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Posted June 4, 2006

Brought up during era of change, this generation is most colorblind yet

By Thomas Rozwadowski
trozwado@greenbaypressgazette.com
and USA Today

Different attitudes. Different friends. There seem to be a few glaring differences when looking at how the older and younger generations respond to the world around them.

Take matters of race and ethnicity. Is he African-American? Is she Hmong? Are they Hispanic? Is he Caucasian? Or Native American?

For the estimated 46.3 million Americans ages 14 to 24 who are the most diverse generation in American society, talk of common interests and perspectives many times takes precedence over ethnicity and skin color.

It's a peer bracket that mostly is comfortable with friends of different races and interracial dating. It's also an age group more tolerant and open-minded than previous generations, according to an analysis of studies released last year by the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, part of the University of Maryland's School of Public Policy. The center focuses on ages 15 to 25.

"I've had this happen to me a few times, but parents will talk to me about how their sons and daughters choose to describe other students at school," said Luke Valitchka, principal of Green Bay West High School. "If the parent can't figure out (who their child is talking about) based on the name, it'll be 'Oh, they play basketball, or she's the one who runs track, or she's on student council.' They aren't using color in their description. The first parent who told me about that said her daughter was describing someone on student council, and at the very end she realized, 'There was never any mention that he was black.'"

Fueling colorblindness

Unlike their parents and grandparents, today's teens and twentysomethings grew up with the buzzwords of "diversity," "multicultural" and "inclusion." Many were required to take courses in cultural diversity. Now the media fuels this colorblindness as movies, TV and advertising portray interracial friendship and romance.

"Race is becoming less of a deal in dating," says Kriss Turner, a TV writer and producer from Los Angeles who wrote the screenplay for this year's movie "Something New." The ensemble cast featured Sanaa Lathan, Simon Baker, Alfre Woodard and Blair Underwood in a tale of a single black woman who found her dreams of marrying an "ideal black man" shattered by her attraction to a white man.

Some attitudinal changes are based in demographics. About 33 percent of those younger than age 18 in the United States are racial or ethnic minorities, and about 20 percent of elementary- and high school-age students are immigrants or children of immigrants, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Racial diversity is especially common in college friendships because that age group is exposed to a wider range of people, and college students have more opportunities to become friends with peers of other races, says Anthony Lising Antonio, an associate professor of education at Stanford University, who has conducted research on friendship diversity.

But it's not that young people are specifically seeking out friendships with other races, high school students say.

"It's just how it's always been," said Plua Kong, 16, a sophomore at West. "You look around in school and hang out with the kids you grew up with. It's been that way since kindergarten."

"I've heard from kids at other schools who've come to our dances and said, 'Wow, it's different here. Everybody gets along and hangs out together,'" added Plua's cousin Nancy Kong, 17, a West junior. "I guess it depends how you grew up and what you feel comfortable with."

Despite isolated racially-motivated incidents that occurred over the past few years at some area high schools, school officials are quick to point out that those problems do not reflect the majority of their students.

Darryl Buck, a diversity liaison with the Green Bay Public School District, said that 15 to 20 years ago the community was much more homogeneous. Pockets of inclusion and exclusion certainly still exist. But such extra-curricular school groups as West's Asian Club and the United Colors of Preble — or even more expansive, the Minority Student Achievement Network — promote honest conversation, which means the lines of communication are more accessible to the current generation.

"That's our goal in the district, for the interaction to be as positive as possible," Buck said. "Kids are creating connections. They're preparing themselves for what happens in the broader world."

While both Plua and Nancy Kong said their view of race comes natural to them, Valitchka knows that tolerance — even in subtle ways — often has roots in the home.

"We had our senior awards night (last week) and the two students who spoke emphasized the importance and respect they had for a diverse school environment these last four years," he said.

"We have many parents who choose to have their son or daughter go to West."

Progress at a price?

Many would say a new generation that considers race irrelevant is something to be celebrated — the fulfillment of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream that his children "will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

But some experts say the notion of a generation that ignores race paints too rosy a picture.

They worry that decades devoted to ending racial segregation and creating a colorblind society may have created a new problem: a generation so unconcerned about race that it ignores disparities that still exist.

"People think this sort of colorblindness is a kind of progress, but I see it as more pernicious than that," says Tyrone Forman, an associate professor of African-American studies and sociology at the University of Illinois-Chicago.

His research, based on data from the University of Michigan's annual Monitoring the Future survey, suggests a troublesome side to racial colorblindness.

Even though young people report having friends of other races, Forman says, those friendships don't necessarily lead to a reduction in negative attitudes toward a racial group, because people view their own friends as an exception to whatever stereotype may exist.

The data suggest young people "are increasingly becoming comfortable with racial and ethnic inequality," he says. "In the socioeconomic indicators — wealth, income, housing — we see persistent patterns of racial and ethnic disparity."

"We have this sense that to talk about race is to be racist. That's what people have been told," says Forman, 35, who is black and is married to a white colleague at the university. "That's fundamentally what kids are reflecting back on us."

Going through phases

Colorblindness might not always seem apparent early on; in high school, for example, students often sit at cafeteria tables largely segregated by race.

But several experts, including Pamela Perry, an assistant professor of community studies at the University of California-Santa Cruz, say such behavior is a phase. "In times of identity development, students clump with who they know and what's familiar," she says. "It seems to pass. Then they get out of high school and into college and they start mixing up more."

Some of that mixing is a result of record numbers of immigrants, both documented and undocumented, totaling more than 35 million over the past two decades and representing the largest wave of immigration in American history, says Marcelo Suarez-Orozco, founder of the Harvard Immigration Project, now known as Immigration Studies NYU. He is a professor of globalization and education at New York University.

In addition to immigrant families, the number of children from other countries adopted by U.S. parents has tripled from 1990 to 2005. International adoptions made up almost 18 percent of the approximately 127,000 adoptions last year, according to federal data based on immigrant visas issued to orphans coming to the United States.

The fact that white parents are adopting babies from China, Guatemala or South Korea who don't look like them reinforces the idea that race matters less. So does the fact that interracial marriages, though still not common, have increased from less than 1 percent of U.S. marriages in 1970 to almost 6 percent of marriages in the 2000 Census.