The nation is witnessing the emergence of a post-Obama black electorate. It is a constituency that has grown impatient with elected officials’ generational promises that their programs will eventually pull blacks from the doldrums of society into a fairer America where opportunity is accessible and hard work is rewarded equally. To combat institutional lethargy, this wave of young people is employing a variety of tactics—from protest to pop culture—to influence the political agenda. They are the offspring of six decades of activism, growing voting power, and increased intra-racial class diversity.

The post-Obama bloc’s urgency for action is clear. African Americans are sick of the unemployment rate being perpetually twice the rate of whites. They are tired of poverty touching more black children while declining for other groups. They are sick of black neighborhoods being patrolled by battle-ready police. They are tired of rights and opportunity being held from them just because of their race, whether its new voter-identification laws that complicate access to the ballot or the persistence of employment, rental, and housing discrimination due to black skin and a black-sounding name. Plus, with health care increasingly inaccessible and health outcomes tragically worse for African Americans, they are literally sick and tired. If recent trends are sufficient indication, the post-Obama black electorate will probably be characterized by three things: stratified voter participation, increased reliance on alternative methods of political pressure, and initial signs of growing partisan and political diversity.

The new black electorate is fired up and ready to go, but the ballot box may not be the destination it once was. Though overall black voter participation increased between 2008 and 2012, Obama’s reelection came courtesy of African Americans over 45 years old. But for blacks born in the late 1980s onward, their turnout dropped nearly 7 percent in that same period, marking the first time that has occurred in decades. At the macro level, it’s evident that the Civil Rights generation and their oldest children value the power of voting differently than black Millennials, who are less interested in conforming to traditional institutional and power structures. This stratification is paralleled in different ways, including partisan affiliation, religiosity, and marital rates. As a result, older blacks are more likely to rely on the vote to bring about policy change, whereas young voters place less confidence in electoral strategies. In the short-term, this may translate to an overall drop in black voter participation rates. But decreased voter turnout should not be mistaken for disinterest.

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The post-Obama bloc employs a different strategy to bring about change—one rooted in creativity and energy. It is because of them that Black Lives Matter exists. Their hunger strike and protest at the University of Missouri, emblematic of campus protests across the country, accomplished what complaints to the state legislature and the board of directors could not. In South Carolina, one of them yanked the state’s Confederate battle flag off the pole before the governor officially took it down. Another wrote a reparations article that created a national conversation—something that a congressman’s annual reintroduction of House Resolution 40 could not. Together, and in front of a polarized nation, they have compelled the president to directly address their concerns, from Trayvon Martin’s death to the lack of diversity at the Oscars. And after releasing an unapologetically black new music video, Beyoncé put on the most powerful display of black femininity the Super Bowl has ever seen, and black lives dominated the news cycle yet again. These devices have been successful in getting specific issues of concern into the national conversation and onto the federal agenda with more urgency than their forebears.