The Politicization of Youth

In a post that appeared earlier this week, Mike Connery recommended an article titled "Generation Why” by Liz Brown, the daughter of Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH). At the start of the article, Liz quotes a student named Andrew Lyubarsky who states, “The election of 2000 is definitely what politicized me, caused me to think critically about the American system.” His remark, a not-so-surprising statement, triggered a larger reflection: What are the ways that young people today are being politicized?

By politicization I mean simply: “to give a political character to.” I’m using it in a very broad and positive sense, as in the catalyzing of active citizenship and the formation of critical consciousness in a democratic society. What activates young Americans? What calls them to action and causes them to think critically about politics and society?

The following list is in no way an attempt at being comprehensive. These are only initial thoughts that I am offering as a simple reflection and for further conversation.

• Family: A large number of youth derive their political beliefs and identity directly from their parents.
• Friends: Youth are strongly influenced by their peer circles and networks. While some might joke about the notion of “peer pressure politics,” young people who are politically active can strongly influence their peers in positive ways.
• Culture: Some cultures are politically charged, dynamic, and contagious; others are politically lethargic, vapid, and dead. An individual’s cultural milieu often plays a large role in determining one’s political life and character.
• Education: Through various pedagogies of democratic education—civic courses, issue-specific classes, service-learning, etc.—young people can be inducted into citizenship and democracy.
• Leaders: Be it a political leader, a religious leader, a rock star, or a movie star, young people can be called to action by the example of someone they look up to and admire.
• Political Campaigns: Supporting, participating in, or closely following a political campaign can serve as young person’s political rite of passage. Some campaigns, such as the 2004 Dean campaign, can politicize a large swath of youngstas when the campaign becomes a movement.
• Blogs: By joining and participating in a blogging community, youth can become the active agents of democracy.
• Work: I know plenty of young people who have canvassed not so much out of an interest in politics but as a need for a summer job. Through the process they found themselves thinking about issues and engaging in political dialogues that transformed them for the rest of their lives. One’s daily grind and/or professional atmosphere—be it in the public or the private sector—can also bring one into the political fray.
• Volunteering: By volunteering with nonprofits and other community groups, young people directly engage with political and social issues that can deeply shape their political character and likelihood to participate in democracy.
• Cultural Influences: (As opposed to Culture in the larger sense.) Cultural settings and groups such as Living Liberally, open mics, your local bowling alley (Bowling Together), etc., can serve as the churning ground for political thought, deliberation, and action.
• Religion: For better and for worse, religious teachings and communities can often lead one onto the political stage.
• Personal Crisis: Often times an individual can experience a life-crisis—divorce, car accident, death, relationship breakup, drugs/alcohol addiction—that awakens their critical consciousness. While some personal crises can spiral to destruction, others often lead to renewal and greater civic engagement.
• Social Injustice: The first-hand experience of social injustice—be it class-based, race-based, or sex-based—often serves as the catalyst of a political awakening.
• The X-Factor: There are those who are politicized by seemingly random events, a sudden inexplicable interest, or what some refer to as that mysterious role of destiny.
• Historical Events: The Great Depression, WWII, 9/11, the War on Terror, etc. I was talking with someone the other day who was a teenager during the assassinations of JKF, MLK, and RFK, historical events that he said played the major determining role in politicizing his life.
• Issue-Based Entrance: Young people often have an issue—war, third-world poverty, global warming, abortion—that speaks directly to their life and calls them to action. Often times they will work for an organization or be part of a project relating to this particular issue that further develops their politics and engagement.
• Movement-Based Entrance: The Civil Rights movement galvanized many thousands of young Americans and influenced the political character of an entire nation. The climate change movement, while not on the same scale as the Civil Rights movement, is one of the most dynamic youth movements in existence today and is activating thousands of young eco-citizens.
• Generational-Based Entrance: This can often overlap with both “historical events” and “movement-based” forces, though throughout history the former has more often been the case. Both prophecy and sociological statistics report that the Millennial generation may politicize our nation in unprecedented ways.

This list is just a quick reflection off the top of my head. I have no doubt that there are other factors that I have not touched upon. There are also many qualitative questions regarding each of these that have not been addressed, such as how is politicization best sustained, and which factors deliver a stronger and more lasting politicization? Quantitative data on some of these points could also be created and may already exist.

One thing that’s clear is that politicization can arise from above or below, from without or within. While there may never exist a comprehensive science to political activation, we should seek to foster, support, and promote proven pathways to positive politicization.

I was reading a book today titled Democracy: A Very Short Introduction and I came across the following passage which is an excerpt from a statement issued by an advisory group to the Secretary of State for Education in Great Britain:

“We aim at no less than a change in the political culture of this country both nationally and locally; for people to think of themselves as active citizens, willing, able and equipped to have an influence in public life and with the critical capacities to weigh evidence before speaking and acting; to build on and to extend radically to young people the best in existing traditions of community involvement and public service, and to make them individually confident in finding new forms of involvement and action among themselves.”

By understanding the myriad of ways in which young people are politically awakened and activated, the hope is that it will allow us to more effectively support the processes of politicization that will give rise to a new generation bearing a highly active political character. We must also begin to create new pathways and political rites of passage for America to politicize its youth, and even more appropriately, for its youth to politicize each other, i.e. peer-to-peer.

"The trouble…is that we have taken our democracy for granted; we have thought and acted as if our forefathers had founded it once and for all. We have forgotten that it has to be enacted anew in every generation, in every year and day, in the living relations of person to person in all social forms and institutions." ~John Dewey