An overwhelming amount of young Americans are living in fear.
In fact, more millennials are fearful about the future of the United States rather than hopeful, according to the Harvard Institute of Politics’ new youth poll. White females were the most likely to be afraid (60%), closely followed by white males (54%), while young blacks and Hispanics were slightly less likely to fear the future.
Their fear mostly comes from a lack of faith in Washington to solve personal, financial, and national security issues, according to Harvard IOP Polling Director John Della Volpe.
Some responses to the Harvard survey of 18- to 29-year-olds included:
“There’s a decent chance the U.S. will break apart within 50 years.”
“This country is f**k(ed)!”
Young whites especially believe that they can work hard, go to college, and still not get a job in their chosen field or attain their idea of the ‘American Dream.’
While minorities were more likely than whites to be hopeful about the future of America, when it comes to their own personal lives, the outlook is bleak.
An astounding 85 percent of African Americans and 72 percent of Hispanics believe that people of their racial background are currently “under attack” in the United States.
78 percent of young people overall are concerned about the state of race relations in America today.
Although respondents said they would expect race relations to get worse if Donald Trump were to become president, they don’t expect things to get better under Hillary Clinton either.
Only 23 percent said they expect race relations to improve under Clinton, while 22 percent expect things to get worse and 36 percent said nothing would change.
