"Colorblind" generation struggles with race

Angela Miller has never seen a cross burning on her lawn. She has never been bullied with racial slurs. And she is too young to remember the tumult of the 1960s civil-rights movement. Still, she has felt the sting of racism in Seattle.

"Racism is subtle here," said Miller, 34, who grew up in Chicago and now lives in Bothell. "But it's still something people struggle with on a daily basis."

The issue of race in America has been rippling through the airwaves and the blogosphere since Illinois Sen. Barack Obama addressed the topic last month in a speech that was one of the most-viewed videos on YouTube for almost a week.

Obama, whose father is black and mother is white, has been called the "post-racial candidate," who appeals to a younger, "colorblind" generation — a generation that was not born into the crucible of a segregated nation.

The overwhelming reaction to his speech, however, and the ongoing attention to race in this month's primary campaign in Pennsylvania tells a different story about how "colorblind" young Americans really are.

"Most people in the U.S. think racism is a thing of the past, or they think only the older generation is racist anymore," said Anthony Greenwald, a professor of social psychology at the University of Washington who has studied racial biases in America.

"The truth is, we've found no indication that race bias is any less apparent among young people [than it is] among older people," he said.

About a million people have taken part in an online psychological experiment, called the Race Implicit Attitude Test, that determines the test-taker's subconscious attitudes toward African Americans, Greenwald said. It requires that test-takers quickly sort positive and negative words — such as "terrible" and "joy" — along with black and white faces into categories.

"People are usually surprised and disturbed by what they learn. Most people have no idea they have the biases they have," said Greenwald, who helped develop the test. "Their professed attitudes often don't match the test results."

Racist assumption?

Greenwald's findings jibe with Miller's experience as a young African-American woman in the Seattle area.

Before Miller started her own online boutique, she worked as a software engineer. On a break one day, she commented to a co-worker that her mother never allowed her to stay out late when she was young. Her white co-worker asked if that was because her mother was afraid of gang violence.

"I was shocked," Miller said. "I wanted to say, 'What about me makes you believe that I grew up in some gang-infested project somewhere? What made you think that was my upbringing?' He was basing it all on race."

To many people, Miller's co-worker's comment may seem innocuous. To others, it may seem deliberately racist. And regardless, it's an example of how the issue of race can be insidious in our culture.

"You end up thinking, 'Wow, what other assumptions has he made about me because I'm black? And is that the reason I didn't get that promotion?' It's not as in-your-face as it was, but it still takes an emotional toll on people," Miller said.

Amy Olson, 30, who is white, says openly discussing race — even with her 20-something and 30-something friends — can be tricky.

"Sometimes I put my foot in my mouth," she said. "If I say 'black' they say, 'It's African-American.' Or my dad works with a lot of Native Americans, and he says they like to be called Indian. So I never know what's right.

"I wish we didn't have to be so afraid to ask questions for fear we're going to insult each other," she said.

Greenwald says about 70 percent of the 1 million people of all races who have taken the Race Implicit Attitude Test possess subconscious negative associations toward African Americans. About one-third of all African Americans possess subconscious negative associations about African-Americans.

Non-Web-based tests with smaller numbers of respondents indicate that a smaller percentage of all races has negative associations with Hispanics and Native Americans, and a much smaller percentage has negative associations with Asians, Greenwald said.

"It doesn't make sense to say that you're 'colorblind,' " Greenwald said. "People need to be aware of the fact that our cultural environment — like news, entertainment, literature, all that — has implanted certain ideas in our heads."

Issue in schools

Gary Melton, an assistant principal who has participated in several diversity councils in the Kent School District, says racial tensions are still an issue among teenagers in Kent. His district has gone from 75 percent white to roughly 50 percent white in less than a decade.

"Racial and cultural tensions are definitely an issue in our schools," he said. "Do all the African-American kids sit together at lunch? Yes. Do kids call each other racial slurs sometimes? Yes."

Recently, a few students said they were feeling intimidated by a group of Asian students who would congregate in a school stairwell during breaks from class.

"They didn't feel comfortable going to class that way. And that's a problem. None of those kids were bad kids, but there was still this intimidation factor," Melton said.

Olson, who grew up in a predominantly white neighborhood in Kirkland, said her parents and teachers subscribed to the "colorblind ideal" and never mentioned race at all. As a freshman at the University of Washington, Olson said, she "got a wake-up call" when she realized race was definitely not a thing of the past.

"Everyone's identity was tied up in their race. 'I'm Korean.' 'I'm Japanese.' 'I'm Indian.' And that's really neat to celebrate your heritage," she said. "But all of sudden, I felt like a really boring white person. I didn't have anything cool about me, I was just plain Jane."

When her fellow students congregated at lunch tables and in study groups according to their race, Olson said she sometimes felt left out. While Olson says she never felt discriminated against, she says she thinks her generation is caught between two extremes.

On one hand, there are "outdated" social programs and clubs that divide people up based exclusively on color, she said. "I'm all for programs that help people who've been disadvantaged. But race doesn't make you disadvantaged. Poverty makes you disadvantaged," she said.

On the other hand, the younger generation confuses talking about race with being racist, she said. "We all grew up in the '80s with the PC police on high alert and we don't know how to talk about it anymore," she said. "We need to be able to talk about it."

A call for dialogue

Miller, who grew up in a predominantly black Chicago neighborhood, echoes Olson's sentiments, calling for a "community dialogue" about race, especially among younger people who didn't grow up "knowing Black Codes or Jim Crow laws or fighting against something explicit."

When Miller was a teenager, she attended the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ, along with Obama, his family and thousands of other black Americans.

Obama's speech last month was in response to video of Wright making inflammatory comments from the pulpit about racism in America.

"People's reaction to Reverend Wright's comments are a good indication of where we are with race in this country," Miller said.

"A lot of black people feel they're oppressed every day. They're followed around stores, they're pulled over in their cars, whatever. A black church — and I'm not saying all black churches are the same — but a black church is all about providing a place to get your self-esteem boosted again. That's what Reverend Wright is preaching to."

While Miller says she's grateful that she has not had to endure the "in-your-face racism" that her parents did, she says her generation still has a lot of work to do.

"We need to be careful that in our struggle to be more progressive, we don't put the issue of racism on the back burner," she said. "We need to talk about the problem to fix the problem."

Haley Edwards: 206-464-2745 or hedwards@seattletimes.com