Millennials are No Less Racist than Generation X

[kiva]

One of the important conversations that has began in the wake of Dylann Roof’s racist murder in South Carolina has to do with racism among members of the Millennial generation. We’ve placed a lot of faith in this generation to pull us out of our racist path, but Roof’s actions may help remind us that racism will not go away simply by the passing of time.

--snip--

And they’re slightly more likely than white members of Generation X to think that blacks are less intelligent than whites. So much for a Millennial rescue from racism. All in all, white millennial attitudes are much more similar to those of older whites than they are to those of their peers of color.

--snip--

So, thanks to the colorblindness discourse, white Millennials are quick to see racism as race-neutral. In one study, for example, 58% of white millennials said they thought that “reverse racism” was as big a problem as racism.

Smith summarizes the problem: For Millennials, racism is a relic of the past, but what vestiges may still exist are only obstacles if the people affected decide they are. Everyone is equal, they’ve been taught, and therefore everyone has equal opportunity for success. This is the deficiency found in the language of diversity. … Armed with this impotent analysis, Millennials perpetuate false equivalencies, such as affirmative action as a form of discrimination on par with with Jim Crow segregation. And they can do so while not believing themselves racist or supportive of racism.

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2015/06/23/millennials-are-no-less-racist-than-generation-x-hardly-different-from-boomers/

To me the discussion point isn't the results - not that surprising - but notion of postracism that seem prevalent today.

[MountCleaners]

1. I am an "X-er"...

And I remember when schools and neighborhoods were integrating, and the racist things white people would say. The Civil Rights Movement was a big influence on me. My parents and teachers taught us about it. The seventies were a positive time to be a kid.

I would love to hear what millennials' experiences are - they didn't live through a lot of history, but I'll let them speak for themselves!

[McCamy Taylor]

2. I belong to Generation JFK

the group whose earliest political memory was the JFK assassination and who can tell you where they were when Bobbie and MLK Jr were killed. That means I grew up watching kids get hit by firehoses in Birmingham on the nightly news. And I am dismayed at how racism has crept back into the American meanstream. It is shameful.

I know plenty of individual kids in their early twenties who have good hearts. But they are mostly active in the LGBT movement, which makes them politically more liberal about everything. They attend Occupy rallies. They protest. They keep themselves informed.

Too many kids embrace a kind of "I'm not political" mindset which is really just "I'm going to enjoy my white privilege without any guilt." They do not know. They refuse to know. They do not understand. They refuse to try to understand.

[kiva]

3. Another baby boomer here.

The college students I teach are not generally malicious racists, just...thoughtless about it.

To my generation any white person who used the N word was a racist, pure and simple, and most wouldn't deny it. Now I see *mostly* younger people twisting themselves into pretzels to explain why they can use the word but not be racists...because it's in the music they listen to, because they end the word with 'a' instead of 'er', because they have black friends who tell them it's OK for them to use it. They don't consider themselves racist, and don't listen to people who say they are offended by the word...because racism is over, so there's no reason to apply the idea to language anymore.

[MountCleaners]

5. "Racism is Over"...

I have painful memories of hearing ugly remarks, of people who didn't want to live near black people and who didn't want their children to go to school with black people. It's hard to forget that, I worry about younger people thinking "racism is over" simply because it was once a lot worse.

OTOH young people can be less stubborn and reactionary. I'd like to read what millennials have to say.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

4. The President was right the other day...

It's a lot more than just 'saying the n word in public'. And there are tens of millions of white people out there who wouldn't dream of using the word, but will still complain about affirmative action, or say white privilege doesn't exist, or defend police brutality (against minorities), or make excuses left and right for racist institutions while complaining about attempts to ameliorate racism.