The Exhaustion of Proving That Black People Matter

When your profession centers on fighting for racial justice, the work becomes a tiresome cycle that feels never-ending.

I wanted to write about something more uplifting for my first essay of 2026. However, that’s hard to do when the same battles from years past continue to feel like shackles around my wrists and ankles, chains I’m afraid I’ll never be free of. The weight is unrelenting as I drag them into another year.

When your profession centers on fighting for racial justice, the work becomes a tiresome cycle that feels never-ending. It didn’t dawn on me how burned out I was from this work until I was removed from it during the holiday break.

It felt so good to ignore the news cycle, where I didn’t have to read stories like “Deportations of African Migrants Triple Under Trump’s Second Term” from Capital B and “Why Former Slave States Offer Poor Quality of Life for Black Residents” from the blog Momentum.

Instead of sitting at my desk developing communications plans to pressure lawmakers into creating policies that improve Black lives, I spent my time on things like going to Ri’s Christmas party, laughing until I cried over our ridiculous Scattergories answers. I binge-watched Emily in Paris. I finished reading Martyr!. I junk-journaled. And, most importantly, I took a lot of naps. 

Now, I’m four days into being back at work, and I’m already tired. Don’t get me wrong, I love my job. I love the work that I get to do. But it is mentally and emotionally exhausting.

Building Black political power in California, where our progressive reputation doesn’t stop Black people from being the lowest-performing group in 21 of 41 RACE COUNTS indicators, is exhausting. Constantly fighting against gentrification that displaces us from our neighborhoods, against rampant health disparities, against widening wealth gaps, against a criminal justice system that overcriminalizes us at every turn, against gerrymandering, and against anti-Black racism… is exhausting.

And I know this isn’t unique to California or to me. Black communities and anyone fighting for racial justice are facing similar battles across the country. Exhaustion is inevitable when fighting systems designed to keep you oppressed, hoping you become complacent in your oppression.

As I sit here responding to emails and listening to Gavin Newsom’s 2026 State of the State address, I can’t help but ask: How much longer can I do this? How much longer do I want to do this?

I’m starting to realize that I’m not just tired of organizational dysfunction, precarious funding cycles, the chaos of the nonprofit industrial complex, the constant fires, and the perpetual sense of urgency. I’m also tired of spending my days justifying my own existence. I’m tired of using my communications, marketing, and PR skills to convince people that Black lives are worth investing in. I’m tired of being the middleman between my community’s suffering and someone else’s philanthropic or political priorities.

I’m tired of begging.

I’m a Black woman doing this work. This isn’t abstract for me. Often, I can use my lived experiences as data. I’m the translator of my own trauma. I’ve spent my professional life trying to prove that Black people deserve to be treated as human. I hate how performative it feels to have to display my own dehumanization for institutional consumption, reducing the dreams of Black freedom to theory-of-change plans that fit into the frameworks of (usually white) funders.

I feel bad for feeling this way, for complaining. I feel bad for wanting to shift careers most days, to do something easier or more fun, something that feels lighter. My burnout goes beyond professional fatigue. I’m exhausted from years of begging people to see me, to see Black communities, as human.

But as I sit with the weight of all this, I can’t imagine myself doing anything else.

A goal I have for myself this year is to find a way to make the work feel less draining. I want to work in a way that doesn’t feel like I’m constantly trying to justify the humanity of Black folks. I want to tell stories that don’t rely on trauma porn to convince people that Black lives matter.

What does that look like in practice? I don’t know (yet). That’s an essay for another day. For now, I’ll allow myself to feel what I’m feeling, let it move through me, and refuse to quit. Despite the exhaustion, I’m doing what Black movement builders like Ida B. Wells, Mariame Kaba, Septima Clark, Charlene Carruthers, and Tiffany Dena Loftin have always done: persist anyway.

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