October 12, 2022
The Black Fatigue
Tykerius Monford '25
Wake up, go to class, go to extracurricular, do homework, sleep, and repeat. That has been my life for the past two years. I’m totally not saying that I don’t have time for myself, but I dedicate the majority of my time to the pursuit of scholarly excellence and career readiness. Work, Work, Work. That’s how my friends and family describe me. “You’re a hard worker.”, “I never hear from you cuz you’re always working,” “you never have time for us.” Over and over I’m told that I am such a hard worker, but I can’t help to ask myself why.
Why do I feel the need to be a hard worker? Why do I feel the need to spend most of my waking hours working, grinding, and studying? Why am I killing myself and overworking myself before I even make it out of college? Why am I working 3 jobs, taking 5 classes, and participating and leading 5 extracurriculars?
I attribute this all to what I call, “The Black Fatigue.” The Black Fatigue consists of 4 distinct parts that I am going to try and break down.
Being Black DEMANDS excellence. Mediocracy doesn’t work for Black faces in the same way it does for white ones.
Being a worker, a wage taker. You work for the white man on their terms, not your own.
Is this a lingering effect of generational trauma?
Supporting the whole family on my back.
I want to start from the beginning, being Black demands excellence. Many Back people have heard of the phrase, “you have to work twice as hard to get half as far.” Many Black people have to prove themselves over and over just to get the same recognition. That means showing up early, leaving late, working long hours, learning how to code switch, all while feeling the intangible pressures that come from being a Black person in America. Excellence is demanded and in order to rise up to the same positions as equally qualified white men, you cannot be mediocre.
This leads me right into my second point, working for the white man. Under a capitalistic environment and especially at a rigorous university such as Brown, we are taught that working in corporate America and climbing the corporate ladder is the pinnacle of society. What we don’t realize is that Black talent is being steered to work in jobs and workplaces that were not designed with us in mind. Large corporations like Apple, Google, Bank of America, and Goldman Sachs are being led by wealthy white man who are profiting off of the work of others. This doesn’t mean that they did not work to get there, but they did not experience the same systematic challenges that we as Black people face. We abide by their rules, their expectations, and take the historically lower wages that we are given.
It is my belief that this is a lingering effect of generational trauma and systematic racism. For many many centuries Black people were used as free/cheap labor for white owned plantations and businesses. Forced to take low wages, we began working multiple jobs just to make ends meet. For me, this started sophomore year of high school. I began working at 15 years old at a local gymnastics gym in my hometown of Athens, GA. I quickly realized that the money I was making was nice, but it really wasn’t enough to meet my needs so I began looking for a second job. February of my Sophomore year I began working for one of the largest movie companies in the US, American Multi-Cinemas (AMC). I was leaving one 8 hour shift to go work another 6 hours at my second job at 16 years old.
Without even realizing, I began to emulate the patterns I had grown up witnessing. My mom, my aunt, and my grandmother all managed to juggle multiple jobs throughout my childhood. And for my family members that weren’t working two jobs, they were either lucky enough to have two streams of income in their house already, or they had some kind of side hustle to make extra money. Working ourselves to the bone, just like all of those who came before us.
I realized my mom, just like I did, felt the need to support my family and carried that burden on her own shoulders. After coming to college and talking to many of my Black friends I have seen this same pattern repeating itself. My friends and I want to be the next generation of Black lawyers, doctors, bankers, CEOs, and writers. But at the same time, we feel so much pressure to find a job that will allow us to not only support ourselves, but those who raised us and took care of us.
Going to Brown is a privilege that I think many white students don’t understand. This is a place where names open doors and there are so many pathways to create generational wealth for so many Black families. Brown is a place of opportunity, but is also a very academically rigorous and treacherous place. You have to do the work, the hours of late night studying, the constant problem sets, and the hundreds of hours of readings. Being in such a stressful environment has already taken its toll on so many of my classmates, and it is clear to me that The Black Fatigue is a real problem.