Black History: Special Delivery!
Resilience is defined as the ability to adapt, recover, and grow after hardship. Black people’s resilience has long been celebrated and admired. What is overlooked amidst the celebration is our suffering. When the celebrations subside, we are left with the opportunity for more struggle and more suffering. Black resilience is real, but its celebration often serves as a smokescreen for the suffering that necessitates it. Our strength becomes a convenient absolution for systemic inaction—our endurance igniting applause while escaping accountability.
Systems carry out the weaponization of our strength as absolution for their injustices—our ability to endure somehow serves to minimize the impact of their oppression. Now, don’t get me wrong, our resilience and strength are truly remarkable and deserve reverence and respect. However, when this reverence and respect move into the realm of romanticization, it de-centers the oppression and isms that necessitate resiliency in the first place. Our resilience does not pardon the hate, violence, and oppression we experience. Our suffering, rendered invisible, means no systemic accountability is owned, and no repair is offered. The toll is multifaceted and multilayered.
But what of those in our circle, for whom suffering does not result in resilience? Those who do not emerge resilient are often dismissed, their suffering misread as a personal failure rather than proof of systemic oppression. They are scolded and scorned as if their inability to endure oppression is a weakness rather than an indictment of a system designed to break them. Even those who do wax resilient still experience the debilitating stress that negatively impacts their health and mental well-being. Public health researcher Dr. Arline Geronimus coined the term weathering in 1992 to explain the scientific harm of chronic racial stress. Her research focused on the health disparities faced by Black women and other marginalized communities, particularly how chronic exposure to systemic racism and stressors leads to premature aging and health decline (The Weathering Hypothesis).
The expectation that marginalized people must always be strong in the face of harm frames resilience as admirable while ignoring the suffering it causes. Resilience without repair and redress is toxic. The focus must shift—not to celebrating our endurance, but to dismantling the structures that demand it.
Another installment of melanated mail has been delivered. Ponder, reflect, and pass it on.
Source:
Tricia Hersey – Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto
Dr. Arline Geronimus – The Weathering Hypothesis
Dr. Brittney Cooper – Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower