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November 4th, 2015 
Awake Goy 
Susanne Posel (OC) : The Black Youth Project (BYP) at the Study of Race, Politics and Culture (SRPC) at the University of Chicago (UC) have published a report on the treatment of African American millennials as evidenced by the deaths of Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, and Tamir Rice.
The authors of the report explained that this data “reflects our commitment to knowledge, voice and action. We create knowledge by detailing the real life experiences of young Black people and identifying how these experiences distinguish them from their peers. We help amplify their voices by providing platforms and opportunities for young people to weigh in on the issues most important to them. We hope the data and findings in this report will contribute to a call to action to bring about change rooted in the ways Black millennials experience contemporary America.”
When it comes to policing, gun ownership, and the legal system at large, there are different temperaments with regard to race because of how they are treated.
Jon Rogowski, assistant professor of political science at Washington University and co-author of the report, asserted that “young blacks and whites feel differently on these issues. For example, white millennials don’t report having to explain themselves to police, while millennials of color report that officers stopped them simply to question them about what they were up to.”
Rogowski continued: “We see story after story about how this leads into a more combative situation which has escalated and led to, in some instances, tragic outcomes. So the experiences that these different communities have had based on where they live and the kinds of policing procedures that are in place there, we would argue, lead to these different patterns.”
In fact, before the Black Lives Matter movement begun, racial inequalities were common place – despite the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.
According to the BYP report, 71% of African American millennials still believe that police are there to protect them.
And yet, 22% of black youth say they know someone who was the victim of gun violence within the last 12 months.
When it comes to being arrested, 38% of millennials in general agree that African Americans are not fairly treated by the American legal system.
Perhaps not surprisingly, 26.8% of black millennials view the US legal system as fair for all races; however there is still a sense that change through politics will provide the solution.
When 71% of black youth look to participation in politics as a pathway to change, it may not be such a far off concept.
Cathy Cohen, chair for the political science department with UC and head of the BYP, explained that “young blacks are more likely to be harassed by the police. We know that they are more likely to mistrust their encounters with the police.”
Cohen added: “But we also know from actually collecting data that a majority of them believe that police in their neighborhood are actually there to protect them, so I think it provides us with more complexity.”
Susanne Posel, Occupy Corporatism
Related article:
Workers of America, Unite! Racism Is a Trade Union Issue
Source Article from http://nsnbc.me/2015/11/04/more-than-50-of-black-us-millennials-recognize-racism-in-policing/
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