Reporter’s Notebook: A Look Inside Our Focus Groups on Youth and Race
Mainstream news media seems pretty certain that today’s young adults, sometimes referred to as Millennials, don’t see race. They date interracially, they identify as mixed-race, and they voted for Barack Obama; the only possible explanation is that they don’t care what color anyone is, right?
The problem, of course, is that nobody’s bothered to test this idea. That’s why Dom Apollon, research director of the Applied Research Center, decided to collect some real data and question the assumption. In this video, Dom discusses the need for the research and the methodology used, and lays out the three major findings about young people’s racial attitudes in the new report. He also interviews participants from the Los Angeles focus groups, asking their opinions on Barack Obama and the United States’ fast-changing demographic profile.
Tuesday, June 7 2011
Editor’s note: This essay is the first in a three-part Colorlines series based on a series of focus groups conducted earlier this year by our publisher, the Applied Research Center. Part two will explore the language young people use to discuss racism and part three will highlight innovators working to help young people organize around structural racism. You can download the full findings of the focus groups at ARC.org. “I think that’s a big fat lie,” responded Jose, 20, when asked the question so many people want to know about his future: whether the fact that his generation elected the first black president means America is, finally, over race. He’s a young Latino man of Mexican descent who works multiple part-time jobs, including painting cars, being a security guard, and doing construction. “It’s been a thousand years that racism has been going on, up ‘til this date,” Jose said. “It’s still a whole bunch of things going on.” Andy, a 19-year old white community college student, was more blunt still. “That’s a load of crap. There are still racists everywhere,” he scoffed. “[It] can still hold you down, and make you less successful. And impact your life.” Jose and Andy are members of what sociologists and journalists have dubbed the Millennial generation. The parlor game of naming and identifying themes for every crop of Americans can be inane, but there’s no denying that people are a product of their times—and, in turn, that each generation collectively gives birth to a new cultural, political and economic ethos. Children of the Depression intuitively grasp sustainability and saving. Baby Boomers can’t stop thinking about tomorrow. Generation X took its own revolution online. And the young people born after 1980 have been correctly recognized as the largest, most racially and ethnically diverse generation the United States has ever known. The Millennials have already helped usher in two massive, irreversible changes in the 21st century: the election of the first nonwhite president and the news, as of the 2010 Census, that America is just a generation and a half away from being a majority nonwhite nation. As a result of these tectonic shifts, everybody wants to know what young people think about the country’s maddeningly perennial problem: race. Or, more accurately, everyone wants to declare what young people think about race. Too many journalists, political commentators, and even researchers have taken the established fact of increased racial tolerance among today’s youth and hastily labeled them “post-racial.” The conclusion fits neatly with the mainstream political narrative of the Obama era—that race and racism are no longer significant barriers to success in our nation. Mass market publications have outdone one another with trend stories suggesting that Millennials’ comfort with diversity—whether in identifying as multiracial or dating outside of their race—is proof of that equity. At the Applied Research Center, which publishes Colorlines.com, we found this narrative a bit too tidy. So we decided to do something that needs to happen more often: Actually ask young people what they think about race and racial equity in their lives and their futures. We conducted more than a dozen in-depth focus group discussions in the Los Angeles area with 80 young people like Andy and Jose, ages 18 to 25. We will be expanding the research to additional cities later this year, but so far, two themes emerged clearly from these conversations.
—Theresa, 24, biracial (Filipina and white) college graduate In my political science class, I’m hearing whites go off. They seem very angry. They kinda feel threatened…. The tension is there, you can feel it. It’s just interesting. They say stuff about immigration, where their money for taxes is going. They feel they should go to their schools, not schools in L.A. or Long Beach. They feel like their money should stay in their community. They don’t feel the need to help others. They feel like … why should they be penalized for our sufferings, basically.
—Ed, 24, Filipino American, part-time student, part-time product developer Reactions similarly differed across racial groups when asked about the demographic projections for the U.S. population. Notably, the white participants in our study generally did not respond in depth when asked how they felt about the nation’s shifting profile and gave comparatively dispassionate responses. The responses of a group of white Millennials who are not in college, for instance, ranged from “it will be good [to have] more diversity” to “[it] will lead to more tolerance” to “there will be more conflict, but eventually things will cool down.” But as a whole, this group expressed a vague sense of optimism. “I don’t know anybody who’s angry/worried about it,” said one person. Among young people of color, however, the topic generated much more spirited discussions. Reactions ranged from concern over the racist backlash against President Obama and anti-immigrant sentiment in today’s political climate to a minority view of sympathy for the loss of whiteness in the traditional American identity. Some also articulated a disbelief that the changing demographics would come with a change in material circumstances for people of color. For instance, Daniel, a part-time junior college student in a Latino focus group, argued that having more people of color in the U.S. won’t necessarily bring about equity. “It’s pointless if we’re not moving forward. If we’re not getting the higher education. We could keep on having immigrants coming over, but it’s pointless if we’re stuck in the same place.” African American college student Stacie made a similar point: In terms of who holds power more politically, economically … as far as, like, land, homeowners, things of economic value? And that really make the economy turn, and that kinda thing? We are not on the radar for that as much as we should be. Sofia, a 21-year-old college student whose parents are from Costa Rica, similarly remarked that a demographic shift toward majority status for people of color is “not necessarily a great thing. The rich are getting richer. And the poor are getting poorer. It could just be a little bit of white people who are very wealthy, and we could have a lot more poor people, too.”