ESSAY AND COMMENT
The Rise of the Youth Class
Historical reflection may well reveal a
significant relationship between
the unrest of the 1960's and the birth
of a new social class. Even from this
limited vantage point it is increasingly
apparent that young people for the
first time have identified themselves as
a separate class in society. Congre-
gated in large numbers on college and
university campuses, young people
have come to the self-realization that
they have common needs, grievances,
and ideals. And, following the pattern
of emerging classes of the past, the
youth class is beginning to assert the
rights to which it feels it is heir,
especially within the democratic
tradition.
The mass media, the emphasis upon
near-universal higher education, and
the Vietnam War have been chief
contributing factors in the solidification
of youth as a definable class. Radio and
television since World War II have
directed an increasing amount of
programming to this group. While adver-
tising has influenced children from the
tenderest years to think of them-
selves as an important sector of the
buying public, programs from Howdy
Doody to Captain Kangaroo have given them
a common framework for
thought and conversation. Teenagers have
found the essence of their de-
veloping subculture broadcast to them in
the sounds and images of folk-
rock singing groups replete with the
latest youth class symbols--mod cloth-
ing, bearded faces, and psychedelic
effects. The success of the Beatles by the
mid-sixties was a belleweather of the
unification of youth about a distinct
cultural pattern in the arts. By the end
of the decade, the Broadway musical
"Hair" became the
international art expression of the frustrations of young
people with the morality of middle class
society and the enunciation of the
youth class ideals regarding war, sex,
and race.
It was the emphasis upon higher
education, however, which brought the
youth together in great enough numbers
on university campuses to bring
its subculture, ideals, and grievances
into sharp enough focus to weld its
members into a self-conscious social
class. Just as the Industrial Revolution
brought the working masses of Europe
together in the cities where they
gradually saw themselves as the
oppressed proletariat which could act col-
lectively to win economic and,
ultimately, political concessions from the
bourgeoisie and nobility, so the
Education Revolution since 1945 has
brought nearly seven million students
together in American institutions of
advanced learning where many viewed
themselves as an aggrieved class and
united to achieve the democratic ideals
with which their education had fa-
miliarized them. If society called for
college degrees as requisites to oppor-
tunity and success, youth progressively
looked upon higher education more
as a right than a privilege and demanded
a voice in forming the policy in
the schools it had to attend. As the
unity of the youth class grew by
212 OHIO HISTORY
1970, student demands for the right of
representation in matters relating
to faculty, curricula, and student
affairs had reached the high school level.
Students for a Democratic Society and
numerous other less revolutionary
groups were products of, as well as
stimulants to, the movement for the im-
plementation of youth rights and ideals
in the universities and society as a
whole.
The Vietnam War crystallized the mind of
the youth class around what
it considered the immorality of the
society of its elders. The war seemed a
perpetual denial of the best American
ideals--ideals for which the youth
class became the prime defender. Young
people were alienated from other
classes in society, and many protested
against what they considered the ex-
ploitation and oppression of their own
class. Much of the dissent centered
in the draft. Should a citizen who
objected to the Vietnam War on moral
grounds be forced to serve? Could
society continue to ask the young to help
fight its wars while denying them voting
rights even though they were better
educated and informed at eighteen than
their parents had been at twenty-
one? Young people sensed that the
democratic trend of American history was
in their favor. Beginning under
aristocratic control, the Republic had em-
braced the universal manhood suffrage of
Jeffersonian and Jacksonian De-
mocracy, had emancipated the bondsmen,
had yielded to the wishes of the
suffragettes, and had responded to the
civil rights movement. Many, particu-
larly of the New Left, felt that the
youth class could no longer be denied.
The tragic assassinations of Martin
Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy
and the dismal reception of the Eugene
McCarthy campaign at the Chicago
Democratic convention tended to
strengthen the commitment of young
people to the total redemption of
society.
Tile truly revolutionary potential of
the emergence of the youth class
broke suddenly upon American
consciousness when militant students first
brought guns onto university campuses in
1969 to support their demands,
even if their firearms were meant for
defensive purposes only. In his classic
study The Anatomy of Revolution, Crane
Brinton identified several signs
of approaching conflict in the past
which may be observable in the present
and of which a wise society should be
cognizant if it is to effect constructive,
orderly change. Brinton found that the
rising class of those out of power
developed a dislike for the ruling class
composed of those in control of
the economic, social, and political
Establishment. He discovered that the
rising class gained intellectual support
in propagandizing its grievances and
felt morally superior to those in
positions of power ("tell it like it is,"
"make love not war") .
Numerous persons in the rising class felt that they
did not have opportunities proportionate
to their native ability, and finally
the class collectively demanded the
rights of self-government and equality
of opportunity to which it felt its
importance in society or its natural rights
entitled it. While this was occurring,
Brinton found that the ruling class
often sympathized with the rising class
regarding the outmoded quality of
traditional beliefs and practices, the
equality of all men, and the fact that
they themselves held power unjustly.
Revolutionary consequences only en-
ESSAY AND COMMENT
213
sued, however, when the ruling class was
so divided and inept or so com-
mitted to the use of sporadic,
unsuccessful force that it was unable to re-
spond creatively to the challenges in
time to produce peaceful reform.
The new youth class, if indeed it can be
defined as such, presents a chal-
lenge to society to put into practice
the best of its social, political, and re-
ligious ideals. Nevertheless, the youth
class itself faces formidable tests.
Youth always has been present in
society, and it customarily has passed on
into middle age only to accept and
defend the status quo. Can the con-
cerned young people of the youth class
of the present win democratic re-
forms that will benefit the youth of
unborn generations? Can they bring
to fruition in society at large the
ideals of peace, honesty, equality, freedom,
and justice which they champion and
which, after all, they have borrowed,
from the dreams of past generations? In
short, now that the youth class like
the child in Hans Christian Andersen's The
Emperor's New Clothes has
been willing to say to its elders
"The Emperor has no clothes on," will it
be able to make him (society) some suitable
ones and convince him to
wear them?
DONALD E. PITZER
Indiana State University,
Evansville
On Negro History
Negro history has lately become
fashionable in the United States. The
"true Negro," however, is
still absent from our history books. White preju-
dice has been part of our history
writing without our realizing it. We have
omitted the Negro from our story because
we did not know much about
him, and we were not aware of our
mistreatment of him. This lack of
knowledge was an integral part of our
prejudice that this is a white man's
country.
A few historians, a few school boards
and teachers, nevertheless, have had
the grace to do something to change
course. Textbooks are being "revised."
But tile trouble is the revisions are
not at all as thorough as they ought to
ble, and some day will be. Revisionists
think of their job largely in terms of
putting more Negroes into historical
narratives. For example, Crispus At-
tucks, a "Negro" who fell in
the Boston Massacre, is now famous. We put
Negroes in the battle of New Orleans,
the battle of Lake Erie, and even in
the Ohio Indian wars (on the Indians'
side) and think our job is done. It
isn't.
It is not so much the Crispus Attuckses
who have been left out of history
as it is that Negro life in general has
been omitted. For example, there are
scores of history books about Ohio
relating many, many pleases of her story
--the Indian wars, the statehood
movement, canals, Civil War, railroads,
et al., but the Negro was largely excluded from equal
participation in such
events. He was forbidden by law from
voting, from being a soldier in the