Black and Exhausted in America

Having grown up the son of two civil-rights activists, one a minister, one of my favorite gospel songs is “I Don’t Feel No Ways Tired.” That song, like so many others from my African American culture, evokes an everlasting optimism about tomorrow, an optimism that is built on “the faith that our dark past has taught us” as well as “the hope that the present has brought us.”

I have always said that black folks are the most optimistic subscribers to the American dream, despite our long history of dehumanization and degradation in this country. This otherworldly optimism is perhaps most famously exemplified in Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech (the same magnificent sermon that America ironically likes to co-opt by trotting it out every year on his birthday as a self-congratulatory sign of how much “progress” we have made as a society since his death).

This morning, I woke up very tired. Not your normal tired. I woke up with a kind of tired that can only be found on the other side of loss, anger, frustration, sadness, and despair. This morning, I woke up in a state in which African Americans make up roughly 13 percent of the population, but constitute at least 31 percent of the people with Covid-19 and 40 percent of the people dying from Covid-19. I woke up in a country where a white woman like Amy Cooper can not only accuse an African American man of threatening her because he is simply asking her to obey the law in a public space, but she can weaponize the police for her own aims simply by repeatedly referring to his blackness.

The scary truth of the matter is that Cooper knew exactly what she was doing — what systemic violence she was inviting — in that moment. By evoking race and blackness specifically, she placed a target on Christian Cooper’s back, putting his life in real danger. The recent murders of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery make this point abundantly clear: Being a black male in this country is a health hazard. Lest we get it twisted, being a black woman in these situations is no picnic either. I woke up in a country where a black woman is being repeatedly punched in the head by a member of my local Sheriff’s department.

This morning, I woke up bone-weary tired.

Some people argue that this country, while being built substantially by us, was never meant for us. (They are not wrong.) As such, some of these same people believe that otherworldly optimism is a sign of weakness and naïveté, that it is ultimately what has sealed our fate as a people. They question the wisdom in holding out such faith and hope for change in a system, in a society, that has demonstrated, time and time again, that black dignity, black bodies, and black lives matter a little less. (It is hard to argue with that logic.)

Times like these, I really do wonder: How long must we wait, plan, work, march, agitate, forgive, and vote before we have a society in which all lives matter equally, regardless of race or color? In my bone-weary-tired state, I ask myself why I should continue to fight to try to change a system that has proved over and over again that it simply does not regard me and people who look like me as fully human.

This morning I woke up so very tired. I could not get out of bed. I lay there for a while trying to grapple with my feelings of exhaustion and despair. Often, when I am struggling to understand important things in my life, I turn to my parents’ example for guidance. I try to access the collective wisdom of those who came before me, those who sacrificed so that I could have more. I wonder what they would say about the state of race in society — and what my role in all of this should be. From birth, my siblings and I learned from our parents through their words — and, more importantly, their actions — that the fight for racial justice is a long, intergenerational one. It is also one that we are destined to win because right is on our side.

No matter the nature of the setbacks they faced (and there were many setbacks — and some brutal ones at that), my parents were always able to get through them with tears and laughter, forever keeping their eyes on the prize. In many ways, they epitomized that otherworldly black optimism. Don’t get me wrong, they never hid their own feelings of frustration, anger, and tiredness from us, and I felt their tiredness in my bones this morning. Nonetheless, my parents never veered from their belief that the brightest day only shone on the other side of the darkest night.

As I lay in bed, thinking about what lessons I could glean from their lives and what they had said to me, my brothers, and my sister, I was hoping for some form of instant relief from my tiredness. I was hoping that their legacy and story would wipe away my doubts about our society and where we are going. I was hoping that reflecting on my parents’ lives would magically recharge my batteries and somehow soothe my pain. But it didn’t.

What it did do was provide me with perspective, a lens through which I can view and understand all that is happening now. This struggle, I see, is not new, nor is it likely to be won in my lifetime. Sadly, it is likely that more Black people will die before we become the country that remotely resembles the one described in our constitution. And yet, looking through the eyes of my parents, I see that this country is my country, too. My ancestors sacrificed their lives building this country — we belong here

Their sweat, tears, and sacrifice fertilize the rich soil from which much of this country’s wealth and standing in the world have grown. The blood of my ancestors runs through America’s veins. I have no choice but to fight for it — to make it live up to its creed. I owe it to those who came before me, those who fought and died to make this country just a little bit better for all of us who came after them. They fought for me. To not carry on the fight would be akin to walking away from my birthright. It is a birthright that does not belong only to me; it also belongs to future generations of black folks.

What reflecting on my parents’ example provided me was not relief, but renewal in the form of resolve. Their example gave me new insights into that otherworldly optimism that is foundational to the strength and resilience of black people.

That optimism does not reside in a naïve belief that America will simply change its murderous ways; it actually resides in knowing that each generation of African Americans has changed America for the better; it comes from a great faith that the next generation will take the next steps toward the future we deserve (even if that future still feels very far away). This otherworldly optimism has renewed my resolve to do all that I can to make whatever change I can, to carry on the fight, to never let all the blood, light, and life my ancestors poured into this country go to waste.

I am still tired of this shit though.