Myth #2: Younger generations are less racist than older ones

Andrew Grant-Thomas: So, about 10 years ago, Oprah – the one and only – is promoting a film about a Black butler who served at the White House for 34 years. She's doing a promotional interview and she's making the point that in terms of race, we in the U. S. have made a ton of progress, right? She's talking about shifts in laws and attitudes that have allowed us to progress beyond the horror stories of racial violence that were once much more common than they are now.

But she's very clear that the problem of racism and prejudice is by no means over. And here I'm going to quote her directly: “There are still generations of people, older people, who were born and bred and marinated in it, in that prejudice and racism. And they just have to die.” Unquote.

Melissa Giraud: Now, we don't know if Oprah still believes that racism is more or less a disease carried by old people, a disease that will die off when old people do. But it's certainly a belief a lot of people have. And we're here to tell you it's false. It's wrong. It's a myth. On today's episode, we'll talk about why.

[MUSIC]

Melissa Giraud: I'm Melissa Giraud. I'm a multiracial woman, Black and white, raised by immigrant parents, one from Quebec, one from Dominica. And I'm a mom to two kids.

Andrew Grant-Thomas: I'm Andrew Grant-Thomas. I'm a Black man who was born in Jamaica, came to the U.S. at age seven, and I'm the dad to the same two kids that Melissa just referred to.

Melissa Giraud: You are! This is the EmbraceRace Podcast, a show about how to raise kids who are thoughtful, informed, and brave about race.

Andrew Grant-Thomas: And in this, our first season, we are looking at popular misconceptions about race and raising kids. And in today’s episode, we examine Oprah's thesis to tackle Myth #2: The passing of the older generation of Americans will end racism.

[MUSIC]

Melissa Giraud: Candis Watts Smith, welcome. Thanks for being here. 

Candis Watts Smith: Yeah. Thank you, Melissa. And thank you, Andrew, for having me. It really is a delight. When I got your invitation, I just was so impressed by the work that you're doing. So thank you for including me. 

Andrew Grant-Thomas: Thank you for coming.

Melissa Giraud: Candis Watts Smith is a Professor of Political Science at Duke University. Her research highlights the role that race, racism, and structural inequality play in shaping the American political landscape. She is the author of four books including, “Racial Stasis: The Millennial Generation and the Stagnation of Racial Attitudes in American Politics.” She also has a TED talk called, “Three Myths About Racism that Keep the U.S. From Progress.” And it’s been viewed over 2 million times. When I ask her how she identifies racially, she keeps it simple. 

Candis Watts Smith: Oh, um, Black AF.

Melissa Giraud & Andrew Grant-Thomas: [laughter]

Andrew Grant-Thomas: I think that's going to be a census category. Am I right? Black AF.

Candis Watts Smith: Am I allowed to say AF?

Melissa Giraud: Yes.

Andrew Grant-Thomas: [laughs] I love it. You’re definitely allowed to make us laugh. That was good.

Melissa Giraud: Candis has put a lot of thought and time into examining what’s changed or not changed in how people in the U.S. think and act when it comes to matters of race.  

Candis, what sparked your interest in looking at the racial attitudes of millennials compared to previous generations?

Candis Watts Smith: I actually don't have any romantic story about this. The fact of the matter is, I'm nosy. AndI like answering questions and puzzles and understanding contradictions, and also just kind of testing the limits and uncovering the roots of our commonsense ideas. And so, most of the major projects that I've worked on have just been that- I just kind of looked around and noticed something odd.

And thankfully, I have a profession where I'm allowed to dig into those things. So for example, the book on racial attitudes and millennials came because I'm a millennial and looking at my peers saying things like, “Well, I can make a racist joke because I'm not racist” is strange to me. And so I just thought I would try to unpack, you know, why are people saying that?

Why do we believe that, millennials – at that time when we were young, we aren't anymore – they just thought that we would do the work of eliminating racism. And so I just was kind of wondering, well, how can we be both upheld as this particular generation and special generation, while also taking part in some of ourmost base senses of humor and things like that?

Andrew Grant-Thomas: Love where your self-professed nosiness has taken you. That's some really interesting, important work that you're doing, so thank you for that. 

You know, we certainly in our EmbraceRace work have come across this idea that racism will just die off, right? And literally die off with old people, right? So this idea that old people in the United States, especially but not only, older white people, 70s, 80s, 90-year-olds, that when they go, those of us left behind are necessarily much more racially enlightened. And especially the youngest people. The younger you go, the less racist you get. And that feels to me like part of the whole kind of mythology around the U.S. I'm wondering if, in your work, that belief in steady progress around race and racial attitudes shows up.

Candis Watts Smith: Andrew, you hit the nail on the head when you talk about this kind of orientation toward progress and toward optimism. And I think also we might make a note of our collective orientation toward history. Maybe orientation is putting it charitably, maybe our kind of disregard of history. I think that, as Americans, generally speaking, on average, we focus on the distance from where we were rather than where we are and where we could be or ought to be. So I see this all the time and I think we just kind of hear it all the time. Like, “It'll be okay. When old people, God bless them, leave this earth, they’re going to leave their racist bones with them,” you know, and all of these kinds of weird things that we say.

And my sense is that this is a no-judgment zone. But what I would say, to be honest, is that every time I hear that I want to puke in my mouth. I don't understand why we think that. I mean, I think some of the reasons why we think that are because we have rather static metrics of what racism is. I'd be happy to talk about that more. And I also think that, somehow, we have disconnected the idea that children are raised by people.

They do not just fall out of the sky. It's unclear why we put racism in a different category than, say, tying your shoes, or sharing, or bullying, or love, or emotional intelligence. These are all things that we actively teach children, and we recognize that even when we don't actively do it, they pick up on cues, they connect their own dots. We provide them tools to navigate life regarding all sorts of things. It's odd that somehow, we put racism in an entirely different category on this point.

[MUSIC]

Melissa Giraud: So, Andrew, this question Candis asks about why there's been so little attention to supporting children's racial learning at all ages and stages is a really important one. It's why we started EmbraceRace when our kids were little.

Andrew Grant-Thomas: Yeah, that's why, right? And I think there are a lot of reasons. So first of all, there's really broad agreement on the importance of teaching kids to say, “Please,” and, “Thank you,” and how to brush their teeth and to learn how to read. But there isn't the same kind of agreement around race, right? What kids should be taught about race, or even the importance of teaching kids about race.

Melissa Giraud: Right. So, for example, adults teach toddlers to share their toys or their cookies, even when that's challenging, because we think that lesson is relevant for little kids. But even among well-meaning parents and caregivers, many don't realize that kids are taking in information about race from very early, from babyhood, and from many sources – some of which are quite harmful.

Andrew Grant-Thomas: Exactly. And you use the example of teaching little kids how to share. So for a lot of adults, a natural way to do that is to encourage them, actually encourage them to share. But on the race front, a lot of us don't know how to teach kids to be thoughtful and knowledgeable about race and racism. We know how to do it in one case. We don't know how to do it in the other. And a big part of that in the race case is that we haven't necessarily figured it out for ourselves.

Melissa Giraud: And that's why we're building some of those supports at EmbraceRace. Support for adults like us to do their own work and support so that we can guide the kids in our lives. But let’s get back to the conversation. 

[MUSIC]

Andrew Grant-Thomas: One thing I want to pick up on is this idea of, you think of that expression, “So and so doesn't have a racist bone in his body.” 

Candis Watts Smith: Yeah.

Andrew Grant-Thomas: Which on one hand, I think people understand, well, that doesn't actually make sense, right? There's no such thing as a racist bone. But it does capture something of the way a lot of us think about race. 

Candis Watts Smith: Yeah.

Andrew Grant-Thomas: Right? Or racism, as being sort of inherent in individuals. You are or you aren't. As opposed to thinking about what you're pointing to, which is a process by which people adopt attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs that perpetuate racial inequality, et cetera.

Candis Watts Smith: Yeah. I think also that phrase is a reference to intentionality: “They wouldn't intentionally do something.” And, again, I think that really serves to obscure the kind of effects of intentions or non-intentions. That bone in the body business, it does a lot of work. It's easy for people to say, “Oh, they don't have a racist bone in their body.” It's just kind of this idea that there's not an ounce there. And to your point, Andrew, it's kind of like, you either are or you aren't. And that really dismisses the processes and the ways that we can intentionally or unintentionally, reproduce processes and outcomes that lead to racial inequity and disparities.

Melissa Giraud: I mean, it's uncomfortable, to say, “Wow, I'm complicit in systems of inequality. I make decisions about where to live, where to send my kids to school, how to vote, that actually really do make inequality better or worse.” And I think it's especially uncomfortable if I'm unwilling to take responsibility for my choices. You know, it's just easier to think, “Well, I'm not a racist. I'm really nice to people,” and to think racism is about other people. That racism is about individuals over there, not me.

Candis Watts Smith: I think it's important for us to figure out- the word that you use here is complicit- or who helped to promote or perpetuate. You know, I mentioned this briefly in my TED talk that, at that time, there was a scandal about the governor of Virginia doing blackface in college. Okay. Doing blackface in college is bad. Yes. 

Andrew Grant-Thomas: Don’t do it. Don’t do it. Not a good idea.

Melissa Giraud: Not recommended. No.

Candis Watts Smith: Don’t do it. But I was really disturbed by the fact that there were conservative policymakers, and even liberal policymakers, who initiate and propose and help to pass policies that reproduce inequality. I mean doing blackface is bad, but also instituting a policy that exacerbates maternal health disparities or further segregates our schools and redistributes benefits on racial lines – that is also bad, if not worse. 

Andrew Grant-Thomas: Much worse.

Candis Watts Smith: Thanks for agreeing! I think that this kind of business of trying to figure out, well, who is a racist, instead of trying to think about where do we see processes that reproduce inequality, and what is our part in making that process speed up, be maintained, or slowed down?

Melissa Giraud: Right. There are a lot of purity tests, right?

Candis Watts Smith: Yes.

Melissa Giraud: Yeah. That aren't that helpful if what we really want is, perhaps choose the candidate in that case who is promoting more just policies that move us towards racial justice, right? So, keep your eye on that. We get distracted, right? We get distracted. You were starting to allude to this, but in your work, something we should definitely talk about is what you mean by racism. You study and have looked at whether a generation is more or less racist than previous generations. What do we even mean by that?

Candis Watts Smith: Yeah, I think that we can understand racism in a multi-dimensional way, but let's just talk about two. I think the two that we know pretty easily, maybe, when we see them. One is structural racism. And so we know that this exists when political, economic, social, and psychological advantages and disadvantages are allocated partially on the basis of race.

Okay. This occurs because of policies and history and all sorts of things that just kind of reproduce the things that we see in the world. The second I mentioned, which I think is helpful, and I think most people think about attitudes. But I'm just going to shift our language just a little and talk about ideology. And here I would say ideology is the stories we tell ourselves. And racial ideologies are the stories we tell ourselves to explain or dismiss racial disparities.

And this is a place where I really sometimes have to bang my head on the wall because, yes, not liking someone because of their race, that's bad and that's racism. But also being intentionally ignorant, being aggressively ignorant about structural racism is also not helpful. And this is what I care about most and what I think about most.

How willing or unwilling are people able to pinpoint and name structural racism and want to dismantle, or at least mitigate, its effects? So if we focused on people not liking people because of their race, this is a very static measure of racism. If you ask someone this question, “Do you like Black people” or, “Would you let them sit next to you?” or whatever. In the 1940s, we would get a totally different answer than we would now.

I mean, asking people if they like other people from other races is like asking if you have a TV in your house. The answer is the same, right? And you know what you're supposed to say. But if we ask people, “Do you think that there are policies and practices that reproduce inequality on racial lines,” or something that's kind of like, we see racial inequality not because people are lazy, but because there are kind of larger structures and policies that produce these inequalities, what would you say?

[MUSIC]

Melissa Giraud: Andrew, Candis says whether or not we like other people of a different racial group doesn't tell us much. She says what's much more important is whether we support or oppose policies that make racial equality better or worse.

But honestly, I'm not sure a lot of us could name examples of policies that make racial inequality worse. And I think we should try right now. Can we name some?

Andrew Grant-Thomas: Well, look, I mean, for sure it helps I've done a lot of work on race and inequality, right? Which I, in fact, have done. So let's look at racial inequalities in health and ask yourself, why do white people, on average, live much healthier lives than Black and Native American people? Is it because they make better choices than Black and Native American people?

It's really, really not. It's because if you're Black or Native American, you're more likely to have landfills and hazardous waste sites placed in your community. You're more likely to have unhealthy fast food places all over your community. You're more likely to be a frontline worker and therefore exposed to COVID. And you're much more likely to work in a job that doesn't offer decent health insurance. And I really could go on. It's a whole bunch of stuff.

Melissa Giraud: Right, it's all of those things and more, and it's not just that each of those factors you named makes racial health inequality worse, but that together they make it much worse. I think our brains, or maybe my brain, can have a hard time wrapping itself around the idea of these compounded impacts, as opposed to understanding each of them alone.

Andrew Grant-Thomas: Yeah, and it's a hugely important piece of the challenge, right? When a problem like health inequality, political inequality, or educational inequality, when these are caused by a whole bunch of things, which is the case, instead of just two or three things, then the problem is not only going to be more severe, but it's going to be a lot harder to solve. That's the challenge we're facing in all these areas.

Melissa Giraud: Right, right. So we really have to do the work to think about all the stuff, including the policies that shape racial inequalities, that shape gender inequalities, and other inequalities. And we have to talk about them. So, Andrew, I really would be lying if I said that we have these conversations all the time. We do have them, but maybe we should have them more.

Andrew Grant-Thomas: We should definitely have them more, and as Candis says, a lot of people don't have them at all. In any case, let’s get back to our conversation.   

[MUSIC]

Candis Watts Smith: We tend to find that if we ask people that second kind of question, we almost see no difference across generations, at least between millennials, Gen Xers, right – those ones who are just a little bit older, and then baby boomers, right? If we focused on this kind of old measures, yeah, millennials look good. But if we ask them a more nuanced set of measures about their ideologies, then we kind of see pretty similar results across generations.

Melissa Giraud: Candis, getting back to this myth that younger generations are less racist than older generations, here's a common scenario where that plays out. Let's say you're a parent to young kids. You have a holiday meal at your parent's home, and one of the older folks says something that sounds pretty racist to you, something like maybe, “Muslims are terrorists,” for example. You see the younger folks at the table react with sighs, with eye rolls. And you're thinking, “Okay, okay. Maybe my parents or my aunt hold a racist view, but my kids clearly don't approve. So we're good.” And what you're saying, Candis, is that yes, younger people really are less likely to be openly racist. But what's more important for reducing inequality is whether or not those kids grow up to support policies that promote racial fairness. Am I understanding you correctly?

Candis Watts Smith: Yeah, actually, let's go back to that scene. I think that, if we played a scene where, Uncle so and so who watches Fox News all day says something explicit, we'd all be like, “Come on, Uncle so and so.” But I bet at the average, white family Thanksgiving, that if the next topic is affirmative action, oh, it's all peace, right? And that's going to be for people who see themselves as friendly or racially liberal. Yeah. In order to stop discriminating on the basis of race, we have to stop discriminating, discriminating on the basis of race. And then we see that Uncle so and Junior, they're on the same page. And that's the kind of thing that my research shows is that when we dig into it, on the issues that will make a difference for reducing or exacerbating racial inequalities in contemporary society, it's about the same across generations.

Melissa Giraud: That's really helpful.

Andrew Grant-Thomas: But, Candis, isn't it legitimately hard to know whether a given policy is likely to make racial inequality better or worse? So let me give you an example. Right, a few years ago, in our town, some developers introduced a plan to put a few mixed-income rental units into a solidly middle-class neighborhood that was full of single-family homes.

And some of the units we knew would go to people with histories of mental illness. A group of three dozen neighbors organized against it. And at a public hearing that I went to, representatives of that group swore up and down that they weren't racist, that they weren't opposed to living next to low-income people or next to people who'd had mental health problems. Right, that they supported affordable housing in principle, but that they really had legitimate concerns about this particular development and whether it would serve the people who would eventually live there, the people who would become their neighbors. Now, I know this looks like, sounds like, classic “not in my backyard” stuff, but isn't it possible that at least some of those people were being absolutely sincere?

Candis Watts Smith: I think that your reading on that example is charitable.

Andrew Grant-Thomas: Could well be. I’ve been called charitable before.

Candis Watts Smith: [laughs] And I say that because why would they preface their stance against that with, “I'm not racist?”

Andrew Grant-Thomas: Yeah, no, to be clear, Candis, I'm not going to defend that affordable housing thing.

Candis Watts Smith: [laughs] I'll give a charitable reading. I have a colleague in political science named Jared K. Clemons. I think he's a really really smart guy. And one of the things that he makes note of is that we must also be cognizant of the kind of economic structure that we find ourselves in. It's not a way to get people off the hook, but just something to keep in mind, which is, in the case of the affordable housing or school allocation of resources or something, that we live in a neoliberal governance structure. 

And what that means is that no one's going to save you. If you lose your home, or if your home value goes down, or if your kid doesn't get into some good college so that they have a high-quality job, no one is going to take care of them. And so if you're in a place where you have resources, you want to hoard those resources. The fact of the matter is that we live in a society where people are incentivized to hoard. And hoarding in a moment where the best resources and the most benefits are skewed toward one racial group. We see in part, whether you are racist or not, why you have an economic incentive to exacerbate the problem.

I guess on one level, like nobody wants to feel bad about themselves. And so, you think of ways to let yourself off the hook. And some of that is just to say like, “Well, I don't mean for it to be this way,” but it is what it is. Any research could show you that those outcomes are going to perpetuate racial inequality.

Melissa Giraud: So, Candis, your research was done with white millennials. Of course, the youngest millennials are in their twenties. You say you're a millennial, not in your twenties, maybe, you suggested. What can we say about younger kids? If the youngest millennials are in their twenties, what about kids of all racial identities who are, six, seven, or eight years old? And this isn't part of your research, but what do we know about how kids think about race at those ages?

Candis Watts Smith: Yeah. They know what we tell them and they know what we don't tell them. Kids are great at connecting dots and they hear us, they hear our words, and they hear our silences. I will say that I'm very nervous for this group because they are being exposed to state-level legislation and threats to teachers that are teaching about our history. The oldest millennial is 42 and the youngest is about 27.

So they’re old enough to have kids in these ranges. Research shows that if parents do not talk about race and racism to their children, their children will connect the dots on their own. They might think, “Well, those kids must be over there at that school together, because they like it, or because they're not as smart as us, or because they don't deserve…” They make up their own explanation. Kid logic is usually very rational. It's not always truthful, but it makes sense when they explain it to you. And so, if we don't do the work of talking explicitly about these things, then they will be just as bad as the parents.

Melissa Giraud: That's right. That's right.

Andrew Grant-Thomas: Another thing along those lines, or another thing that adds to the danger is we know that many, many parents, many, many adults really overestimate the age at which children are thinking about race, are making sense of race, and can be talked to about race.

Candis Watts Smith: Yes. Mhm.

Andrew Grant-Thomas: If you think that, you know, the child needs to be six, seven, eight years old before it makes any sense to talk to them – and a lot of people think exactly that. Again, largely white, but not exclusively white adults. And as you say, the children are developing their ideas, you know, generating their own explanations or leaning on their peers, coming up with logical but false, often harmful explanations, that's a major missed opportunity, and it's going to have some big consequences.

Candis Watts Smith: There's work to do and there are resources like yours that can help make us better. I know a lot, but there's always more to learn. I have made it my life's work to try to write and to make information available so that it makes it hard for people to say that they didn't know or couldn't know. I think it actually is really hard for people to say that there aren't enough resources on structural inequality and explaining what is a kind of hard concept, but there are plenty of resources. I'm happy about that and I think that's good news.

Andrew Grant-Thomas: I want to pull up one last thing, Candis, that you mentioned. Earlier you said that Americans tend to believe in sort of a natural historical progress because we tend to look at the distance we've traveled, right? The amount that things have improved and not so much where we have yet to go.

Structurally, things have loosened, become more fair for communities of color in general. And it's true that we have a significant distance to go if we're truly to, you know, be what we've wanted to be, what we've said that we want to be as a country and a land of opportunity and equal opportunity for all.Both things are true. We've made progress and there's a distance yet to travel.

Melissa Giraud: Let's get there.

Candis Watts Smith: Can I add one thing? 

Melissa Giraud: Mhm.

Candis Watts Smith: I would also just like to say that we cannot rest on our laurels and that there is a possibility of going backward. And I think that this kind of idea that we are always moving forward, that progress is always good, or let me say that change is always good, that can make us – I don't want to use the word lazy, but it can make us not as vigilant as we ought to be. Yeah.

[MUSIC]

Melissa Giraud: Thank you, Candis. Couldn't agree more. We need to believe in that possibility, right? We need to believe that things can be different and act on it. Thank you so much. You’ve been so informative and so fun.

Candis Watts Smith: Thank you. It's been my delight to be with you all.

Andrew Grant-Thomas: Thank you so much, Candis. 

[MUSIC]

Andrew Grant-Thomas: So that was Candis Watts Smith, Duke University, Professor of Political Science. Candis is an expert on racial attitudes and racial mythologies.

[MUSIC]

Melissa Giraud: Okay. Andrew. So, we've poked holes in the myth that racism will die out naturally when older generations die out. It definitely won't.

Andrew Grant-Thomas: Yep. I think that's exactly right. And there's another twist that we haven't even spoken about yet.

Melissa Giraud: Okay, there's always a twist.

Andrew Grant-Thomas: There's a twist, and here it is. It turns out that while explicit racism has gone down over the last 50, 60 years, younger and older adults have about the same amount of implicit or unconscious bias today. And we know that unconscious bias matters a lot in terms of how we deal with other people. So that's another argument for the idea that racism won't die with old people.

Melissa Giraud: It's a pretty big point, Andrew. Again, younger people are less likely to say they don't like Brown or Black or Asian American people, but they might be less likely to give up their seat on a crowded bus to an elderly Asian American or Latine woman than to a white woman…or more likely to let a group of white high school boys cross a busy street while driving than a group of Black high schoolers.

Andrew Grant-Thomas: Let’s be clear – it’s not because they’re thinking, “I like white people better than Black people or any other kind of people.” But they may act that way anyway and not even realize why doing it, right, not even realize that they would do it. In fact, they’d probably deny that they would do that.

Melissa Giraud: It’s unconscious.

Andrew Grant-Thomas: Yep.

Melissa Giraud: So going back to Candis, so she emphasizes structural racism and the role of policies in promoting inequality. Coming back to parenting, coming back to raising, teaching kids, what this should mean for our parenting. We personally do talk about structural racism in our house, some. We could do it more, we could do it better. But to be honest, I don't always find the research laying out these structural ties that accessible. 

Andrew Grant-Thomas: I agree with you. It's definitely not always accessible, which is exactly why at EmbraceRace, we are making real efforts to make some of the most relevant and important research more accessible. That's actually part of the work that we're trying to do. But you said another thing earlier, Melissa, that I really want to lift up. You said it's harder for people to see and appreciate the impact that policies and practices can make if they're not the ones who are actually bearing the brunt of those policies and practices.

Melissa Giraud: Mhm.

Andrew Grant-Thomas: Which is clearly true, right? And this is something parents can do. We really need parents themselves, and parents on behalf of their kids, to connect with people who are living very different lives than ours, right? Listen to their testimonies. Let's learn their stories. Let's read about their histories. And think about how policies, practices, the big picture stuff have shaped how those stories come out.

[MUSIC]

Melissa Giraud: The EmbraceRace podcast is hosted by me, Melissa Giraud.

Andrew Grant-Thomas: And by me, Andrew Grant-Thomas.

Melissa Giraud: Our Senior Producer is John Asante. Our editor is Megan Tan.

Andrew Grant-Thomas: Our Engineer and Sound Designer is Enrico Benjamin, and our Consulting Producer is Graham Griffith.

Melissa Giraud: Special thanks to Team EmbraceRace – Robin Deutsch Edwards, Andrea Huang, Tamara Montes de Oca, Christina Rucinski, and Maryam Zahid.

Andrew Grant-Thomas: Those are our people. And a big shout out to our main inspirations, our two kids, and to the entire EmbraceRace community.

Melissa Giraud: Subscribe, rate, and review our show on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcatcher. That really helps us.

Andrew Grant-Thomas: It does. And for resources on addressing structural racism with kids and many other topics about race and children, please visit us at EmbraceBrace.org To learn more about Candis’ work, check out our show notes. 

Melissa Giraud: Thanks for listening!

Andrew Grant-Thomas: Thank you.

[MUSIC]