How a Generation of Kids Coped With Their First White President
Zoomers’ childhoods were first defined by the Obama administration — now they look back on how a Trump term has changed them
Update 6/7/22: Level has a new home. You can read this article and other new articles by visiting LEVELMAN.com.
When Hillary Clinton lost the election to Donald Trump on November 8, 2016, a generation of children of color lost their innocence. For anyone born in 2005 or later, the first and only president they had known was Black and beloved. Not only did their new president ascend to the White House after a campaign that made a joke of the political process, but many young people also saw their parents crumble that night, in a way they’d never seen before.
Four years later, those kids are teens — and they’re more politically astute than their ’80s and ’90s counterparts could have dreamed of. Ronald Reagan and the Iran-Contra Affair were barely homework assignments for us; Gen Z teens might not even be old enough to vote, but they know who they’d vote for all the way down their local ballot, what it means to flip the Senate, and why RBG’s legacy is also problematic.
On the eve of the upcoming election, we gathered a half-dozen students coming off their…
