Log 2

• Between weeks 8 and 12, each student should provide a weekly reflection (500 words) on the data you have collected to date.
  • What data did you collect?
  • What is your initial impression of the data?
  • How have the data you have collected this week changed/progressed your thinking about your research project?
  • What challenges did you encounter while collecting the data?
  • What are your next steps?

This week I continued to unpack the data I collected last week, while I also explored new surveys and colorblind racial ideology. I examined data from two additional surveys: “A Generation in Transition: Religion, Values and Politics among College-Age Millennials” and “Look Different.” The former is a study conducted in 2012 by Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs. This study encompassed a slew of issues, however, I focused on its section exploring how college-age millennials feel about minorities, governmental action to rectify discrimination, and reverse discrimination. The results of this section mirror the data from the GenForward survey. Millennials report favorable feelings toward minorities, however, a large percentage of millennials, especially white ones, feel that the government has devoted too much attention to the problems of blacks and other minorities. Furthermore, almost 60% of white millennials believe that reverse discrimination is as big as a problem as discrimination against blacks and other minorities, as compared to only 24% of blacks who express this sentiment.

The “Look Different” survey is part of a broad public affairs campaign conducted by MTV that scrutinized millennials’ perception of race and discrimination. Many of the findings similarly echo the results of the GenForward survey. The most notable findings center around the widespread belief among all millennials that equality is paramount and that the way to achieve equality is through adhering to colorblind racial ideology. In this way, the respondents in this survey praised diversity and professed how they look beyond race. Over 70% of respondents believe that “never considering race would improve society.” Furthermore, 58% of respondents of color and 64% of white respondents believed President Obama’s election signaled that “racial minority groups have the same opportunities as white people.” This embrace of colorblindness fueled almost 90% of respondents to affirm that favoring one race over another is unfair with 70% of respondents believing that “it is never fair to give preferential treatment to one race over another, regardless of historical inequalities.” It is important to highlight that 65% of respondents of color agreed with this latter sentiment.

Analyzing both of these surveys in conjunction with my research from last week has elucidated the importance of colorblindness in how the millennial generation conceptualizes race. I believe this data illustrates how millennials view racism on a largely individual and interactional level. In this way, race can be removed from public discourse by individual and interactional efforts of avoiding “seeing” and discussing race. I think this idea of eschewing conversations about race is evident in the findings of the MTV project. 70% of white respondents reported that their families did not talk about race growing up. Moreover, the “Look Different” project found that more than 50% of respondents find it difficult to “have a conversation about bias in person or online.” The pervasive nature of colorblind ideology allows millennials to ignore how racism and unequal treatment is rooted in the history and practices of institutions. This blatant disregard of how racism is ingrained into the institutions that bestow power and resources in this country allows millennials to view any kind of differential treatment of individuals based on race as pernicious.  Thus, millennials can equate the effects and severity of reverse discrimination to be as injurious as historical discrimination against African-Americans in this country.

I plan on incorporating this idea of colorblindness to the notion of white fragility that I examined last week. I think it is important to include both of these ideas in my discussion of how whites conceptualize race. I intend to continue combing through the data and surveys I have read and keep researching ideas on cultural anxiety, white fragility, and colorblindness.