Millennials are no less racist than Generation X
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.
In fact, data from the General Social Survey - one of the most trusted social science data sets - suggests that Millennials are failing to make dramatic strides toward a non-racist utopia. Scott Clement, at the Washington Post, shows us the data. Attitudes among white millennials (in green below) are statistically identical to whites in Generation X (yellow) and hardly different from Baby Boomers on most measures (orange). Whites are about as likely as Generation X:
- to think that blacks are lazier or less hardworking than whites
- to think that blacks have less motivation than whites to do well
- to oppose living in a neighborhood that is 50% or more black
- to object if a relative marries a black person
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.
At PBS, Mychal Denzel Smith argues that we are reaping the colorblindness lessons that we've sowed. Millennials today may think of themselves as "post-racial," but they've learned none of the skills that would allow them to get there. Smith writes:
They know how to claim that they're not racist, but they don't know how to recognize when they are and they're clueless as to how to actually change our society for the better.
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: