All of you folks up in arms right now about the unrest in American really don't spend much time around young adults. You must either not have kids, be around kids, or talk to your own kids. /1
Most college freshmen starting in 2019 were born after September 11th. You still seem to think it was last year, and for them, it is history. It is your reality, not theirs. /2
So what is their reality? Since the year 2000, hundreds of deaths to gun violence have taken place in their schools. The place which is supposed to prepare them for their future may have actually done that while you weren't paying attention. /3
Because they don't remember 9/11, they can't understand why the police are so militarized and have power which seems to countermand the Constitution. What they do know is that it seems the police can kill people with impunity. /4
Faith in the criminal justice system? They saw someone just a few years older than them murdered while carrying skittles and an Arizona Iced Tea and the criminal justice system did nothing. Then they watched it fail Eric Garner. Then Tamir Rice. And on and on. /5
The climate is changing, but it won't be a really be a problem for you or me. We will be dead. They won't, and they know it. /6
Income inequality in the US is at an all-time high. The primary means to increase earning potential is to go to college, which has gotten much more expensive during their lives. They will have significant debt before they even see that earning potential payoff, if they ever do./7
The first election they actually remember was awarded to the less popular candidate. Their first lesson in voting was that their vote didn't actually matter. And the person elected was a misogynist and racist. /8
And on top of all of this, they constantly hear how apathetic they are, how they don't have a work ethic, how they aren't tough enough. That they just want the easy way. /9
These kids aren't apathetic. They care more about issues than you could even imagine. They just have no efficacy in government. And why should they. Every lesson they have learned through lived experience is that government won't solve these problems and their is no easy way./10
So right now, facing a pandemic, rampant unemployment, and yet another spree of racist killings are you seriously shocked they have the desire to burn it down? /11
This generation has lived in a world of upheaval, and they have never known it to be anything else. /12
You are shocked that the streets are filled with people of color and people under the age of 25. I am frankly shocked it took so long. /e
