A viral clip of a Jennifer Hudson Show audience member who stated, “I don’t respect my elders if they don’t respect me,” is causing a lot of conversation on the platform formerly known as Twitter.
The comment initially got a gasp from the audience but mostly approval, especially after he explained that respect is reciprocal and should be modeled by both parties. Part of the clip is a rebuttal from guest Alfonso Ribeiro, who stated that it was important to respect elders to their faces but added that it is okay to disagree with them behind their backs.
Uh-oh… What do y’all think? ???? pic.twitter.com/xHLo0m5Qfb
— The Jennifer Hudson Show (@JHudShow) March 16, 2025
No one asked for my opinion, but you are welcome in advance.
Old people are people, just like young people are people, and an elderly person deserves no more respect as a living being than a toddler does. Wait, wait, wait. That’s very specific. As living beings, their experiences are obviously tailored by time, but their right to validation as humans should be guaranteed for a lifetime. With that said, their right to get cussed out does not have an age limit, and this is coming from someone who’s said a thing or two to a person of gray-haired experience level. Hell, I cursed two old ladies out for minding MY business while I was holding a yoga mat. I didn’t curse them out because I was bored or desired to be disrespectful. These women thought they were my authority figures, simply due to their advanced age, and could talk to me any way they wanted over something they were actually WRONG about.
These women were strangers.
During another occasion, I was sitting in front of an older woman who kicked and jerked my seat so violently that the woman next to me woke up. Her excuse was that she didn’t want to put her purse on the floor—and therefore, my seat—which had been reclined for at least an hour, kept her from comfortably sitting with her purse on her lap.
Mind you, this was on a Megabus at midnight.
Lady, if you are so worried about being poor, well, you are traveling on a Megabus, so it’s too late for all that.
At the rest stop, her son told me, “You didn’t have to curse an old lady out like that.”
Actually, yes, I did. She is not too old to learn new things, and hopefully, I kept her from trying to bully another stranger.
There is a woman I am related to; some would call her my aunt, but I just refer to her as my father’s twin sister. It is NOT a family secret that I absolutely HATE this lady, and I mean UTTERLY DESPISE HER. While I am not at all alone, there are multiple family members who don’t prefer her presence, I am ONE of the more vocal ones about my disdain. There are many specific reasons, but the root of the issue is that she never respected any of us. As a child, I watched her physically abuse a younger relative left in her care, not to mention the very traumatic things she did to me that changed my life. She even tormented a defenseless toddler, but she still gets invited to family functions. That toddler is now an adult woman and still expected to be kind to someone who traumatized her because that woman is an “elder” and is somehow deserving of a respect she was too good to ever show at any age.
Giving carte blanche to sh*tty people to be even sh*ttier just because they are eligible for social security benefits no one.
We all have the capacity to learn and be accountable until our dying day. I am obviously not referencing anyone with diminished cognitive abilities who can’t help themselves; I am referencing unhealed people who got older and felt that they were too old to learn things they never desired to learn when they were younger.
Let’s keep it a stack, ‘respect your elders,’ can have really bad implications when you throw in “children are to be seen and not heard,” making it compulsory for a child to respect someone even if they violate their boundaries. All those elders don’t have the best intentions at heart, and many of those people who harm children get to retire into a respected elder status simply because their knees are too immobile for them to traumatize others with the same spring in their step.
Some of the most disrespectful people I’ve ever encountered have been older than me. If they haven’t learned to respect people at a base level by their age, why would they be deserving of it simply because of their age?
