Back in summer 2020, I wrote a letter to my former school. In the wake of George Floyd’s murder at the hands of a police officer, I felt an urge to do something—anything—to protest against systemic racism. Locked down in rural Worcestershire, taking to the streets wasn’t an option, so I channelled my frustration into writing this letter.
It was a collaborative effort with both current and former students involved in collating years of reports of racism and microaggressions at our school. Some students felt that they had been typecast in school plays. Others were tired of teachers mispronouncing their names. By the time the letter was sent to the headmaster, it had over 600 signatures. Everyone who contributed had a different story to tell, but the overarching message was clear: racism at our school would no longer be tolerated.
According to a recent study by Channel 4, every one of the signatories might be described as a “young illiberal progressive”, or “yip” for short. The broadcaster surveyed the thoughts, feelings and views of young Britons and found us to be more progressive but also more intolerant than other generations. Only 48 per cent of gen Z believe that there are “only two genders”, compared to 68 per cent of over-25s. But the broadcaster also found that a quarter of us have “very little tolerance for people with beliefs that they disagree with”, while nearly half agreed that “some people deserve to be cancelled”.
The national papers reported these findings as if they were contradictory. How can we be progressive but have no patience for people with different views? Alex Mahon, chief executive at Channel 4, called this an “obvious paradox”.
Our exposure to social media has made us unprecedentedly invested in progressive change
I can understand why older people are confused by gen Z: the assumption was that the internet would make future generations more open-minded; as the first to grow up exposed to different views on social media and smartphones, we’d be the most flexible generation ever.
But I think our “progressive intolerance” makes perfect sense. Our exposure to social media has made us unprecedentedly invested in progressive change. It has offered us a unique insight into the lives of others, opening our eyes to injustices that may have previously gone unnoticed. We don’t have to rely on traditional media to show us what life is like for society’s most vulnerable—on social media, marginalised people can tell their own stories to huge audiences.
Take Kwajo Tweneboa, the young activist from Mitcham fighting to expose social housing slumlords. How can you not feel passionately about holding rogue landlords to account when Tweneboa posts video after video of the squalid conditions people are forced to live in—flats infested with mice and cockroaches, rooms ridden with damp and mould? How can you ignore the issue of sexual harassment when the hashtag #MeToo has been tweeted millions of times? How can you accept police brutality against black people, after watching Derek Chauvin kneel on George Floyd’s neck for nine minutes?
I recognise the need to talk calmly about controversial issues with the people you’re trying to win over but in my experience, there’s little point arguing with those who are unwilling even to listen. In most cases, refusing to engage with hateful people results in them (rightly) fading into obscurity. Case in point: Katie Hopkins’s career, which she built by spewing inflammatory views, tanked after she got banned from Twitter and we stopped “tolerating” her horrible opinions. That is surely a win for social justice.
And isn’t intolerance how change happens, anyway? All generations have been intolerant of other social issues; second wave feminists in the 1960s and 1970s didn’t placidly smile and nod and say “I see where you’re coming from” in the face of bigoted, backwards-looking misogynists. If past generations had been tolerant of injustice, we’d still be working 16-hour days, six days a week and sending children up chimneys.
The way I see it, my generation isn’t setting out to suppress freedom of speech or persecute people for thought crimes, à la Nineteen Eighty-Four. We just desperately want to see change on the issues that affect us and no longer entertain the regressive beliefs of people who keep their heads in the sand—just like the young people before us.
