Op/ed: Black People Are Tired of Trying to Explain Racism

What would you say to a friend who admitted she had not believed something you told her years earlier—even about something that is a painful constant in your life?

Journalism Associate Professor and Washington Post reporter DeNeen L. Brown grapples with the question of explaining racism to white people in an essay published today in The Post. From the killings of unarmed African Americans around the nation through the years to her own “math nerd” son being chased through a Washington State town by an angry white man screaming he didn’t belong there, an unending tide of injustice makes it an increasingly draining endeavor, she writes.

I have no recollection of this conversation. It sounds like my younger self — the self not yet exhausted explaining racism to white people.

I'm not sure how to respond.

Explaining racism is exhausting. It’s exhausting to explain to people who don’t believe you, or who look at you with blank expressions. Or, worse, who ask, “How do you know that happened because of race?”

You try to summon the ancestors, who might give you energy to explain. But I no longer want to explain it.

Black people are in pain right now. We wake up each morning to another horrible story about black men and teenagers killed. Black women shot. Black women tackled by police.

Read the full essay in The Washington Post.