Let’s be clear about the room we’re in.

This is written from the vantage point of a Black American woman, but it’s not meant to be consumed only by Americans. That idea, that everyone else should stay out of it, has always been convenient fiction. The decisions made here don’t stop at the border. They travel. They land. They cost people things. Pretending otherwise doesn’t make it true. It just lowers the volume so the people causing the damage can pretend they don’t hear it.

What follows isn’t a pep talk or a meltdown. It’s an observation. The kind you make after watching the same pattern repeat long enough that surprise feels dishonest.

America is not gripped by outrage, nor is it tired. It is acclimating.

That’s the part people don’t like to admit. Not because it isn’t happening, but because acclimation sounds intentional. Like a choice. Like someone looked at the situation, shrugged, and said, “Well, I guess this is how we live now.”

Crisis after crisis rolls through, and instead of demanding change, the bar gets lowered, so no one has to trip over it. The bar doesn’t drop all at once. It slides, slow and polite, the way things do when everyone agrees not to make a scene. Comfort stays intact. Routine stays intact. And change remains optional, which is another way of saying it’s postponed indefinitely.

You can tell because everything still works just enough. The lights are on. The news keeps talking. The machine keeps moving. There’s a lot of motion, but very little interruption.

And if you’re paying attention, you start to notice something else. People aren’t disengaged. They’re busy. They’re busy managing their reactions, practicing opinions, staying just informed enough to sound responsible without being inconvenienced.

For Black Americans, none of this is new.

Not the details. Those change. It’s the structure that’s familiar. The expectation that we’ll spot the problem early, explain it clearly, and then be evaluated not on accuracy, but on tone. The assumption that if we aren’t visibly upset, we must not care. That if we stop reacting on cue, we’ve somehow checked out.

We haven’t.

Anger has always been available. That was never the issue. The issue has been whether anyone was willing to listen before consequences made it unavoidable. Black Americans have been pointing to the cracks in this country for generations, saying, “This isn’t built the way you think it is,” long before anyone admitted the floor was unstable.

People we voted for trading favors to stay seated, then standing up to lecture everyone else about values. Systems built to defend their position long after they stop serving the public.

It’s impressive, really.

But funny thing about patterns: they only surprise people who benefit from pretending they don’t see them.

We warned. We organized. We testified. We showed up with receipts.

And every time, we were told to relax. To slow down. To be patient. To trust a process that kept missing its own deadlines.

Then history did what it always does. It caught up.

When the warnings turned out to be right, nothing happened. No apologies. No return calls. Nada. Just acknowledgments slipped in like footnotes, offered by people whose entire skill set is knowing how to sound serious while doing nothing. No repair. No accountability. Just a smooth pivot to the next emergency, as if amnesia were a leadership skill.

So yes, something has shifted.

Not because anything got better—but because the mask finally slipped and we all saw what was behind it. This wasn’t a blip. It wasn’t a localized freak accident. It was a test case, a preview, and for Black Americans it was a very familiar page from a book we’ve been forced to read cover to cover for generations.

In Minnesota, federal officers shot and killed a US citizen in broad daylight—a mother, in her vehicle, before her kid got home from school. They say they acted in self-defense. The governor and mayor say they didn’t see evidence of that. The FBI is now handling the case while the state bureau gets shut out of the investigation. The operation has spiked tensions, closed schools, and turned neighborhoods into zones of fear and protest. 

This isn’t random. This isn’t news clips. This is what policing looks like when the people in charge decide the only rule that matters is whoever has the badge. And for a lot of people—not just in Minnesota—that realization is now hitting all at once.

Black Americans aren’t hearing this and saying, “Oh look, finally they see it.” We’ve been saying it forever.

We’ve watched systems use cops to enforce punishment without consequence. We’ve watched people excuse it because the victim wasn’t “one of theirs.” We’ve watched jurisdictions wash their hands when the cameras turn off. We’ve seen responses that insist the problem is “both sides,” when one side is still out on the streets with badges and the other is begging not to be shot. This shit is not new. It’s a recurrence, and it’s rooted in the same structural impulse that once had white families picnicking while Black bodies swung from trees.

If there’s one thing Minnesota made unmistakably plain—it isn’t some aberration happening “elsewhere.” It’s America doing exactly what it has always done and finally forcing the rest of the country and the world to confront it.

From Minneapolis to the global stage, the narrative people are now waking up to is this: the voice of Black America was not hysterical, or exaggerated, or performative. It was correct. We were pointing to the cracks when others were busy rearranging the furniture. We were calling out the behavior long before it metastasized into open aggression and blatant disregard for due process. And we were punished for noticing clearly.

So yes, we’re tired—but not in the way people like to simplify it. This isn’t burnout from caring too much. It’s exhaustion earned from being asked, over and over, to survive conditions no one wants to admit are hostile, while also being blamed for holding the whole thing together.

So yes, we’re tired—but not in the way people like to reduce it. This isn’t burnout from caring too much. This is the kind of exhaustion you earn after being told, over and over, to survive conditions everyone can see are hostile, while also being blamed for keeping the whole thing from falling apart.

And let’s stop pretending this is just a “difference in politics.” That story is for people who don’t pay a price either way. What’s happening now is simpler than that: power consolidating through fear, and the public being boxed in so tightly there’s no outside pressure left to interrupt it. Call it whatever helps you sleep. The mechanics are obvious.

Black Americans aren’t surprised by this turn.

We’re experienced.

We’ve seen what happens when a country quietly decides some lives are negotiable and then asks everyone else to stay calm about it. Conservation isn’t apathy. It’s how you stay alive in a moment designed to grind you down while people with the most insulation argue over language like it’s the point.

If we protest, we’re accused of tearing the country apart. If we rest, we’re accused of abandoning it.

That’s the trick. There’s no version where we’re allowed to be right without being blamed for the reaction.

Here’s what doesn’t get said enough: constant vigilance without restoration doesn’t produce progress. It produces collapse. Rest, in this context, isn’t indulgence. It’s infrastructure. It’s maintenance. It’s how you keep something from breaking past the point of repair.

As a Black American woman, my existence here is political whether I volunteer for the role or not. My body gets read. My words get weighed. My silence gets assigned motives. There’s no exiting the symbolic economy. The only real decision is how much of myself I’m willing to hand over to systems and relationships that don’t recognize my humanity as a baseline requirement.

There’s also a not so quieter problem this country never wants to name: America has a long, unresolved issue with Black women who won’t stay in their assigned lane. Y’all notice that? Not loud Black women. Not angry Black women. Thinking Black women. The ones who read early, question doctrine, notice patterns, and don’t ask permission to connect history to the present. From the time I was a kid—nerdy, observant, out of step—it was clear that curiosity itself was a provocation.

Black women are expected to pour the foundation, hold the line, explain the danger, and then step aside when it’s time to lead. We’re told to wait, to be patient, to support the mission—just not to run it. And when we do step forward, suddenly the standards change, the patience runs out, and the scrutiny gets personal. Not because we’re unqualified, but because we’re uncontrollable. A Black woman with clarity breaks too many myths at once. She exposes the lie that power is neutral, the lie that leadership is benevolent, and the lie that America is comfortable being told the truth by someone it was never supposed to listen to.

That’s usually where the room tightens.

There’s an unspoken rule that Black political engagement has to be visible, public, and expensive. That exhaustion is proof of sincerity. But survival has never relied on resistance alone. It has always required interior space. Joy that doesn’t need approval. Imagination that isn’t waiting for validation.

This is where art comes in. Not to save anybody. Not to soften the blow. Art is how you keep a record when the country starts editing its own memory. It’s how you say, “No, that’s not what happened,” when the official story suddenly develops amnesia. Making art right now isn’t escapism. It’s how you stay sane while everyone else is pretending this all makes sense.

I recently read a man’s final words and it summed up like this: Be brave. Stay kind. Make art.

People hear that and think it’s sentimental. It isn’t. There’s no optimism in it. No promise this turns out well. It’s just a set of rules for how not to turn into something unrecognizable when the situation keeps getting worse.

Be brave enough to tell the truth without auditioning for approval.
Kind enough not to become what you’re up against.
Clear enough to create without lying to yourself.

That’s not inspiration.

That’s how you live through a moment that keeps asking who you’re willing to sacrifice.

For many Black Americans, choosing rest, distance, and sustainability over constant reaction isn’t apathy. It’s agency. It’s what happens when you’ve watched the same movie long enough to stop yelling at the screen. Movements don’t collapse because people stop shouting. They collapse because the people with the clearest view are expected to light themselves on fire every time the system needs warmth.

That doesn’t absolve anyone else. It actually raises the bar. Because democracies don’t fall apart when the most exploited step back. They fall apart when the most protected mistake comfort for virtue. When being “against” something replaces doing anything about it. When outrage becomes a personality trait instead of a practice.

History isn’t going to scroll. It’s going to tally. Who accepted inconvenience. Who showed up when it cost them something. Who understood that listening isn’t passive and that change charges interest. Agreement is cheap. Participation isn’t.

Black Americans were never meant to hold this country together through endurance alone. That was never the deal. What we’ve contributed, over and over, is foresight earned the hard way. We’ve been close enough to the failure to recognize it early. Loud enough to name it. Patient enough to explain it.

If the country chose not to listen, that wasn’t confusion. It was preference.

Arriving here wasn’t an accident. It was the most predictable outcome of ignoring the people who knew where this road led.

As for me, I’m after a life with a clean through-line. One where art doesn’t get quarantined from truth, and truth doesn’t get dressed up so people feel better about ignoring it. A life where relationships aren’t judged by how long they lasted, but by whether dignity made it out alive. That’s the metric. Everything else is nostalgia.

Rest doesn’t need defending. That debate is over.

It needs to be gathered back—the way we’ve always known how to do. No announcement, no permission, just knowing when it’s time

If this moment feels uncomfortable, good. It should. Comfort has been doing entirely too much damage lately. Growth never knocks politely. It kicks the door and asks who’s actually serious. And the real question now isn’t whether Black Americans will get louder. We’ve done plenty of that. The question is whether anyone else is finally willing to move without being dragged.

Bravery, kindness, and art aren’t slogans. They’re habits. They’re what you do when nobody’s filming, nobody’s praising, and nobody’s keeping score for you.

And those habits?

They always tell the truth about who you are when the applause stops.

Tasha Monroe
Founder, Simply Edyn & Co.
Writer and Editor, The Commons Dispatch