Fifteenth International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences

Abstract

The Pew Research Center (2019) has projected that, in 2020, one-in-ten eligible US voters will be between the ages 18 and 23, and that 18% of eligible American voters will be non-Black minorities—nearly double that demographic’s share of voters in 2000. Whether one seeks to comprehend if most of this population will remain a “sleeping giant that will never wake” (Cillizza 2013), or concurs with proclamations that those who constitute what sociologist Eileen O’Brien has helped dub “the racial middle” (2008) will “determine” the United States’ next leaders (Univision 2019), one must agree that key to understanding the potential and power of the racial middle is understanding its young adults, and what informs their attitudes and behaviors regarding civic and/ or political engagement. This paper illuminates this by sharing preliminary findings about how American young adults who self-identify as Asian, Hispanic or Latinx, Native, Pacific Islander, and/ or mixed perceive the US racial order and themselves in it, the social problems they feel most affected by, how immigrant parents and/ or communities shape their sense of the risks and responsibilities of engaging in outside activities “not just for myself”, and possible implications of the rise of the US racial middle for greater US society. These findings are part of a current qualitative study of 50 young adults in the US Midwest, Northeast, Pacific, South, and West Coast.