Today it amazes me how my generation has such a negative attitude towards hard work (and sometimes any work at all). With unemployment nearing the heights that it was during the Great Depression, and with it being especially detrimental in the African American community one has to wonder how much of this is because of our attitude towards doing the jobs that are probably the easiest to get.

Most high school to college-aged youth frown at even the mere mention of working in fast food service. They might even laugh at you if you told them about a janitorial opening at the local…well let’s just say a janitorial opening anywhere.

We don’t want to bag your groceries, or clean your home, and we aren’t going to stand on a corner and sell you fresh fruit either.

Why?

The only answer that I can come up with is subconsciously we believe labor with low pay, no matter how menial, relates too closely to slave labor and you know we aren’t having that. But I also believe that this mentality leads us to be left behind in so many aspects of business because of our lacking work ethic.

We don’t want to go to work, especially to a job that we don’t like, and listen to a boss bark orders for us to do things we don’t feel like doing, for eight long hours everyday, to get a paycheck that Uncle Sam, and everyone else has already had their hand in. To so many of us it just isn’t worth it. Its better off being unemployed and complaining about it. Its much easier to just get some county money with that oh-so-convenient-accepted-just-about-everywhere EBT card.

Every issue needs a scapegoat right? Whom can we blame? Public enemy number one; the Latinos?

We constantly complain that all of OUR jobs are being taken, when really we are just angry that someone is willing to do the same job for a lot less money, or, they are willing to do the jobs that we couldn’t fathom doing for any amount of money.

Many of the youngsters in my generation have grown up with a sense of entitlement. We expect a lot but we don’t expect to do a lot to earn it.

We are all about the quick fix and the easy money. Not so much the job, more importantly is the hustle.

This is why it isn’t at all surprising to me that so many young people today see nothing wrong with selling a little weed, or worse. Some turn to just stealing whatever it is that they want, and some have begun to see the profit in sex. Many young girls are being enticed and influenced by the “glamour” of pornography and prostitution or hoping and praying that they can get pregnant by an NFL or NBA player, and nine months later have an 18-year meal ticket.

Once again, they believe its easy to carry someone’s baby, someone that you may barely know, and hardly like in order to make some money. Its better than selling tube socks by the freeway on-ramp right?…because THAT would be degrading…

Obviously, I am being facetious. I think it is a travesty that we look down on people who do what it takes to make it, honestly.

I fear that maybe the value of a hard days work and an honest days pay has been lost on much of my generation and what that may mean for our future is a hard question, with only an eerie silence as its answer.