We published a very important piece at the Washington Monthly this morning by Mike Males, the senior researcher at San Francisco’s Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice. Mike and I worked on this piece for over a month, hashing out how to present this data in a compelling narrative form that speaks to (and helps explain) the current political environment. In the end, I think he came up with a brilliant article that is must-read stuff for anyone who wants a deeper understanding of the competing narratives of the Trump campaign (we’re all doing lousy and we’re doomed) and the Clinton campaign (the future’s so bright, we gotta wear shades).
It all turns on where you’re standing. Perspective is everything.
Los Angeles is a sprawling megalopolis of 10 million people whose violent youth culture has been legendary in pop culture, myth and media. In the past, this reputation was for good cause. In 1990 alone, nearly 500 L.A. teenagers died from gunfire and 730 were arrested for murder.
Today, L.A. is again at the forefront of a youth revolution – this time a positive one.
In 2015 – in stark contrast to 1990 – teen gun-related deaths totaled 57, while teen murder arrests numbered 65. Overall in California, the crime rate among teenagers has dropped by 80 percent since 1980 – at the same time immigration has fueled a growing, more racially diverse young population, now 72 percent of color. The school dropout rate has also nosedived, as have births by teen and young-adult mothers. College enrollment and graduation rates have soared. These trends, moreover, are not unique to California. They’re happening nationally.
The flip side of young Americans’ astonishing behavioral turnaround is an equivalently dramatic decline among older Whites. In California, for example, the number of arrests among people over 40 in 2015 was nearly double the number of arrests among Black and Hispanic teens. Nationally, in a shocking reversal of past patterns, a middle-aged White is at greater risk today of violent death (by suicide, accident, or murder, and especially from guns or illicit drugs) than an African American teenager or young adult.
These stunning reversals of fortune among the generations could help explain one of the central mysteries of this year’s election cycle: why two such starkly divergent views of America – Republican Donald Trump’s grim vision of an apocalyptically degenerated America and Democrat Hillary Clinton’s sunny affirmation of a diversifying country’s bright future – are finding equal resonance. The short answer is that both portraits reflect equally valid truths about Americans’ experience today – depending on who and how old you are. While Democrats’ younger, more diverse constituencies are experiencing dramatic improvements in their personal security and behavioral well-being, Trump’s older White demographic is suffering rising drug abuse, crime, incarceration, suicide, gun fatality, and disarray.
These divergent realities, however, have also led to an extraordinary level of mutual incomprehension, as even sophisticated insiders in both parties and in the media seem largely ignorant of the underlying statistical facts. Hence, progressives dismiss the rage of Trump’s supporters as artifacts of mere racial prejudice and bigotry, without seeing that the anger is rooted in the very real personal insecurity middle-aged Whites are living with. And conservatives mistakenly impute to darker-skinned young people the growing chaos they may be feeling without understanding that a huge, multi-ethnic generation of young voters has perfectly sound reasons for feeling confident and optimistic.
