In This Movement for Racial Justice, We Need to Listen to the Voices of Kids

The kids are at it again. They're all over social media, on the front page of the New York Times Sunday Style section and many other news sources. President Barack Obama dedicated not one, but two sets of threads, tweeting out praise and linking stories of young activists leading the charge toward racial justice. The Black Lives Matter movement is reaching every part of our country, and young people are proving, once again, that their voices are important—and we need to listen.

Last fall, I wrote about the growing trend of youth-led movements to bring attention to critical issues at the national and global levels. At the time, our news cycles and twitter feeds were filled with updates of Swedish environmentalist Greta Thunberg’s trip across the Atlantic en route to the United Nations Climate Action Summit. We watched her initial school strike for climate change grow from a single sit-in to a protest involving hundreds of thousands—and a steadfastness that has been sustained for nearly two years. In the U.S., active student-led environmental activist groups and youth-led protests remain vigilant, even as the current administration moves forward with its withdrawal from the Paris climate accord and scales back and eliminates federal climate protections.

A year prior, we watched Emma González and students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida lead a grassroots movement to address gun safety. March for Our Lives became one of the most successful campaigns in support of legislation to prevent gun violence; initial progress included a bump stock ban and stricter gun laws in Florida. Parkland survivors’ focus on increasing their peers’ civic participation was also notable; 37 percent of Florida’s 18- to 29-year olds voted in the November 2018 midterm elections, compared to 22 percent in the previous midterm, after their get-out-the-vote efforts. We can encourage young people to continue to be civically engaged, by seeing them as individuals with agency and with the right to have a voice in the issues that affect them.

It is far more common for young people in other countries to have opportunities to share their opinions, to express their viewpoints, and to be part of formal conversations around national policies and programs. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child gives young people the right to express their opinions on matters that impact them; as the U.S. hasn’t ratified the Convention, American youth are denied this right.

Why does it take a crisis for us to think about and listen to kids?

In 2020, the COVID-19 global pandemic stripped the world of “normalcy,” forcing us into a new reality of physical distancing, mask-wearing, distance learning, and sheltering-in-place. Children and young people have been affected in countless ways. Despite our own government’s silence in speaking directly to our kids, children and young people are offering insights into their experiences, talking with elected leaders about coronavirus, and providing suggestions for coping with being in lockdown.

The killing of George Floyd by police on May 25 drove hundreds of thousands of activists out of their homes to stand in solidarity with the Black community to fight for racial justice. Once again, young people across the U.S. have jumped into activism. This time, however, feels different. Our nation is at a tipping point, and kids—some as young as five and six years old—are in the thick of it. The number of peaceful protects, marches, and rallies taking place in states across the country include those in large cities like San Francisco, Baltimore, and Nashville, but also in smaller towns like Corvallis, Oregon and Katy, Texas. Young people are mobilizing neighborhoods and communities, and their messaging is focused on a shared humanity and collective goal.

Some neighborhood marches, such as those in Grosse Pointe, MI and Brooklyn, NY, were born from parents’ wishes to keep their children from the larger protests and demonstrations while still giving them an opportunity to experience activism and speaking out for social justice, but many of the marches in the news arewere the direct result of young people getting together—in many cases, online—to plan and lead events on their own. Teens are using Instagram, TikTok and other social media platforms as vehicles for their activism. They are building a sustainable movement by educating one another and their communities, posting actionable challenges, and connecting through their shared commitment to standing up for what is right. A 17-year-old student activist in O’Fallon, Missouri helped organize a protest and was encouraged when more than 2,000 people showed up, noting that “people showed up to love and drown that hate out…It is us against racism.”

The Black Lives Matter Youth Group of Oklahoma held a march in early June, to declare that their lives and education matter. The kids involved in the march presented specific demands—ending zero-tolerance policies, increasing the hiring of Black, Indigenous, and Latinx teachers and administrators in Oklahoma public schools, adding African American, Latinx and Indigenous Studies to the curricula in Oklahoma public schools, increasing state funding of schools, and removing armed police from schools. These students are mobilizing their community, addressing the systemic racial injustices, and are asking for real change.

This week, New York Times’ Jessica Bennett featured several teens who are organizing and fighting for racial justice; one public commenter stated a fear that instead of underestimating these young leaders, we might over-rely upon them. As I have written before, there are many ways by which we have failed our children. It is time to do the right thing.

We know that young people have a voice—a strong voice. Let’s ensure that they are at the table and their voices are heard and listened to. Let’s give them platforms and opportunities to contribute to discussions of school reopening, policies that promote racial justice, environmental protections and climate change, and so much more. Let’s see them as individuals with agency and opinions that have value. Let’s celebrate young people, their activism, and all they are doing to help create a more just world.  

Links to coverage of the youth-led marches and protests are included on our Resources web page. Let us know if you have additional links to share.