Give ’em enough rope and they’ll hang…me.

Regarding the perils of racism and being of Xennial age.

I fear I’ve been lending white people too much rope insofar as accepting their inability to truly understand how and why their accidentally or intentionally racist behavior towards black people of late in America is truly troubling. At some point, I think I’ve lent them enough rope to form a noose, and now that noose feels like it’s slipping entirely too comfortably around my neck. However, in unpacking how the newly coined “Xennial” term plays into all of this, I get why this is happening and may ultimately seal my own peril in the process.

Due to my date of birth being April 19, 1978, and because I understand both resisting the staidness of pop culture like a Gen Xer but am also okay with bustling into the social unknown like a millennial, there’s a term now a term used to describe me: Xennial. Simultaneously, because I’m an African-American born between 1977–1983 who understands these things but am also faced with millennials unpacking being post-racial then re-racialized, and Baby Boomers and old folks doubling down on actual racism, there’s another term that best describes my Black Xennial nature: (the) strange(st) fruit (yet).

With every ill-formed tweet, triggering push notification regarding stupid behavior that makes my…