There’s nearly a 50-year age gap between the oldest Baby Boomer and the youngest member of Gen Z. And for years we’ve heard how different these generations can be, from how they spend their money to how they work to how they use emojis.

We’ve seen “OK Boomer” trend on TikTok as Gen Z criticized their elders, and heard Boomers retort that younger generations should “stop whining.”

But Baby Boomers and Gen Z have something in common that’s often overlooked: Bias is shaping the way we talk about them, allowing stereotypes and myths to drown out facts and reality.

It’s an important point the president of the Pew Research Center made in a recent post. And it’s worth unpacking, because it has big implications for how we can better understand huge swaths of the US population – and the country’s political future.

Fifty-nine years ago today, legal apartheid in America came to an abrupt end. President Lyndon Johnson addressed the nation from the East Room of the White House:

"I am about to sign into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964 …. Let us close the springs of racial poison."

Afterward, ours was a changed nation, prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. The back of Jim Crow, with its false promise of "separate but equal" public accommodations, was broken, as America fulfilled its most sacred ideal: "All men are created equal."

Since then, the Civil Rights Act has become as fundamental to our national identity as any of our founding documents, deeply rooted in the fabric of a nation that strives to be "more perfect" and to move ever forward.