TruthBook Religious News Blog

By Steve Geissinger
MEDIANEWS SACRAMENTO BUREAU

Article Launched: 04/25/2007 06:41:24 AM PDT

SACRAMENTO -- Make way for the new American Dreamers.

A new, unprecedented ethnic-mix of youths in California yearn for the traditional values of family, safe neighborhoods and religion, according to a poll to be released today, with news conferences to follow in Sacramento, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

The first poll of youths ages 16 to 22, using their communication tool of choice, cell phones, added a label to the long list of yippie, yuppie and hippie terms, and all those Generation-something alphabet-soup labels, said study spokesman Kevin Weston.

The dreamers are coming from a "post-minority generation," said Weston of the nonprofit New America Media foundation, which commissioned the poll.

"It's the most intimate generation we've had, as far as people knowing each other and getting along," he said. "We haven't seen this before in the United States."

Youths have concerns about family stability, cite parenthood as a life goal, are worried about violence in neighborhoods and communities, are seeking religiously guided lives, and want good educations, indicates the poll, jointly commissioned with the University of California.

Researchers have labeled them a "post-minority generation" -- the largest and most diverse to emerge in the nation -- reflecting relaxed attitudes about race, their own identities and immigration status.

They are as likely to identify themselves by music and fashion taste as by the color of their skin.
In short, facing financial and other obstacles, they are concerned about challenges close to home and are not nearly as worried about global warming or the Iraq war, though a majority oppose the fighting.

"While the media and politicians are preoccupied with U.S. conflicts abroad, California youth are far more concerned with conflicts in their own home neighborhoods," according to pollster Sergio Bendixen. At the same time, many see the armed forces as a way to a job.

The youths "represent the forefront of the culture" and a glimpse at "who we are becoming as a (national) society," said Sandy Close of New America Media.

The poll respondents represent a new "global society (that's) coming of age," Bendixen said, with one in eight of the nation's young people living in California -- three-fifths of them nonwhite and nearly half immigrants or children of immigrants.

More than 80 percent support giving illegal immigrants a chance to earn legal status and citizenship, according to the poll.

The study found two-thirds of the 601 respondents expecting to get married and have children.
A quarter of respondents consider the breakdown of the family to be their most pressing issue. Violence in neighborhoods was second, followed by poverty. Global warming and anti-immigrant sentiment came in significantly lower, along with war at just 3 percent.

"It's no wonder this generation is concerned about family breakdown," Weston said. "When the post-hippie generation started divorcing, many of the youths didn't have a mother or a father around."

Two-thirds said they consider it to be "very likely" they will get married and have children.
A majority of respondents also said they felt religion or spirituality is important in their lives and nearly four in 10 said they go to church. The finding stands in stark contrast to the high number of agnostic adults in California.

Given the cost of higher education, the majority of youths cite school and/or money as their top source of personal stress.

Pollsters conducted cell phone interviews of 601 youths from Oct. 6 to Nov. 15. Each was offered $10 to cover phone expenses. The margin of error is plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Labels: family, neighborhood, New America Media, religion, Steve Geissinger, tradition, values, youth

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Monday, May 07, 2007

Guess What Troubles Young People The Most?

By Katherine Kersten, Star Tribune
Last update: May 06, 2007 – 8:27 PM

What issue most concerns young people today? A new survey from hip, racially diverse California -- home to 1 in 8 of the nation's youth -- provides a startling answer.

What does this generation of baggy pants-wearers and body piercers view as "the most pressing issue facing your generation in the world today"? Racism, environmental problems, the war in Iraq?

An answer closer to home tops the list: family breakdown. Pundits may find it fashionable to sneer at Ozzie and Harriet, but kids are longing for a harmonious home with mom and dad at the dinner table. Almost 90 percent of survey respondents expect to get married or enter into a life partnership and have children themselves.

The survey, titled "California Dreamers," assessed the hopes and fears of young people ages 16-22. Three-fifths of respondents were minorities, and half were immigrants or children of immigrants.

The survey was commissioned by New America Media, an association of over 700 ethnic media organizations.

"California Dreamers" revealed another surprise. Almost three-quarters of the young people questioned said that religion and spirituality are important to them. In this respect, California's new generation differs substantially from their parents. "Previous polls rank California as having the highest percentage of 'agnostic' adults in the United States," according to the report.

"California Dreamers" summarizes its findings this way: "The poll reveals a deep yearning among 16- to 22-year-olds for traditional structures - marriage, parenthood [and] religion."

Do Minnesota's young people share these yearnings? Absolutely, says the Rev. Efrem Smith of the Sanctuary Covenant Church, a multiethnic congregation in north Minneapolis. Smith has spent his life working with youth, and speaks nationally on the subject.

"This generation is deeply marred by family breakdown," he told me. Many young people are victims of our society's epidemic of out-of-wedlock childbearing and divorce, he says. Even children from intact families often feel neglected by busy or preoccupied parents.

"Kids understand that a strong, loving family is the core, the base, of what it takes to develop a moral compass, a sense of purpose, an identity," says Smith, even if many self-absorbed older folks have forgotten this inconvenient truth.

Smith's own parents never missed his football games or school talent shows, he says. So he first experienced young people's anger over family breakdown as a varsity basketball coach at Minneapolis' Roosevelt and Patrick Henry high schools, where a substantial number of kids are in poverty.

Smith sees a connection between kids' anxiety over abandonment and neglect, and their spiritual hunger. As a longtime youth worker, he says, he's convinced that "this void, this hole from having no moral compass or guidance at home, can only be filled spiritually."

Kids' interest in religion may seem surprising, given the debased popular culture they inhabit, and the fact that religious expression is frowned on in the public square. "But they're so hungry for love, for a sense of purpose, that they are very open to filling the void spiritually," says Smith.

"I've never seen a young person sold down the road to atheism," he adds. "That comes later in life."

"If you believe that you are beloved of God," Smith says, "that you are made in his image, it doesn't matter if you have two parents or one parent, or if you're being raised by your grandmother or by foster parents. You believe you're on Earth for a purpose, and you can make it."

Katherine Kersten • kkersten@startribune.com Join the conversation at my blog, Think Again, which can be found at www.startribune.com/thinkagain

Labels: family, Katherine Kerston, marriage, New America Media, parenthood, religion, spirituality, youth

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Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Generation Tolerant

A cellphone poll of California youth shows remarkably liberal attitudes toward race but conservative beliefs on family values.

April 30, 2007

FOR CALIFORNIA'S teenagers and young adults, the answer to Rodney King's question is a definite yes: We can all get along. Race and ethnicity, according to a new survey of Californians ages 16 to 22, are far less significant to this generation than to any in the past.

The survey, sponsored by New America Media, found dramatically liberal attitudes when it comes to the issue of getting along. Two-thirds say they have dated someone of another ethnicity, and a whopping 87% say they would marry or have a life partner of a different race.

Not only are young people encouragingly unconcerned about the skin color or nationality of others, they don't think of themselves much that way, either. When asked the most significant aspects of their identity, they chose music and fashion. Their tribes? Punk-rock skaters, hip-hop activists, salseros.

In terms of what young people consider most important about themselves, race and ethnicity didn't even come in second — that slot went to religion.

Most young adult Californians have many friends outside their own race, the survey found. For Asians and Anglos, the majority of their friends are of different races, while Latinos and blacks said that about 40% of their friends come from different groups.

And as for illegal immigration, basically the kids don't see what the fuss is all about — 82% say illegal immigrants should be given a chance to earn citizenship.

But if you think that California is producing a generation of young liberals, think again. The young people in the survey swing to the right when it comes to family values and religion.

Their No. 1 concern is the breakdown of the family. Second is violence in their neighborhoods.

A majority say they are religious and spiritual. They plan to go to college, have jobs, marry, buy homes, raise kids.

This may seem like a return to the California of the 1950s, but it might be more of a reaction to the perceived sins of their elders. After all, California has one of the highest divorce rates in the United States, is home to more gangs than any other state and purportedly has the highest number of agnostics (although, to be fair, atheists and agnostics have the lowest divorce rates).

The survey thus suggests that California's youth are sharp critics of their parents, rejecting a culture they perceive as sanctioning loose marital bonds and religious indifference. The state's young adults may just be perfectly out of sync with their parents — sometimes more tolerant and other times more traditional. Which suggests the deepest California tradition of all: time-honored youthful rebellion, rejecting, as every generation does, the ethos of the generation before.

Labels: California, family, immigrants, New America Media, race, religion, spirituality, values, youth