Concerning the appropriation of "Black Fatigue"

Effective immediately, I quit. Consider this the moment I step out of the cage you keep mistaking for a conference room, a committee, or whatever sanitized pen you cage diversity into so you can pat yourselves on the back. I’m done donating my peace of mind to your quarterly reports, photo ops, and carefully curated panel discussions that pretend at progress while strip-mining every ounce of my lived experience. Effective right now, I’m cashing out spiritually, emotionally, and professionally. I’m cashing out from an arrangement that has never paid for what it’s owed. If I’m such a burden, then by all means ignore me.

Take back all the time you wasted obsessing over how I pronounce my name.

Take back all the time you wasted obsessing over how I talk.

Take back all the time you wasted obsessing over how I style my hair.

Take back the late-night energy you waste doom scrolling my social feeds for what you assume goes against the unspoken rules of professional respectability. You can add those hours to your sleep budget. heaven knows you’ll need them once the consequence of my absence kicks in.

I remember when woke was a banner of love, an understanding among people determined to keep each other alive in the shadow of injustice. It was shorthand for awareness, a tap on the shoulder that said, “Stay alert.” You corrupted it, boiled the skin off its bone, weaponized it, and spat it back in the face of honest conversation. Now the same mouths that mocked woke have the gall to come for “Black Fatigue” the moment we call out cruelty. Apparently you’re “tired.” Tired of what exactly?

Tired of protests?

Tired of being footnotes in HR memos?

Tired of demanding the right to breathe without permission?

Your boredom masquerades as exhaustion, your impatience is pathological, and somehow I’m the ungrateful one?

Black fatigue is not a fad you get to play with on TikTok. It is a chronic, cellular, uninvited erosion. It’s a marathon run in waist-deep mud. It is explaining the same history to colleagues who clutch pearls at the mere suggestion their ancestors profited from bondage. It is smiling through meetings where my ideas are stapled to someone else’s mouth five minutes later and watching that plagiarism being praised. It is the breath that catches in my chest each time a headline pairs a police officer’s name with a Black child’s, knowing my community will spend another year litigating the dead kid’s humanity. Black fatigue is a diagnosis born of systems you designed, so you do not get to reassign it to yourself because you’re weary of hearing me demand to exist without fear .

You say you feel drained? Try living in skin you keep turning into policy debate. Funny how the very obsession you accuse us of wielding is actually your own. You dissect Blackness like it’s an exotic specimen, extract our culture for your playlists, memes, and marketing, and then clutch your pearls when we hand you the bill. I’m not fatigued by Blackness; I’m energized by it. What exhausts me is babysitting fragile egos while you harvest my vocabulary for new ways to excuse your indifference.

You’ve twisted “equity” into a line item.

You’ve twisted “inclusion” into a recruitment pitch.

And now you're twisting “Black Fatigue” into your latest get‑out‑of‑critical‑thinking free card.

Well, keep it. Frame it. Wear it on a T-shirt if you must. But don’t mistake your sluggish empathy for my diagnosis. Some will say quitting proves you right and that I can’t handle the heat. Let them. They’ve confused heat with toxic fumes for years. What I can’t handle is the hypocrisy of an organization that schedules mindfulness workshops at nine and a spirited debate about affirmative action at noon, as though meditation can offset the insult of negotiating my worth over salads.

I refuse to be your resident contradiction.

I refuse to be your inspiration yet disposable.

I refuse to be your celebrated yet silenced.

I quit caring what you think of my tone.

I quit caring what you think of my accent.

I quit caring about my so-called chip on the shoulder.

I quit filtering my outrage through acceptable metaphors.

I quit apologizing for taking up space you reserved for pretty, quiet, ornamental Blackness.

Most of all, I quit surrendering vocabulary to people who destroy meaning just to dodge accountability.

Black Fatigue is a mirror held to systems of oppression, not a blanket you hide under when the mirror reflects your injustices. Words don’t bend reality just because you misuse them. From now on, Black Fatigue will remain exactly what it is. I’m done letting you rent it cheap by using it against me. I leave you with the gift of my absence. Sit with that emptiness. It’s an emptiness you can no longer fill with applause. Consider this letter both my resignation and my emancipation. My final act of labor is to liberate myself from your confusion. Enjoy the quiet. I know I will.

P.S. Feel free to host another listening session after I’m gone. Hire a consultant to translate what I’ve said every day for free. Draft pledges, inflate metrics, and do what you do best. Ignore the machinery grinding people into statistics. I won’t be here to watch. I’ll be busy elsewhere, where honesty isn’t met with a write-up.

William Saint Val