YUSEF WILEY BLOCK

I’ve been tired for a very long time.

For generations, African Americans have lived with the weight of racism. It has shaped our history, influenced our opportunities, and tested our resilience in ways that many people will never fully understand. The story of discrimination in America is not new to us. We know what it looks like. We know what it feels like. For hundreds of years—from slavery to segregation to the ongoing fight for equity—African Americans have endured systemic racism, particularly from dominant white institutions and power structures that were built during the earliest chapters of this country.

That history is painful, but it is also familiar. It is something we have studied, resisted, survived, and organized against for generations.

What has become increasingly exhausting, however, is experiencing racism not only from those traditional systems of power, but also from other communities—communities that themselves have histories of oppression, migration, and struggle. Today, many African Americans report experiencing bias, stereotyping, and discrimination from a variety of cultural groups: from immigrants, from communities of color, from people who have also faced marginalization in different ways.

This reality can be confusing and deeply painful.

How does a group of people who have endured centuries of dehumanization become the target of prejudice from others who also know what discrimination feels like? Why do stereotypes about African Americans persist globally—even among people who have never lived alongside us or fully understood our story?

These questions are difficult, but they are worth exploring.

Part of the answer lies in how racism travels. Anti-Blackness did not begin in one place and stay there. It was exported through colonization, media, global power structures, and centuries of narratives that portrayed African people and their descendants as less than human. Those narratives spread across continents and generations, shaping perceptions far beyond the borders of the United States.

Another part of the answer lies in proximity to power. In many societies, groups sometimes attempt to distance themselves from those perceived to be at the bottom of social hierarchies in order to gain acceptance or security. Unfortunately, African Americans have often been placed at that lowest rung in racial hierarchies constructed during colonial and post-colonial eras.

But understanding the roots of something does not make experiencing it any less exhausting.

There is a particular fatigue that comes from constantly having to prove your humanity, your worth, and your belonging—especially in a country your ancestors helped build. African Americans have been here since before the founding of the United States. Our labor, our culture, our creativity, and our leadership are woven into the very fabric of this nation.

Yet the struggle for basic respect continues.

Still, this conversation cannot end with frustration alone. If we are going to confront racism honestly, we must also be willing to talk across communities—about history, about stereotypes, about the ways anti-Blackness shows up in different cultures, and about how solidarity can be stronger than division.

Because the real question is not only why this happens.

The real question is: What are we willing to do about it?

Are we willing to challenge the stereotypes we inherit?

Are we willing to listen to one another’s histories with humility?

Are we willing to confront racism even when it exists within our own communities?

These are difficult conversations, but they are necessary ones.

I’m tired of racism. Many of us are.

But fatigue does not mean surrender. It means it is time for deeper truth, deeper accountability, and deeper solidarity—so that the generations that come after us won’t have to carry the same exhaustion.

What do you think?