ogc163
Superstar
Reniqua Allen/February 20, 2019
On a cold winter morning this year, I stepped on a downtown 6 train in New York City. I had just come from a grueling workout, and I was tired and hungry. Bundled up in my coat, with a pocketbook and bulky backpack, I took up more space in the aisle than usual, as if I were some exaggerated version of myself. A few seconds later, a blonde woman about my age huffily pushed by me, annoyed that she had to brush past my backpack. Apparently dismayed that her shove hadn’t gotten the message across, she loudly told me that my bag was in the way. Annoyed at her annoyance, I told her, “Figure it out.”
She proceeded to berate me for over ten minutes. Like the rest of the people on the train, I ignored her. A few stops later, as she got up to leave, our eyes locked and I flashed her a smile.
“Typical,” she said, glaring at me as she walked out.
“Typical for who?” I yelled back.
I was fine with being called out for bad behavior and a bad attitude. I probably could have been nicer. My backpack was clunky, and protocol required that I take it off my shoulders and put it on the floor. No, it wasn’t her complaints that bothered me—it was the way “typical” flew out of her mouth.
The only things she knew about me were my race, my approximate age, and my gender. The way she looked at me, the disgust with which she hurled that word, told me that this interaction wasn’t about another rude New Yorker on the subway. It was about what I stood for: some group of people she thought she understood, whose stories she thought she knew.
But she didn’t know my story, nor the stories of many others like me.
A few years ago, because of people like that blonde woman on the train, I set out to collect the voices of young black people across the country for a book. As I talked to these black millennials, it became clear that nearly all of them were frustrated by the gross popular perceptions about what it means to be young and black in America.
As a generation, millennials are used to being misunderstood. Perhaps no generation has been so gleefully maligned in the press, which has produced a zillion think pieces casting millennials as entitled, lazy, mayonnaise-hating, over-educated pampered whiners who, in their blinkered narcissism, are selling out the human race. That caricature has slowly given way to a more nuanced picture of a generation profoundly shaped by the events of its time—9/11, the Iraq War, the Great Recession, climate change—and baleful socioeconomic trends: growing income inequality, staggering levels of student debt, stagnant wages. And yet, for all this new understanding, there remains a huge blind spot when it comes to black millennials in particular.
African-Americans make up 14 percent of the millennial population, born, roughly speaking, between 1981 and 1996. Black millennials came of age in the so-called post-race era, their worldview defined by Barack Obama’s historic rise to the presidency, Beyonce’s dominance of the entertainment industry, and Ta-Nehisi Coates’s emergence as one of the premier public intellectuals in this country. But they also witnessed tragedies like the Rodney King beating, Hurricane Katrina, and the police shootings of Mike Brown and so many other young black men and women. They saw the horrific and racist treatment of our first black president and his wife. And then they saw the alleged “post-race” period give way to the election of the most openly racist president in modern American history.
The black millennial, then, is composed of contradictions and ambiguity; her journey of tentative steps forward and horrific setbacks. In this, young blacks are not so different from their ancestors, complicating the whole notion of generational change that we are used to ascribing to non-black people, in which a particular cohort is perceived as being fundamentally different from its predecessors. In many ways, the story of the black millennial is as much about consistency as it is about change—which is to say that the story of the black millennial is the story of what it means to be black, period.
Like all millennials, black millennials have to deal with a host of economic challenges. In addition to middling wages and the burden of student debt, they have to negotiate a thriving gig economy that provides little security and an urban housing market that has increasingly priced out the working and middle classes. They are uncertain about the future in a way that past generations weren’t, and grasping for an adulthood that feels forever delayed.
But though black millennials have much in common with their white peers, there are important distinctions. In almost all areas of life, the deck is stacked even higher against us, in part due to historical discrimination and in part because of inequities unique to the millennial era. By many measures, black millennials are behind. We lag in terms of employment, wages, and attaining “good jobs.” We have less wealth, live in poverty more. Even when we try to do something positive like go to college, we have to take on higher amounts of student debt. And then we still end up with fewer job prospects than our white counterparts.
As an older millennial, I saw my black friends working harder than ever and going to graduate school—and still taking on multiple jobs. Meanwhile, my white peers regaled me with tales of miraculously landing great positions and getting into fantastic schools with mediocre test scores. They told me about promotions, about just being in the right place at the right time. They struggled less, made more money, and had all the luck. It made me angry.
And that’s just the economic situation. Black millennials are increasingly asked for their ID when voting. We are still disproportionately being sucked into the criminal justice system. We have less access to health care, and are likely to die at a younger age. We have to dress a certain way so we aren’t stopped by police at night. We are mocked for the way we look and disparaged for being angry and loud. Our sexuality, always expressed as something animalistic and promiscuous, is often still the subject of public indignation. Even the wealthiest, most successful black millennials can’t protest peacefully without being called ungrateful and unpatriotic.
The great irony of all this—and perhaps what truly makes black millennials distinct from their forebears—is that we’re supposed to believe that the playing field has finally evened out. Many people, including older blacks at times, just don’t understand why young black millennials are frustrated. They think because we aren’t being threatened by the Klan every day, that, if we point out racism, we are playing the “race card,” indulging in identity politics, playing the victim, and simply not working hard enough. Martin Luther King Jr., once dubbed the “most dangerous negro,” has a national holiday in his honor; explicit segregation and overt discrimination are universally condemned (but nevertheless ubiquitous); Black Panther destroyed the box office last year; and heck, we had a black president.
On a cold winter morning this year, I stepped on a downtown 6 train in New York City. I had just come from a grueling workout, and I was tired and hungry. Bundled up in my coat, with a pocketbook and bulky backpack, I took up more space in the aisle than usual, as if I were some exaggerated version of myself. A few seconds later, a blonde woman about my age huffily pushed by me, annoyed that she had to brush past my backpack. Apparently dismayed that her shove hadn’t gotten the message across, she loudly told me that my bag was in the way. Annoyed at her annoyance, I told her, “Figure it out.”
She proceeded to berate me for over ten minutes. Like the rest of the people on the train, I ignored her. A few stops later, as she got up to leave, our eyes locked and I flashed her a smile.
“Typical,” she said, glaring at me as she walked out.
“Typical for who?” I yelled back.
I was fine with being called out for bad behavior and a bad attitude. I probably could have been nicer. My backpack was clunky, and protocol required that I take it off my shoulders and put it on the floor. No, it wasn’t her complaints that bothered me—it was the way “typical” flew out of her mouth.
The only things she knew about me were my race, my approximate age, and my gender. The way she looked at me, the disgust with which she hurled that word, told me that this interaction wasn’t about another rude New Yorker on the subway. It was about what I stood for: some group of people she thought she understood, whose stories she thought she knew.
But she didn’t know my story, nor the stories of many others like me.
A few years ago, because of people like that blonde woman on the train, I set out to collect the voices of young black people across the country for a book. As I talked to these black millennials, it became clear that nearly all of them were frustrated by the gross popular perceptions about what it means to be young and black in America.
As a generation, millennials are used to being misunderstood. Perhaps no generation has been so gleefully maligned in the press, which has produced a zillion think pieces casting millennials as entitled, lazy, mayonnaise-hating, over-educated pampered whiners who, in their blinkered narcissism, are selling out the human race. That caricature has slowly given way to a more nuanced picture of a generation profoundly shaped by the events of its time—9/11, the Iraq War, the Great Recession, climate change—and baleful socioeconomic trends: growing income inequality, staggering levels of student debt, stagnant wages. And yet, for all this new understanding, there remains a huge blind spot when it comes to black millennials in particular.
African-Americans make up 14 percent of the millennial population, born, roughly speaking, between 1981 and 1996. Black millennials came of age in the so-called post-race era, their worldview defined by Barack Obama’s historic rise to the presidency, Beyonce’s dominance of the entertainment industry, and Ta-Nehisi Coates’s emergence as one of the premier public intellectuals in this country. But they also witnessed tragedies like the Rodney King beating, Hurricane Katrina, and the police shootings of Mike Brown and so many other young black men and women. They saw the horrific and racist treatment of our first black president and his wife. And then they saw the alleged “post-race” period give way to the election of the most openly racist president in modern American history.
The black millennial, then, is composed of contradictions and ambiguity; her journey of tentative steps forward and horrific setbacks. In this, young blacks are not so different from their ancestors, complicating the whole notion of generational change that we are used to ascribing to non-black people, in which a particular cohort is perceived as being fundamentally different from its predecessors. In many ways, the story of the black millennial is as much about consistency as it is about change—which is to say that the story of the black millennial is the story of what it means to be black, period.
Like all millennials, black millennials have to deal with a host of economic challenges. In addition to middling wages and the burden of student debt, they have to negotiate a thriving gig economy that provides little security and an urban housing market that has increasingly priced out the working and middle classes. They are uncertain about the future in a way that past generations weren’t, and grasping for an adulthood that feels forever delayed.
But though black millennials have much in common with their white peers, there are important distinctions. In almost all areas of life, the deck is stacked even higher against us, in part due to historical discrimination and in part because of inequities unique to the millennial era. By many measures, black millennials are behind. We lag in terms of employment, wages, and attaining “good jobs.” We have less wealth, live in poverty more. Even when we try to do something positive like go to college, we have to take on higher amounts of student debt. And then we still end up with fewer job prospects than our white counterparts.
As an older millennial, I saw my black friends working harder than ever and going to graduate school—and still taking on multiple jobs. Meanwhile, my white peers regaled me with tales of miraculously landing great positions and getting into fantastic schools with mediocre test scores. They told me about promotions, about just being in the right place at the right time. They struggled less, made more money, and had all the luck. It made me angry.
And that’s just the economic situation. Black millennials are increasingly asked for their ID when voting. We are still disproportionately being sucked into the criminal justice system. We have less access to health care, and are likely to die at a younger age. We have to dress a certain way so we aren’t stopped by police at night. We are mocked for the way we look and disparaged for being angry and loud. Our sexuality, always expressed as something animalistic and promiscuous, is often still the subject of public indignation. Even the wealthiest, most successful black millennials can’t protest peacefully without being called ungrateful and unpatriotic.
The great irony of all this—and perhaps what truly makes black millennials distinct from their forebears—is that we’re supposed to believe that the playing field has finally evened out. Many people, including older blacks at times, just don’t understand why young black millennials are frustrated. They think because we aren’t being threatened by the Klan every day, that, if we point out racism, we are playing the “race card,” indulging in identity politics, playing the victim, and simply not working hard enough. Martin Luther King Jr., once dubbed the “most dangerous negro,” has a national holiday in his honor; explicit segregation and overt discrimination are universally condemned (but nevertheless ubiquitous); Black Panther destroyed the box office last year; and heck, we had a black president.
