This essay is written from the vantage point of a Black American woman, but it is not intended solely for an American audience. It speaks from within this country while remaining attentive to a world shaped by its decisions. I am aware that Americans are often quick to tell those beyond our borders to disengage, to stay out of it, to “mind their own business.” That insistence ignores a basic reality: much of what this government does reverberates far beyond its own citizens, with tangible consequences for lives, economies, and futures elsewhere.

 

What follows is not a call to outrage, nor an argument for despair. It is an attempt to name what is happening plainly, and to consider what survival, responsibility, and humanity require when crisis becomes routine.

 

***

 

America is not gripped by outrage, nor is it tired. It is acclimating—absorbing crisis after crisis, then adjusting its expectations downward to preserve comfort and routine. Not yet compelled to change.

 

Change remains optional.

 

The news cycle hums along, governments posture, alliances wobble, and the machinery of power keeps moving with a steadiness that feels less like confidence than momentum without reflection. The language of crisis has become so routine that even genuine alarm now struggles to register. In this climate, the most radical act may be refusing to perform urgency on command.

 

For Black Americans, this moment is familiar. Not the specifics, which are always new, but the structure of it. The expectation that we will sound the warning, absorb the consequences, and then be criticized for the tone of our distress. The assumption that if we are not visibly enraged, we must be disengaged. The quiet accusation that rest is surrender.

 

It is not.

 

Anger has never been in short supply. What has been scarce is the willingness of this country to take Black clarity seriously before catastrophe makes it fashionable. For generations, Black Americans have identified fault lines long before they split the ground open. We have warned about imbalance, about democratic erosion, about the dangers of confusing moral certainty with power. We have marched, organized, educated, testified. We have been called disruptive, divisive, excessive. When history later validated those concerns, the acknowledgments came without apology and without repair.

 

Now, in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s return to the presidency, many Black Americans have chosen a different posture. Not silence. Not withdrawal. But a recalibration that is being widely misunderstood. What looks like disengagement is, more accurately, strategic conservation.

 

The country is once again in a period of high political theater paired with low institutional accountability. Abroad, instability is described in the abstract language of “strategic interests,” even as civilian lives remain negotiable. At home, the alignment between political power and white evangelical influence continues to shape policy in ways that privilege doctrinal certainty over pluralistic democracy. These are not hidden developments. They are plainly observable. What is notable is not their existence, but the degree to which many Americans remain surprised by them.

 

Black Americans are not surprised. We are tired.

 

That exhaustion is not merely emotional. It is historical. This nation has required Black people to survive conditions it refuses to acknowledge as hostile, while simultaneously holding us responsible for maintaining its moral coherence. We are expected to remain invested in systems that routinely demonstrate their indifference to our safety, our labor, and our lives. When we protest, we are accused of destabilizing the social order. When we rest, we are accused of abandoning it.

 

The truth is simpler and less flattering. We have learned that constant vigilance without restoration leads only to collapse. Rest, in this context, is not a luxury. It is infrastructure.

 

As a Black American woman, my existence here is political whether I consent to that framing or not. My body is read, my speech interpreted, my silence assigned meaning. I do not get to opt out of the symbolic economy of this country. What I do get to choose is how much of myself I offer to systems and relationships that do not recognize my humanity as intrinsic.

 

This is where the conversation often falters. There is an expectation that Black political engagement must always be visible, public, and sacrificial. That we must continuously convert personal cost into collective progress. But survival has always required more than resistance. It has required interiority. It has required joy that is not contingent on permission. It has required the ability to imagine futures that do not depend on immediate validation.

 

Art has been central to that work. Not as ornament, but as evidence. Art records what official histories omit. It preserves nuance where institutions prefer slogans. It insists on complexity in moments when power demands simplification. To make art, to tell the truth about what it feels like to live now, is not an escape from politics. It is an engagement with its consequences.

 

Recently, I came across a set of final words attributed to a man at the end of his life: “Be brave. Stay kind. Make art.” What struck me was not their sentimentality, but their restraint. There is no demand there. No promise of redemption. Just a distilled ethic. Courage without cruelty.

 

Kindness without naivety. Creation without illusion.

 

That triad feels particularly relevant now, as the country seems increasingly committed to spectacle over substance. Bravery, in this moment, is not loud. It is the willingness to see clearly without becoming brittle. Kindness is not acquiescence. It is the refusal to let cynicism hollow out one’s capacity for care. Art is not decoration. It is the practice of attention.

 

For many Black Americans, the decision to rest, to redirect energy toward sustainability rather than perpetual reaction, is an assertion of agency. It is an acknowledgment that survival cannot be improvised indefinitely. That movements fail when they consume their most perceptive participants. That there is a difference between disengagement and discernment.

 

This does not absolve anyone else of responsibility. If anything, it clarifies it. Democracy does not erode because one group becomes tired. It erodes because those with relative safety mistake comfort for innocence. Because outrage is expressed as identity rather than action. Because being “against” something is treated as sufficient, even when it costs nothing.

 

History will not ask who posted the right sentiment. It will ask who accepted inconvenience in service of integrity. Who chose participation over performance. Who understood that listening is not passive, and that movement requires more than agreement.

 

Black Americans are not responsible for holding this country together through sheer endurance. We never were. What we have offered, repeatedly, is insight born of proximity to the system’s failures. What others choose to do with that insight remains the open question.

 

For my part, I am interested in a life with a clear through-line. One where art is not separated from truth, and truth is not severed from humanity. One where relationships are evaluated not by longevity, but by whether they honor the dignity of those involved. One where rest is not justified defensively, but claimed as necessary.

 

If this moment feels unsettling, it should. Growth avoids comfort by definition. The invitation now is not for Black Americans to scream louder. It is for everyone else to decide whether they are willing to move at all.

 

Bravery, kindness, and art are not abstractions. They are practices. And like all practices, they reveal who we are when no one is applauding.

 

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