Stop waiting for racism to die out with old people. The Charleston shooting suspect is 21.

[Blue_Tires]

Dylann Roof has been charged with murder for killing nine black people at a Charleston, South Carolina, church on June 17 in an attack that's being investigated as a hate crime. He's 21 years old. His birth year — 1994 — means he's not just a millennial, but one of the younger ones.

The accused killer's youth is a reminder that the cultural myth of racism eventually dying out along with an aging, backward-thinking generation is nonsense.

Obviously, as time passes, many of the elderly people who were alive and just fine with it when legalized segregation was enforced, who took full advantage of the days when saying the n-word was normal, and who could publish a racist rant in the local paper without any consequences are leaving the Earth and taking their brand of stubborn, proud bigotry with them.

But to look for comfort in the idea that their departure will make America a place where black people can enjoy equality and peace is a piece of American fiction that's as dangerous and lazy as it is seductive.

Roof, according to his roommate, is "big into segregation and other stuff" and worries that "black people are taking over the world"; is a fan of the former racist regimes of apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia; and, according to police, uttered a "racially inflammatory remark" at the scene of the church massacre. A manifesto attributed to him details his hatred of African Americans. Roof developed these twisted views not in pre-civil rights movement America, but in the past two decades. He — along with many more who perpetuate racism in lower-profile, legal ways — is proof that it's not just the elderly who continue to have and act on racist views.

http://www.vox.com/2015/6/22/8810539/racism-generational-american-views

[gollygee]

1. There is so much push back about this

I've posted a few articles in a thread in GD about a study that shows that younger people have about the same level of racism as Gen Xers and Baby Boomers, but there is a real desire to ignore the facts raised by this solid study.

And here's my original post: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026864379 I've also responded to at least one other thread about that repeats the same myth that racism is dying out on its own.

This isn't a superficial or questionable study. This is good data. But people keep saying, basically, "that's not how it feels to me (or how I want it to be) therefore it can't be true." Hopefully not the same people who were posting in the anti-intellectualism thread about how they were so much more objective than everyone else.

There are several articles in there, and I could have found more, that make it clear that racism is not going to magically vanish as future generations grow up. Right now, it's staying about the same for each generation since the Boomers, and it could just as well get worse as better.

I think this is a dangerous myth. I also think it's an intentional excuse to not actively fight against racism. I would have hoped that we would have learned a lesson from this shooting and from all the instances of police brutality from relatively young police officers. Our country has to actively do work to dismantle racism. It isn't going to go away on its own.

Our country needs a lot more discussion about the reality of this.

Anyway, huge kick & rec.

[JustAnotherGen]

4. Thank you

I saw the thread and got distracted - I wanted to read that piece!

[SusanCalvin]

2. They are still being carefully taught. nt

[Number23]

3. K&R The whole "racism will die with old people" meme is one pushed by unaffected white people

Black people know that this stuff is learned behavior and that there are still more than enough racist people in the world to last the next 50 generations if nothing is done about it.

[randys1]

6. Exactly what I was told by my friend the other night, and I was sure that

for a variety of reasons, interracial marriage, etc., it was dying with the elderly generation, not completely but in large part, I would have bet on that for sure.

I was wrong.

I think the percentage of overt racists is less (remember, all white people are born with white privilege therefore, etc) now than 50 years ago, but I may be wrong about that too, not sure.


ALL THE MORE REASON to SHAME these motherfuckers.



p.s. one reason I believed there were less racists with the under 30 crowd than in the past is my son, who is like me politically and about race, but he also is the one that told me his generation doesnt react to the N word the way I do or mine.


I think he misunderstood the use of the word by the AfAm community as a sign that the word might be OK again for all, I assured him no and he now understands that, but I had to tell him that. I have never heard him use the word, BTW.

You know me, I believe there are, wait for it

TENS OF MILLIONS

of overt racists and homophobes and misogynists and they are mostly teaparty/repubs, but also Democratic party.

There are 30 or 40 million American adults who would not do what Roof did, but in the back of their mind they get it.

[Number23]

8. "There are 30 or 40 million American adults who would not do what Roof did, but in the back of

their mind they get it."

I agree. And it's times like this that I feel weary to my very bones. I am so damn sick of all of this.

[JustAnotherGen]

5. Rec!

[Flatulo]

7. I admit I've had this kind of thinking myself, based on observing my millenial son's interactions

with his friends, which group includes a black kid and an Indian kid.

They're not quite colorblind, but they do all get along just grand. And they do discuss race among themselves.

I've also thought that the Latino immigration wave, which would darken the nation's complexion, along with intermarrying, would normalize race relations.

Now I'm thinking otherwise. After all, billions of people have complete faith in the biblical telling of events that happened thousands of years ago. Apparently belief systems can be perpetuated indefinitely.