Jalessa, who worked in communications for a major company in Los Angeles, said that the idea that blacks have to work twice as hard is very real. “Black people gotta prove so much before our opinion can be valued,” she said, “whereas a white man could walk into a room and he could just come out and say what he wants, negotiate with who he wants.” She added, “Let me come in and have a bad day. I’m supposed to suck it up, smile and not be the black girl with the attitude.”

To understand the black millennial, then, is to not only reverse the tired tropes about millennials that have proliferated in the media for the past ten or so years—it is also to rethink the role of race in twenty-first century America. Despite the increased acceptance of interracial relationships, a widespread love of black culture, and a more visible presence for blacks in historically white institutions, it’s still hard to overstate just how much the past remains present in this country. Research conducted by The Washington Post in 2015 about the supposedly “woke” millennial generation found that 31 percent of white millennials think blacks are lazier than whites, and that 23 percent say they’re not as intelligent. Shocking responses, and statistically not much different from those in previous generations.

If it is the case that black millennials are stuck in a cyclical experience that transcends history, then some will ask why the experience of the missing black millennial, in particular, matters. They will say this is essentially the same story that black people have suffered for decades, and to some degree they will be right. Promise and decline, hope and suffering—it is a pattern that weaves together Reconstruction, the Great Migration, the Civil Rights movement, and the election of Barack Obama. Throughout it all, the black community has waited for America to finally make good on its promise. Yet that day hasn’t come.

To comprehend the black millennial experience in America is to comprehend what it means to hope.

To comprehend the black millennial experience in America is to comprehend what it means to hope. Not in a feel-good way, not in a naive way, but in a desperate way, as a way of life, because the alternative is unacceptable. This is the story of black America, a story of strength and overcoming. But I sometimes wonder: When do we give up? When will hope fade? I am reminded constantly that, despite the hope of a black president, it was under his watch that the movement for black lives started. And it’s in his shadow that a racist president exists.