Coming home for the holidays is a tradition that I've cherished every year of my young adult life. It's the one opportunity I have to completely unplug from life's responsibilities and spend time with all of my family. After my parents, the first person I make time to see is my 72 year-old grandmother Mary. Born in the south in rural Georgia, she moved to Detroit in the early 60's, just a few years before the riots, and the rest was history.
Spending time with her is special not only because of the fond memories I have of her from childhood, it's an opportunity to hear from someone that experienced some of the most harrowing times for Black Americans and lived to tell her story. When I arrived from San Francisco last week, I surprised her by stopping by her house one morning just to find her in the middle of a routine that's more that 20 years in the making. Standing over the stove cooking a pot of grits, frying bacon and making scrambled eggs with the sound of the morning news playing as a soundtrack.
After sitting down for a moment to catch up on family gossip, she asked me "what do you think about Trump?" Knowing the question was rhetorical, I spent the next few minutes trying not to make a mess on her table from laughing to myself in between listening to her talk about how 'crazy' the Republican candidates were and sipping orange juice from one of her mason jars.
The next question she asked had a more serious tone and was one that political veterans, Gen Xers and tenured faculty at universities across the nation have been asking for years. "Where are the young people?" In this instance, she was referring to black millennials.
In 2008, we came out in record numbers to help elect America's first Black President, Barack Obama. With the help of campaigns like Diddy's "Vote or Die," rallies at historically black institutions and headlines throughout the media, the election had the highest voter turnout in history for young black Americans. Seven years later, we're finding ourselves at the center of a different conversation.
The violent deaths of Laquan McDonald, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Freddie Gray and several others, at the hands of people tasked to protect and serve our communities has sparked a movement. A movement led by young people to challenge the status quo in our justice system and make the names of #TravyonMartin, #SandraBland and #RenishaMcBride more than hashtags. Young people that demand that candidates running for office in this country make preserving and improving the quality of our lives a priority in their platforms.
However an issue candidates are facing, even with support from the Black Lives Matter Movement and the groups they draw at rallies in bastions of black excellence, HBCU campuses and the black student unions of PWIs. There is a large population of black millennials that is not engaged in the political process this time around. We are the post-college aged workforce that is scattered across the country working in cities from as far north as Boston, down and through the south and up into the bridges of the San Francisco Bay.
According to the U.S. Department of Education Institute of Education Sciences while over 30 percent of Black Americans between the ages of 18 - 24 are enrolled in degree granting institutions, almost three quarters of millennials are being missed by rallies candidates have on college campuses. Whether they are not enrolled in higher education institutions or they've graduated and entered the workforce, this isn't an effective strategy to reach black youth. On the other hand, according to the PEW Research Center 98 percent of 18-29 year old Black Americans use either broadband and/or own smartphones; 96 percent of which use social networks.
Twitter, which played a major role in the formation of #BlackLivesMatter, has a significant number of black users. 40 percent of Black Americans ages 18-29 say they use Twitter, compared to 28 percent of White American internet users in the same age group. The influence of the group's presence on the social network prompted the L.A. Times to assign a reporter to cover #BlackTwitter as a beat.
Just as Barack Obama used social media in 2008 to gain 70 percent of the votes from Americans under 25, it's time that candidates, especially the Democratic party who has been accused of taking the black vote for granted, develops strategies to reach black millennials where we are; the internet. By driving conversations with black youth in a comprehensive fashion, the Democrats, and Republicans if they so choose, will have a better opportunity to gain millennial trust and votes.
The party has a little under a year to engage this critical group of voters, time will tell if the party is living in the present or will pass like another trending topic on twitter.