Young, Gifted, and Uplifted: Political Activism among Young People
Who says young people cannot be politically active? When II Magazine asked me to write about young people and politics, my initial thought was to approach the writing assignment by addressing the generational divide we often see in American political participation: older people are more politically active than younger people, especially as far as voting. However, political activism is not just about going to the polls to vote. One can be considered politically active by working at the polls, signing a petition, or doing something as simple as wearing a campaign button to support a political candidate. But now, we have the dawning of a new generation of political activism, one wherein people who have access to the Internet have the power to inform others and become politically active in different ways: now, activism is no longer as simple as the stroke of a pen, but rather is simpler as the stroke of a “Send”! We can post to our favorite social networking websites news articles about politics, petitions, campaign ads, political interviews, and political documentaries, sharing such information with hundreds, if not thousands, of people instantly.
Even political elites who seemed more distant and less easily accessible can now communicate with us more directly and vice versa through social networking exchanges. Our political world seems even smaller. But, even more telling, how we understand who and how people are politically engaged is becoming more transformed, and people of all ages, young people age 25 and under, especially, are coming of age in a new era of technology and politics in which access to diverse information arguably continues to democratize our society and make us a network less farther removed from the lives of political, economic, and social elites.
In essence, access to more information and people with extensive networks, theoretically enhances our abilities to express our political interests, disdain, and support for democracy-enhancing politics. To this end, young people today, often referred to as the Millennials (who came of age during the 2000s), similar to their progenitors, whether they were a part of the Generation X (post-civil rights), the Baby boomers (Post-World War II), or the Greatest Generation (pre-World War II), have a vested interest in politics. They just may choose to become active differently and based upon different political events. Several political events that have occurred within the past year and a half indicate to us that young people are aware, politically participatory, and engaged in politics related to their circumstances—Arab Spring, the Occupy Movement, the Trayvon Martin case, and Election 2012. Recurring themes across these several political events are the quest for justice, equality, and a better democracy.
Recall, elsewhere in the world, in 2011, “Arab Spring” evolved as a result of young people in Arab nations using social networking websites to encourage others in their nations to promote democracy, thusly, revolutionizing regime change in several Arab nations. Here, in the United States, young people also have been active in protesting tuition increases at their universities and protesting business practices that they feel divide us further into the “99 percent versus 1 percent” dichotomy. Who can forget the local protests in major cities across the nation in fall 2011—the Occupy Movement–stemming from the protests of young people, the seemingly “40 and under” demographic, who questioned the practices of Wall Street and corporations around the world and their effects on the “99ers,” the masses of whom the Movement suggested lacked the wealth, wherewithal, and power to maneuver their economic statuses to the extent of the nation’s top 1 percent.
Although some pundits questioned whether the Occupy Movement had a specific agenda, the major point is that, in the context of the United States, younger Americans were highlighting, engaging, and protesting socioeconomic inequalities and their implications for democracy, and ultimately, their implications for access to the commonly touted “American Dream.” By spring 2012, the death of Trayvon Martin yielded realities and concerns about the quality of life for young people manifested in another light, aside from class —the legacy of race in America and its effect on the quality of life for people of color, especially black Americans. With special attention to the circumstances of this youth’s death, we could not help but ask, “Could young black people escape historic, racial discrimination in a post-civil rights America?”
On February 26, 2012 in Sanford, Florida, a seventeen-year-old African American teenager, Trayvon Martin, lost his life to a gun-shot wound in the chest, after the assailant, George Zimmerman, a twenty-eight-year-old biracial white/Latino man, shot him based on Zimmerman’s claim of self-defense. Even over a month after the incident, despite admitting that he shot Martin, Zimmerman remained a free man, not having been arrested or arguably properly investigated for the offense. In the State of Florida, there is a “stand your ground” law, which on the face, allows gun-toters to “stand their ground” and shoot another person in self-defense if they feel as if their lives are being threatened. In the Martin-Zimmerman case, Zimmerman has used this law to his benefit, making the claim that he shot Martin in self-defense after he felt threaten by his presence.
As many of us are now aware, the controversy in this case lies in the fact that Martin had no weapon on his person, and as we may admire in the joy and likeness of a child, Martin only carried a bottle of tea and a pack of Skittles candies on his person. To this point, many African Americans who have experienced racial discrimination, racial profiling, and even instances of undue arrest, questioned whether the lack of Zimmerman’s arrest at the time and questionable investigation of the events surrounding the interactions between the two were exemplary of a miscarriage of justice. Even more, for many, the question of how and why Zimmerman found threatening a young black teen who was unarmed and traversing afoot in an upscale neighborhood, where he was visiting his family. To many, Martin’s (now affectionately known worldwide and sadly, posthumously famous, as “Trayvon”) only offense was being a young black teen, dressed in a hooded sweatshirt (also known as a “hoodie”) and walking through a neighborhood, where Zimmerman served as a neighborhood watchman and wherein Zimmerman found him alarming and threatening on one rainy night in Florida. Simply put, for many, this ordeal encapsulated an eerily familiar American story about race, crime, and justice in America: Trayvon was young, black, racially profiled, and thought to be out of “place” in this Sanford neighborhood. What all this meant for justice and equality for black Americans, in particular, sheds light on the disparate realities that Americans perceive and can face based on their categorization in racial groups in our society.
It is because of “place” that, historically, many African Americans, especially in the American South, have been reprimanded if they were seen as being “out of place” in certain contexts. For blacks, “place” had much to do with their race and the expectation that blacks were to be subservient and deferent to whites and that affluent environments were even more remote and exclusive of them either by custom or, formerly, even by Jim Crow, race-restrictive laws. If one were black and s/he “stepped out of place,” the consequences could be dire and uncertain, with either a reprimand by oftentimes whites verbally sanctioning blacks or, the most extreme consequence, with a public lynching to warn other blacks that “stepping out of one’s place” could mean an outcome of death.
For black women, as Professor Evelyn Simien reminds us in her new book Gender and Lynching: The Politics of Memory (2012), racial violence also was not a stranger to black women, as they were also lynched, and rape by white men mostly went duly unpunished because black women’s bodies were viewed societal as hypersexual, and thusly, open to ravishment by men, in general. While law and society sought to protect white womanhood and white property, this protection was not reciprocated for black women and men and their possessions. Black masculinity was publicly vilified as rapacious towards white women. Black property could be revoked or violated without legal sanctioning.
Thus, as victims of racial violence themselves (to their person or to their property), black women and men lacked equal protection of the law to try and punish their violators. The value of black life also took a different and lower weight compared to whites as victims of crimes committed by (or allegedly by) blacks or whites as perpetrators of crimes against blacks. In such cases, often blacks received weightier and extreme sentencing for crimes committed (or allegedly to have been committed) against whites, whereas whites often received little or no jail time for crimes committed against blacks.
That the Trayvon Martin case would be as evocative of historical practices towards blacks remains astonishing. Pundits questioned whether the teen was racially profiled, as Zimmerman possibly saw the teen as “out of place” in his upscale neighborhood. Some questioned whether Zimmerman participated in race-related retribution, wherein he felt the need to control and reprimand people like blacks that he associated with criminal behavior. At some point during the controversy, for example, there were media disputes over whether Zimmerman referenced in his 9-1-1 call the need to reprimand in the Sanford neighborhood either “goons” (criminals) or “coons” (a historic racial epithet used to refer to blacks).
Additionally, others, like historical civil rights organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), questioned the disparate circumstances by which Zimmerman was treated as an assailant, as he was not immediately investigated and arrested for committing Trayvon’s murder. To many questioning this disparate justice, the treatment of this case evoked black life having a lower value than white life, for if Zimmerman were black and Trayvon were white, many suggested that a black Zimmerman would have been arrested immediately and charged with the murder of a white victim. Summarily, many questioned whether justice was for all (regardless of race) or for some (principally in favor of whites).
In April 2012, Zimmerman was eventually arrested; however, after having received bail, he posted it and was free within hours. Within weeks, Zimmerman was returned to jail and his bond revoked after it was revealed that he and his wife had not properly disclosed assets that would have affected the judge’s assessment of the amount of George Zimmerman’s bail. Zimmerman’s wife, Shellie Zimmerman, now faces perjury charges as a result of her involvement in making false statements about the couple’s additional access to funds, which were obtained from monies fundraised through a website launched in George Zimmerman’s name, in the aftermath of Trayvon’s murder and before his bond hearing.
Nevertheless, week by week it seems that the media report juridical nuances that complicate the working and common knowledge about the prospective case against Zimmerman. If anything the Martin-Zimmerman incident elucidates how uncertain justice, in general, may be regardless of race. However, historical perspectives about race and justice in America make the uncertainties about justice more real for the memories of people who have witnessed blatant injustices, especially against black people in this nation. To restore the Sanford community’s faith in its police department, more recently, the town fired its chief of police, Chief Bill R. Lee, who led the department that conducted the investigations in the Trayvon Martin controversies. Without this assurance of commitment to justice, the lack of confidence in the police could mean greater psychological vulnerabilities for the community’s citizenry and perhaps less confidence in impartial justice.
As I have argued elsewhere in my book, Trust in Black America: Race, Discrimination, and Politics (2012), history can inform how people perceive the actions of others in a contemporary context. These evaluations can influence how we trust in other people across racial lines and even in political institutions, like in this case, the police department. For young people, hearing the apprehensions about impartial justice and recollections of historic experiences with injustices for groups like blacks proves useful for possibly a new knowledge set for which to assess what-not-to-do in justice and democracy. Again, we assume, being informed helps us to make more politically sophisticated decisions to the benefit of our respective political interests. Chief among making our political interests known is through the electoral process.
In 2008, many African Americans celebrated the fact that the nation seemed to have progressed enough to have elected its first, African-American president. As Professor Cathy Cohen notes in her latest book, Democracy Remixed: Black Youth and the Future of American Politics (2010), young people of all races, especially more so among black youth, were among the most stringent supporters and voters to turnout and help elect the nation’s first African American president. However, despite this accomplishment, to date, we are reminded of the subtle and extreme differences that one’s race can bear on his or her life, and for our youth, we would hope that race would not disproportionately affect or continue to affect their lives in this way. But, the Martin case tells us, clearly, we still have room to question whether race still has disproportionate effects on people’s life chances, happenstances, and justice.
Today, young people, especially young black people, live in a non-government sanctioned desegregated society. The mores of yesteryear and race seem remote, if not, unbelievable. But, by way of the Trayvon Martin case, we see that the call for justice, equal protection of the law, and equitable respect for the value of life of black people remains as pertinent an issue as it did pre-1965. For just a brief moment after the election of the nation’s first black president, people entertained whether we live in a “post-racial” society, but the continuing effect and perceptions of injustices surrounding race in America remain alive and well. For black parents, this reigns true, as they must continue in the tradition of their parents and generations before, to inform, teach, and socialize their children about how people in American society may view their race in a way that can be disparaging or harmful to them. This “talk,” also known in psychological studies as “racial socialization,” is one of many conversations that black parents share with their children to protect them from the racial discrimination still evident in our society. Sadly, despite racial socialization experiences and preparation for racial biases, black children or even people of all races may never really be prepared for the harms of racial discrimination.
This is to say that for young black people, the Trayvon Martin case resonates in a way that perhaps their parents honestly hoped that it would not. Although many blacks have been socialized about race in America, many hope that racial socialization messages like “watch how you interact with police because a quick move may lead one to be shot and killed by the police, leaving the store without a bag may indicate theft, or whispering in a store as a black person may lead to white salespersons viewing one as a suspected criminal” will not have to matter in young people’s lives. The politics of the Trayvon Martin case, however, show us that racial socialization is a very powerful tool to help prepare blacks for racial discrimination.
Nationally, the young and others have made resounding cries against the seeming injustices that continue unfolding day by day in the Trayvon case. This activism shows us that our young people are not politically inactive. Rather, they are politically active when issues disproportionately affect them, and they may be politically active in ways different from times past—sending emails and posting to blog sites and social networking sites to inform their peers about politics, and like the young people of the civil rights movement, they are willing to express their disdain about injustices by marching in the streets, organizing sit-ins, and petitioning against unjust policies.
To this end, we would be foolhardy if we were to say that young people are not politically active. Nevertheless, the extent of this activism may still trail behind others, whether based on age differences or racial and ethnic differences. The work of Professor Cathy Cohen shows, black youth are generally less politically active than white and Latino youth. But tragically, in the wake of the Trayvon Martin case and even amid the protests against New York City’s infamous “Stop and Frisk” measures, which disproportionately affect black and Latino boys and men between the ages of 14 and 24, we see gross evocations of race and injustice that have ignited young (black) people’s political fury. For us all, I wish that such a heinous incident as the Trayvon Martin case would not have been our rallying cry. But for the sake of justice, the time is now for us young and old to make our voices loud and clear that justice should be impartial, equally protect ant of all, and respectful of human dignity. This tragedy may awaken a renewed and continual spirit of young (black) activism. With the 2012 presidential election just months away, young people have yet another opportunity to make a nuanced appearance at the polls, all within keeping of democracy and making their voices heard.
In 2008, young people went to the polls in historic numbers. Candidate Obama struck a notable accord with the youth vote, ages 18-29. For the upcoming election, a downturned economy, questions about the constitutionality and relevance of the Affordable Health Care Act, the mortgage crisis, immigration policies, and unemployment are issues meaningful enough to bring all kinds of people to the polls. Within the past few weeks, we have seen President Obama reach out to an increasingly influential voting bloc in American politics—the Latino vote—by making an executive order that would temporarily halt deportation of young undocumented persons (disproportionately Latino) whose parents introduced them to the U.S. illegally as undocumented persons. By engaging a political issue dear to a specific group of young people, we see possible political inroads that may lead to increasing political activism of this group on behalf of the President’s candidacy and, in this case, in support of the Democratic Party.
With Latinos being the second largest ethnic group in the country, the future of American politics and the outcomes of elections may well depend on the voting loyalties and preferences of emerging young, Latino voters. But, for all young people, addressing inequalities and a better quality of life, both relate to their future and the future of the nation: Their participation in election 2012—whether through voting, campaign contributions, working on campaigns, or through sending social networking announcements about politics and policies—will be a critical part of determining who will be the next president of the United States and what party will reign dominant in determining the fate of our nation. With respect to race, inequalities, and justice, protest options remain a rallying cry to draw attention to injustices. However, the power of the vote, especially as it includes the formal empowerment of young people, lends itself to determining politicians, public policies, and political outcomes that affect the contours of our democracy. People, young and old, must participate to make our preferences known, and for today’s youth, we can only make our democracy better through their continued input and participation.
