By Ron Ford

To millennials:

I am in my late fifties, a victim of the recession, returned to college to rebuild my life. Now my tenure here at SFCC is nearly over.

I can’t say it hasn’t been difficult, but it has also been rewarding in so many ways. Far from the least of those ways has been learning and working alongside a plethora of you millennials – is that the correct pluralization? — You guys make me feel like my generation has done at least one thing right by raising you.

As I am writing this, police are on high alert in Chicago following the acquittal of patrolman Michael Brelo for the fatal shooting of an African American couple. This kind of story is becoming really common these days. It and it’s like render the allusions of some right-wing pundits that we are now in a post-racial society, laughable — Barack Obama’s stay in the Whitehouse notwithstanding.

Last year, the New York Times ran a piece on the rise of black activism on supposedly “post-racial” campuses.

“There’s this preconceived notion that our generation is postracial, but there’s these incidents that happen constantly that disprove that point,” Zach Fields, a business major at the University of Michigan, said. He was quoted in the New York Times report, following protest rallies on that campus.

Yes, the struggle for universal equality will probably never end. It requires a constant vigil and a constant chipping away at outdated mores.

However, that said, I do not for a second believe that the civil rights movement has been ineffective or in any way in vain. The fruits of those struggles are no place more apparent than on this campus, in you guys, its predominantly millennial student body.

When I first went to college in the late 1970s, you saw racially diverse groups of friends on TV comedies and dramas, but rarely in real life. Even on TV, the effort to integrate the races felt forced, and therefore, insincere. Every show had just one token African American who was always disposable, and was often the first to die.

Now, as I look around on this campus, racially diverse peer groups seem to be the norm. From what I can see, a majority of you millennials – on this campus, at least – behave in the truly color-blind manner that was the pipedream of hippie philosophers in my day.

You guys seem to know instinctively that the hatred of division is ultimately defeated only by embracing all. You are the living embodiment of a so-called “hippie” ideal. Do your own thing. Don’t judge. Love, man. It’s where it’s at.

Bet you never thought you’d read that. Groovy.

Your music and some of your fashion choices might require a different conversation. But aside from those quibbles, I think you millennials are doing your parents proud. You guys own the future. I think you just may leave it a better place than you found it.