Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: 'Millennial' voters not just white

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: 'Millennial' voters not just white:

 'Millennial' voters not just white

"Show the younger generation what standing up looks like," Chance the Rapper at yesterday's free concert.

Please, no more hand-wringing about under-voting, so-called "millennials". I say, so-called, because I don't really think there's one such thing as millennials. Of course I know there are young people who came of age by the year 2000. The problem is, the way the term is used in media and even by academics, it's come to mean young white people/voters/consumers. Don't believe me? Close your eyes and imagine a millennial. Who do you see?

The corporate world is smart enough to see black millennials as a vast potential profit centerand for their role as "culture creators". But as you can imagine, they fail to mention the stark racial disparities in the population of incarcerated youth. Among the estimated 717,800 men ages 18 to 29 who were incarcerated at midyear 2010, 37% (290,100) were black and 23% (180,400) were Hispanic.

Here's a survey done by Harvard University’s Institute of Politics which made me cringe:

Asked about the nation's future, 51 percent of those ages 18 to 29 said they feel "fearful," while just 20 percent picked "hopeful." In responding to the question, which hadn't been asked in previous polls, every demographic group felt more fearful than hopeful, the institute said, with white women exhibiting the most anxiety, at 60 percent fearful. 

I can't help but wonder which millennials are even accessible to Harvard researchers? How about Spanish-speaking immigrant youth or young African-American men in what's left of urban public housing? Or in prison.

While there is some cultural overlap, black, Latino, urban poor men, women don't occupy the same space as middle-class or wealthy white youth when it comes to education, consumption, or voting. Averaging them all together is misleading.

For example, millennial 3rd-party voting has been limited almost exclusively to white people. While Clinton holds a 36-point advantage over Trump in most polls, there's no sense even Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: 'Millennial' voters not just white: