Enduring hope

Writer and producer Reniqua Allen offers an essay on the lives of black millennials in the New Republic. I found it haunting.

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.

Go read it all.