Racial Stasis: The Millennial Generation and the Stagnation of Racial Attitudes in American Politics
Christopher D. DeSante and Candis Watts Smith
Abstract
Racial Stasis reveals that rather than the expected upward trend of two steps forward one step back in terms of racial attitudes in America, we witness stagnation. Even though we have seen significant changes in what most Americans clearly understand as racist attitudes, we have not seen the same changes on more symbolic matters. Not only does this book provide evidence that racial progress has flatlined, we also offer several explanations for why. There is probably a plethora of reasons why we see the trend illustrated in the figure above, but a large piece of the puzzle can be explained by t ... More
Racial Stasis reveals that rather than the expected upward trend of two steps forward one step back in terms of racial attitudes in America, we witness stagnation. Even though we have seen significant changes in what most Americans clearly understand as racist attitudes, we have not seen the same changes on more symbolic matters. Not only does this book provide evidence that racial progress has flatlined, we also offer several explanations for why. There is probably a plethora of reasons why we see the trend illustrated in the figure above, but a large piece of the puzzle can be explained by the central claim of this book: younger Whites, namely members of the Millennial Generation, are not doing the work that young people in the past have done to make significant and positive changes in aggregate racial attitudes or policies that aim to ameliorate racial disparities. Instead, there are a series of countervailing forces that prevent the positive aspects that characterize White Millennials (e.g. values of egalitarianism and diversity; a recognition of white privilege) from coming to fruition. We focus on young people, and Millennials in particular.
Keywords:
racial progress,
20th Century Racial Attitudes in America,
Black Americans,
White Americans
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2020 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780226643595 |
| Published to Chicago Scholarship Online: September 2020 |
DOI:10.7208/chicago/9780226643762.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Christopher D. DeSante, author
Indiana University Bloomington
Candis Watts Smith, author
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
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