Modern Teens Don’t Believe In Future Without Racism Any More

Youth don’t think that situation with racial discrimination has got better than 50 years ago.

A recent poll conducted by Newsweek shows that president Obama might be the only person in the country thinking that now is the best time to be “young, gifted, and black’ in America”.

The poll involved 2,057 citizens between the ages of 13 and 17. The results showed that 82 percent of young people today are completely sure that racism is a plague of their time. By a way of contrast only 44 percent of youngsters in 1966 shared such opinion. The gap is even deeper for teenagers of color: 91 percent of those at the moment think that racial discrimination is not gone yet, though in 1966 only 33% of black teens were taking this view.

These figures are sad indeed as they show that regardless all efforts to fight racial bias the situation hasn’t got better and has even got worse. Our black president is finishing his second term, the schools were desegregated quite long ago, but the future prospective still doesn’t seem too bright for the younger generation.

Who is to blame? Why does not the most diverse generation share the dreams and ideas of their predecessors, who had to literally struggle for freedom and equality? Possibly, they face the same ‘old racism’ in a different form, even in the 21st century.

“Teenagers are growing up under this black president, yet at the end of his presidency we are seeing a constant stream of police killings and a new civil rights movement that’s really turning the narrative on its head,” Nikole Hannah-Jones, a New York Times journalist, told Newsweek.

ProPublica 2014 report concerning police killings says that teenagers of color have 21 times more chances to be shot than their white counterparts. One can constantly see names like Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin and Tamir Rice all over the media. These guys are much closer to modern youth than some romantic stories from the past. So the present they see, hear, and feel forms their attitude, it also frightens the representatives of racial minority among them. And when you are frightened you can’t have high hopes or dreams.

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