The exhausting task of being black in America

Do you know how exhausting it is to be black in America? Do you have any idea?

Do you know what it's like to be …

... followed in a store.

… "mistaken" for the help.... petted like a dog because your hair is "interesting."

… told to "get over" the wholesale trade and trafficking of your ancestors?

I do.

And so do millions of other black Americans. Rich and poor. Uneducated and those with a Ph.D. Famous and anonymous.

We are exhausted. We are tired. We can't breathe.

We can no longer bear the weight of seeing our men, our Americans, our husbands, fathers, brothers, uncles and cousins humiliated, profiled, emasculated, choked, dragged and shot, day in and day out.


We are sick of needing new hashtags. #RumainBrisbon. #TamirRice. #MichaelBrown. #EricGarner. #TrayvonMartin. #WhosNext.

We are sick of hollow apologies and press conferences and presidential speeches and gone-too-soon funerals and distraught parents wailing in the streets.

We are exhausted. Aren't you?

One of us, Chris Rock, is famous and he's tired, and he's saying so. He's tired of having to justify black excellence vis-à-vis white approval. Of having to prove that we deserve to be players socially, politically and culturally in this country. A country built, in great part, on our sweat.

"To say Obama is progress is saying that he's the first black person that is qualified to be president. That's not black progress. That's white progress. There's been black people qualified to be president for hundreds of years," he mused during a New Yorkmagazine interview. "The question is, you know, my kids are smart, educated, beautiful, polite children. There have been smart, educated, beautiful, polite black children for hundreds of years. The advantage that my children have is that my children are encountering the nicest white people that America has ever produced. Let's hope America keeps producing nicer white people."

Chris Rock(Photo: Kevork Djansezian, AP)

Rock is right about all of it. Every single word. Especially that bit about "smart, educated, beautiful, polite black children." Did you catch that?

Do you get as tired as I do when thinking about those "smart, educated, beautiful, polite black children" that won't make it to their next birthday because America has fallen behind in the production of "nicer white people"?

Has your fatigue set in yet?

Regular, everyday, non-famous black Americans are plenty tired, too.

I asked my friends and followers on Facebook to describe what it's like to be black and tired in America.

They are exhausted because…

... "I am tired of being tired. What we are feeling is likely the same anger and disbelief felt by prior generations when they marched for civil rights. We have been pampered and sheltered and made to believe we have come so far. Nah, this country is standing still."

… "Being Black in America is like walking through an ice storm: It's cold, isolating, and exhausting. You're not sure if you're gonna make it and you can't see what's coming for you."

... "Tomorrow, I'll once again be in an office with my 'peers,' who live in a completely different reality and have no concept of my true feelings and pain. I'll smile and say I'm doing great."





… "I used to play sports in my front yard with friends from the neighborhood. On a few occasions, cars of white men would drive by yelling at me — the only African American there — to 'go back to Africa,' or 'you monkey,' or the racists would just drive by screaming 'nigger!'"



Did you catch that? A child, now a man, being called a nigger for having the audacity to play. In his own yard. In this country. In this century.

How dare he. How dare we.

I am so, so tired. Are you?

Arienne Thompson is an entertainment reporter for USA TODAY.