People sometimes conclude the topic of “hippies” is passé is because hippies no longer exist—“Hey, the sixties are over with!” This pervasive and pernicious belief, which millions have been trained to recite with an almost Orwellian obedience, defies reality.

Recently, a colleague asked me about this book. We had just attended a meeting with several visibly hippie staffers; the dean of the division, I would judge based on the way she dresses and the Jimmy Buffet paphernalia on her door, is probably hippie; there are hundreds of visibly hippie students on campus. As I explained the book's basics, he mused, "Gee, I didn‘t think there were any hippies anymore." And as he was speaking these very hippie-denying words, a white male in his thirties--bearded, ear ringed and with his hair in a ponytail--walked by. Now, I’d be willing to bet that if I showed a brief video of that passerby to 100 people and asked them, "Give me five words off the top of your head to describe this man," hippie would be on the list of at least 95. How is it my colleague can’t see that post-sixties hippie? Or perhaps he can’t admit that he sees that post-sixties hippie. My colleague is not alone: it’s a sort of socially induced denial--"Flappers lived in the 1920's; hippies lived in the 1960's; that's the way it is."

On another occasion I was discussing "hippies" with someone who, despite his own obviously countercultural identity, was insisting hippies lived only in the past: "If hippies no longer exist," I countered, pointing to a visibly hippie couple, "then what are they over there?" "I don’t know," he answered, not missing a beat, "but you can’t call them hippies." Why can’t we call post-sixties hippies, hippies? How is it he has such difficulty acknowledging the obvious? Why the stubborn refusal to admit what he sees, to tell the truth about himself: that he's a hippie living in a post-sixties present?

Often, even as people say that hippies no longer exist, there’s a contradictory undercurrent. Recently, for instance, I heard a Coloradan remark, "Yeah, the sixties are over with, but boy, someone sure forgot to tell them that up in Boulder." So, even as he was relegating hippies to the past, he was admitting they exist in the present; even as he was reciting the cliché, he was admitting it’s a fiction. Hippies don’t exist, but they do exist.

The widespread relegation of hippies to the sixties is at least partly the result of media coaching, and news reports are larded with examples illustrating this peculiar way of thinking and speaking.
New York Times reporter Evelyn Nieves, for instance, writes, "In the San Francisco Bay area, Marin County is considered a kind of resting home for old hippies and New Age followers . . . ." Why call these hippies "old"? Why the "resting home" remark? Are these hippies all senior citizens? No, they’re "old" and in a "resting home" only because hippies were a thing of the sixties, and the sixties are over with. And why must the younger hippie types be considered something other than hippies: "New Age followers"? Are they really "following" the older hippies in the religious sense? No. They can’t just be called hippies because hippies were just a thing of the sixties, and these younger people are clearly post-sixties. Truth is, just as particular ethnic groups dominate other towns or regions, hippies apparently dominate Marin County. And Marin County hippies are a variety of ages. It would be easier and clearer for Nieves to simply say Marin County is a hippie enclave; instead, she carefully parses her language in deference to the thing-of-the-sixties cliché.

Or look at this 1991 New York Times story “A Move for Marijuana Where the 60’s Survive”: in the small town of San Marcos, Texas, a group of hippie types have been engaging in civil disobedience in protest of marijuana laws. The hippies are described as "refugees from the 1960’s," "residents who pride themselves on dwelling largely in the 60’s," and the situation is called a "throwback to the 60’s" by the reporter. The local District Attorney explains, "We have a little time warp here in parts of Hays County." The local sheriff comments, "They are just old hippies going through a life change." Every time hippies are mentioned in this piece, a comment about being "old" or belonging back in the sixties is added. And again notice, if the hippies in question belonged to any other group, it’s unlikely they’d be called "old."

McNeil-Lehrer News Hour report from 2001 describes a section of New York City as "kind of a hippie throwback area." Why not just call it a "hippie area"? You wouldn’t call Harlem "a kind of African-American throwback area." No, "throwback" is there because—sing along, please—"Hippies were just a thing of the sixties!"

Methinks they protesteth too strongly: if hippies really were just a thing of the sixties, we wouldn’t have to be so constantly reminded. And as we’ve seen, even as people relegate hippies to the sixties, they’re often admitting in some way that hippies exist in the present. Ironically, to believe that hippies no longer exist, you’d have to be "not living in the real world." The evidence that hippies have continued to exist beyond the sixties--that hippies exist today--is so obvious, the point shouldn’t even have to be argued. Again, what’s going on here? Why the weird duplicity, the denial, the doublespeak?

The answer is pretty simple: "Hippies were just a thing of the 60s" is not descriptive: it's proscriptive. That is, it doesn’t tell us what is; it tells us what "should" be. Instead of an accurate description of reality, it’s a policy statement: "Hippies shouldn’t be here in a post-sixties world; they shouldn’t exist in the present; they have no right." That this thing-of-the-sixties notion is so ubiquitous is the result of a campaign by the powers that be to convince people that hippies don’t have a right to exist in today’s world: "They had their chance, and now they belong to the past—we’re over all that business."

This constant attaching of this addendum, this mental note, to hippie has another function: it stigmatizes. It adds something to every utterance about hippies that undercuts and delegitimizes. Phrases that relegate hippies to the sixties—"holdover from the sixties," "leftover from the sixties," "overgrown hippie," "stuck in a time warp," "aging hippie" (all humans age, so why say it and only about hippies?)—function the way an epithet functions: whenever one refers to this group or its members using the epithet, the very language communicates disrespect.

But there’s more here: Not only is this attitude of seeing hippies as existing only in the sixties counter to reality, it’s also evidence of ethnocide, the attempt to destroy an ethnicity. (No, ethnocide doesn’t necessarily mean genocide: there are ways of ending an ethnicity besides mass murdering the group’s members.) That Americans have been trained to see and speak of the counterculture as dead, despite its obvious existence, reflects the will of the powers that be to kill the counterculture. They would have us believe hippies are nothing more than a figment of our own imaginations--a dream we dreamed one afternoon long ago.