Black millennials most optimistic?
Nationwide poll’s findings draw mixed opinions in Austin.
A Texas marketing firm that conducted a national poll of millennials wanted to strip away the stereotypes that tend to be draped over an entire generation. The poll found — to the surprise of even the people who conducted it — that black millennials tend to be the most optimistic members of their generation, the most likely to think that with hard work they can achieve their dreams, the mostly fervent believers in the American dream itself.
“A reasonable person may expect to uncover a sense of despair, apathy, or hopelessness. In this case, a reasonable person would be wrong,” the pollsters conclude. “With a heightened sense of control over their future, (black millennials) have the most faith that their hard work will pay off.”
If anyone had a reason to think that, it would be Mica Burton and Donnie Simmons of Austin. Both are in their 20s, black, college-educated and so creative they make a living at it. They work at Rooster Teeth Studios, the internet darling that exudes millennial artistic sensibilities, producing comedic cartoons and other online programming in a suite of Austin offices where the walls are covered with vintage movie posters, the fridge is stocked with beer and a replica of Thor’s hammer sits in a corner.
One problem: Burton and Simmons don’t believe the poll results. They don’t see the future in such optimistic terms, nor do they think most of their fellow black millennials see the world in such sunny terms.
“I don’t think the future in the short term is optimistic in the slightest,” Burton said. “We’ve gone backwards.”
Among black millennials interviewed by the American-Statesman, the polling drew mixed opinions. Dallas branding agency Richards Lerma interviewed 1,000 millennials around the country, working in conjunction with a University of Texas marketing professor.
“The data led us to a much more interesting place than we expected,” Chaille Alcorn, one of the Richards Lerma researchers, told the Statesman. She said the research combines traditional polling with the firm’s experience reading data to draw meaning for clients.
Follow-up interviews attempted to unpack the findings, according to the researchers. One of their conclusions: Black millennials find inspiration and optimism in an ancestral legacy of overcoming the most pernicious kinds of adversity. They can see gradual but significant progress up the socio-economic ladder in their own families.
That line of reasoning resonates with Brenden Twomey.
‘A surge in American pride’
Twomey, 23, is an incoming student at Texas Southern University’s Thurgood Marshall School of Law who grew up in Houston. In an interview, he struck a chord similar to one commonly attributed to Thomas Jefferson: If dissent is the highest form of patriotism, then the kind of social dissent encouraged by the Black Lives Matter movement could signal a renewed belief that the American dream is achievable — and worth fighting for.
“President Obama, his rallying cry was hope ... I think that’s something the black communities have been saying since the 1600s,” Twomey said. “I think along with a resurgence of the civil rights movement, you’re seeing a surge in American pride.”
That was also the reaction of Dante Berry, the founder of the New York-based social justice organization Million Hoodies. He told the Huffington Post: “Our communities are resilient and innovative, often making a way out of no way. Black people can combat systemic racism in community with other black people.”
Among black millennials polled by Richards Lerma, 61 percent responded they are optimistic about the future. Black millennials were the most likely to believe that with hard work they can achieve their dreams, a notion with which 59 percent of them agreed. Only 29 percent said they are now living the American dream — the lowest among millennials — but 55 percent said they believe they can live the American dream, the highest among millennials.
The polling found that Asian millennials worry about being stereotyped as “honorary whites” and having racial difficulties they face dismissed. Hispanic millennials, despite resenting a common portrayal as cultural intruders, are the most committed to traditional American values such as family, belief that the free market yields fair results, and pride in the United States.
Twomey said he worries about the overarching conclusion for white millennials. The pollsters found white millennials tend to be the least optimistic about the future — suggesting resentment about lost social position and implying the possibility of racial polarization, a set of possibilities the pollsters said are backed by their interviews.
Twomey said his own family is proof that social ascension need not be a zero-sum game in which one race’s benefit is another’s loss. Twomey’s mother is black, his father white. He said his father grew up so poor in the St. Louis area he never had a new coat. But he attended St. Louis University on a baseball scholarship, played in the Cincinnati Reds’ farm system, earned a political science degree and worked his way into the middle class in the oil and gas industry. Twomey’s mother came from a similarly poor background and also worked her way into the middle class.
Seeing that generational ascension — in two races — makes Twomey think the future holds even more promise than the present.
“The report,” he said, “struck me as true.”
‘My happiness is important to me’
Kolbe Ricks was more skeptical about the report’s conclusions on optimism for the future. But she said its findings about changing priorities rang true to her.
Ricks is 27 and teaches seventh-grade English in the Pflugerville school district. She dislikes the millennial designation, considering it a synonym in some circles for laziness or self-indulgence or “neo-hippiness.” That stereotype is rooted at least in part in a misconception, she said — a conflation of laziness with a set of priorities that are simply different from those of previous generations.
The survey found that black millennials consider “personal fulfillment, happiness and self-actualization” the highest ideal of the American dream. They ranked personal happiness above considerations such as material success, the ability to achieve success through hard work or even ensuring equal opportunities for all Americans.
Whites and Asians considered freedom and equality for all the best definition of the American dream. Hispanics considered the ability to prosper through hard work the epitome of the American dream. But black millennials’ notion differed, in that it is more inward looking; the survey suggests many black millennials see happiness as something people can (and should) experience regardless of what is happening in the world around them.
Ricks said she doesn’t want to dismiss the economic anxieties of millennials, among whom, according to a 2014 study, 43 percent between the ages of 30 and 33 still depend on their parents financially. But Ricks said traditional notions of success — such as home ownership, once seen as one of the cornerstones of adulthood — aren’t as important to her and her peers as it was to earlier generations. She said those who consider that philosophy frivolous have missed the point: that, at least ideally, de-emphasizing economic success in favor of personal happiness should make people more passionate about not only their own lives but about their families, friends and communities.
“My happiness is important to me,” Ricks said. “Doing a job that I really care about is important to me.”
‘Starting on equal footing’
“I want to meet the people who are so optimistic.” That was the general take of Burton, one of the black millennials working at Rooster Teeth, in response to a question about the survey results. In a conference room, where she and Simmons talked about the polling results and their views on race more broadly, the conversation turned, perhaps inevitably, to the election of President Donald Trump, a sore issue for many minorities.
Trump lost among black voters by an 80-20 ratio. But Simmons, who manages Rooster Teeth’s email marketing, and Burton, an actor and program host, said the election didn’t change their view of the future so much as lay bare obvious, longstanding truths.
On this point, at least, the two agree with the pollsters. The surveys were conducted in April 2016, before Trump was elected. But the divisive dynamics that shaped the election “were already well underway” by that point, pollster Alcorn said.
“We feel these stories are rooted deeper than circumstances” of the moment, she said. If the polling was replicated today, she added, “black millennials may be less optimistic about the future, but they would still be optimistic.”
Simmons, who is 29 and grew up in Dallas, said his optimism about the future is dampened only partly by nation-shaping events, such as the election or the in-custody deaths that led to the Black Lives Matter movement, and at least as much by everyday reminders. For instance, the much higher likelihood that, as a black man, he will be pulled over by a police officer while driving. Or the talk black parents almost inevitably have with their children about how to interact with police. Or being turned away at the door of a club for wearing Vans, only to see similarly dressed white people admitted.
White friends are sympathetic, Simmons said. But they are also uncomfortable talking frankly about such situations. He said the hesitation is another subtle reminder that he experiences race-based obstacles they do not — and that race creates higher hurdles to achieving the American dream.
Burton said the optimism suggested by the polling is difficult to reconcile with a trio of lessons imparted by her parents. Those lessons came from successful professionals. Burton’s mother is a Hollywood makeup artist, her father an actor and writer who “still wakes up every day and thinks of race.” Personal experience has borne their lessons out, Burton said.
Their first lesson: Hard work can indeed lead to success. The second: “There will also always be an obstacle that’s unfair” that’s based on race. The third: “You have to work hard, but you as a black woman have to work 40 percent harder ... just because of the melanin in your skin.”
“I don’t think that’s changing,” Burton said. “I just haven’t seen the proof of that yet.”