Young white adults say they support BLM, but their positions say otherwise.
I was a young white male between 18 and 30 once, and I had friends who were young white males 18 to 30 once. Back in the early years of the Bush administration, we were the future progressives. Anti-war, pro-equality, economic progressives who sought a better world where prejudice is a stain of the past and economic equality is the future.
Then we got old, and now I war with my best friend, a former Howard Dean volunteer, over whether or not a football player protesting the national anthem is just as bad as telling two gay guys they should die. (my previous diary on that is here). And now I listen as a friend who I marched in anti-war protests with tells us we need to “bomb the shit out of Syria” because he’s worried about his daughter’s life here in New York.
What happened? There were warning signs I think. I can remember talking to friends of mine who supported Howard Dean in 2004, but who also felt we couldn’t “go overboard” in opposing wars, because “Afghanistan was still necessary.” In 2008, my aforementioned best friend sported an Obama button, but warned he had to be mindful of the deficit and couldn’t “go on a spending spree.” Within a few months, he was fretting about Obamacare because it wasn’t getting Republican votes.
It hit me; they were never really all that progressive in the first place. What struck me into pondering this was reading this article.
bigstory.ap.org/...
On its face, this seems to be good news
Fifty-one percent of white adults between the ages of 18 and 30 say in a GenForward poll they now strongly or somewhat support Black Lives Matter, a 10-point increase since June, while 42 percent said they do not support the movement.
But underneath lurks some concern
But most young whites also think the movement's rhetoric encourages violence against the police, while the vast majority of young blacks say it does not. And young whites are more likely to consider violence against police a serious problem than say the same about the killings of African-Americans by police.
...
Asked specifically about recent killings of black people by the police, 72 percent of African-American young people, 61 percent of Asian-Americans, 51 percent of Latinos and 40 percent of whites said they consider those killings part of a larger pattern, rather than isolated.
But young blacks are much more likely than young whites to call killings of black people by the police a very or extremely serious problem, 91 percent to 43 percent. Sixty-three percent of young whites think that violence against police is a serious problem, similar to the 60 percent of young African-Americans who say so.
Young whites also are more likely to say they trust Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump more than Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton to handle attacks against the police, 45 percent to 28 percent, though they prefer Clinton for handling police violence against African-Americans, 44 percent to 20 percent.
Majorities of young African-Americans trust Clinton more to handle violence by and against police. Young Asian-Americans and Hispanics are also more likely to trust Clinton than Trump on both.
And 66 percent of whites also said that they believe that Black Lives Matter's rhetoric encourages violence against police, compared with 43 percent of Asian-Americans, 42 percent of Hispanics, and 19 percent of African-Americans who said so.
So what does this tell us? First it tells us a slim majority of whites 18-30 support BLM, but then it also tells us that a bigger majority doesn’t agree with the movement’s message. Only four in ten whites 18-30 think police violence is part of a larger pattern, while nearly 2/3 thinks violence AGAINST police is a serious problem AND a solid 2/3 think BLM encourages police violence. (a good 15 percent support BLM, but think it encourages violence against police, explain that away)
Now we are talking about a minority of young white people here, for sure, but my larger point is my cynicism that young, especially white, people will continue to hold progressive views and fight for progressive ideals once they grow older. I found it in my own life; a few of my friends who supported Dean in 2004 are strong Trump backers now (including one who voted for Obama in 2008)
I identify several factors in their shifting views; getting high-pay jobs, having children, moving to the suburbs and paying property taxes. Suddenly, revolutions and society-changing movements become less interesting and perhaps even dangerous to their interests. Police become key to keeping the peace they have grown accustomed to, taxes are a burden that’s keeping them down, Syrian refugees are secret terrorists out to blow up their children. None of these things were factors at age 24.
Almost always they point to their younger idealist years as “being young and stupid and not knowing what I was talking about”
We’ve seen this before. The boomers were hippies who were going to bring about a post-racist world of unity and peace; but then the majority of voters in that generation cast votes for Reagan and Bush. Indeed my dad’s best friend, whose first vote for cast for Eugene McCarthy and who still has a McGovern sign in his house, has been a hardcore right wing conservative since at least 2004, or as my dad put it “since he has been able to afford the country club.” Today, he thinks everyone in New York should have guns and “we should point them at the thugs in the projects.” When asked about his support for McCarthy and McGovern, he kindly reminds me “they weren't nearly as liberal as Democrats are today.”
I wouldn’t hang my hopes on the youth of the nation. For these young white adults, who appear more progressive than their elders, though they seem to call themselves supporters of a movement, they don’t seem to understand or back the message of it. Looking back, I can see that with my friends now. Some supported Dean, but thought we should torture terrorists. Some supported Obama, but thought taxes were too high. Some supported Sanders this year, but think cops are being unfairly labeled as racist, and keep in mind, Clinton is losing more Bernie dead enders to Gary Johnson, the anthesis to Bernie’s agenda, than Jill Stein, who is much closer. For these folks, it was never about the message.
Once their interest in being part of a movement dies down, their true feelings will come out, and we’ll wonder what happened to our idealist young millennials.
