Black Fatigue Meaning: Why the Internet Keeps Twisting It
There are some terms that carry a weight you can feel the moment you hear them. Black fatigue is one of those terms. If you’ve spent any time scrolling through social media recently, you’ve probably seen people throwing it around in ways that don’t sit right. Some use it to mock Black people. Others flip it into something it was never meant to be.
But here’s the truth – Black fatigue has nothing to do with being tired of Black people. It’s about the exhaustion of being Black in systems that were never built to support Black people.
What Black Fatigue Really Means
The phrase was coined by Mary-Frances Winters, an author and diversity strategist, in her book Black Fatigue: How Racism Erodes the Mind, Body, and Spirit. Winters didn’t create the term as a catchy buzzword. She created it to give language to something Black communities have known and lived for generations.
According to Winters, at its core, Black fatigue is the mental, emotional, and even physical exhaustion that comes from dealing with racism day after day. It’s the weight of microaggressions in the workplace, the stress of being stereotyped, the anxiety of seeing racial injustice in the news, and the frustration of always having to prove your worth in spaces that question your belonging.
Over time, this constant grind takes a toll. It affects not just mental health but physical health too. Stress-related illnesses, high blood pressure, and shorter lifespans in Black communities aren’t coincidences. They are symptoms of systems that wear people down.
How Racists Have Hijacked the Term
As with many words born in marginalized communities, the internet found a way to twist it. Racists online now use Black fatigue in completely different ways, including the following:
- To mock Black people, making it sound like Black people are always “complaining”.
- To express annoyance at conversations about race, as if they’re tired of hearing about injustice.
- To shut down dialogue, using it as a way to dismiss very real lived experiences.
It’s the same thing that’s happened with words like “woke”. What started as language to describe awareness and resilience gets co-opted and turned into a weapon. The misuse of Black fatigue is no different. I think the goal is to silence instead of spark understanding.
The problem with that kind of hijacking is that it erases the original meaning. When people see the term misused often enough, they may never learn the truth behind it. And that truth matters.
Black fatigue is not a joke. Neither is it a meme. It is not about being annoyed by diversity workshops or social justice movements. According to the creator of the phrase, it is about the deep, generational exhaustion that comes from fighting battles Black people’s parents and grandparents also fought.
Putting It Into Perspective
Think about it like this. Imagine carrying a backpack filled with bricks every single day. Every microaggression is a brick. Every racial slur is a brick. And every time you are passed over, underestimated, or told to “calm down”, another brick goes in. Even when you try to set it down, society finds a way to slip more weight into it.
That is what Black fatigue is. It is not just about tiredness, but a weariness that runs deep into the body and spirit. And I think it doesn’t just affect individuals as this is passed across generations, shaping entire communities.
Winters gave this exhaustion a name so that it couldn’t be brushed aside as “just stress”. By calling it Black fatigue, she made it clear that racism leaves scars you cannot always see. Naming it makes it harder to ignore, and it gives Black people language to validate what they already know in their bones.
How TikTok Racists Weaponized the Term
Spend a few minutes on TikTok and you’ll see how badly Black fatigue has been twisted. Instead of being used to talk about the very real exhaustion caused by racism, it has become a lazy punchline for racist commentary.
Here’s how it usually plays out. Let’s say someone uploads a clip of a Black person getting into an argument, misbehaving in public, or even committing a crime. Almost instantly, the comments start rolling in with people writing “Black fatigue” as if it’s some kind of clever joke.
But to be perfectly honest, there’s nothing clever about it. What they are really doing is:
- Reducing an entire community to stereotypes.
- Dismissing individual behavior as if it represents all Black people.
- Using the term as a coded way to say they’re “tired” of Blackness itself.
This is not harmless internet slang. At its core it is racism wrapped up in a trending phrase. And it’s especially damaging because it takes a term that was created to highlight the harm racism causes and flips it into yet another weapon against Black people.
What’s worse is that TikTok’s algorithm thrives on engagement. The more people comment with phrases like Black fatigue, the more visibility those posts get, which means the racist misuse spreads even further. It becomes normalized, repeated, and detached from its original meaning.
If you’ve ever wondered how language gets hijacked, TikTok is the perfect case study. A phrase born to validate Black pain has become a meme that mocks it.
A Real Example of Racist Misuse of “Black Fatigue” on TikTok
To show you how far this misuse has gone, let’s look at a recent example. On TikTok, a video circulated showing a Black man misbehaving on the London Underground. Instead of focusing on the individual’s actions, the comment section quickly turned ugly.
One user simply wrote: “Black fatigue”.
At first glance, it might look like a throwaway comment. But it’s anything but harmless. What this person is really doing is reducing the actions of one man into a stereotype about all Black people. They are hijacking a term that was created to describe the pain caused by racism and using it as a punchline to spread more racism.
A recent example is the fatal stabbing of an innocent young Ukrainian refugee, Iryna Zarutska, on a Charlotte light rail train by Decarlos Brown Jr., who is a Black man. Instead of focusing on the tragedy itself or honoring the victim, the comment sections on TikTok quickly filled up with people typing “Black fatigue”.
This TikTok comment misusing the term ‘Black fatigue’ gained more than 2,500 likes. This shows how racism gets normalized through viral interactions online.
At first glance, it looks like just another internet phrase being recycled. But when you stop and think about it, it’s far more sinister. By spamming Black fatigue under videos of this tragedy, commenters aren’t just talking about the suspect but rather painting the entire Black community with the same brush. They are flipping the term into a way of spreading more racism.
It reduces a woman’s death to a meme. It reduces an entire people to a stereotype.
Very Dangerous Development
This is the dangerous cycle we see on TikTok and other platforms. Racists grab a trending phrase, strip it of its original meaning, and weaponize it against the very people it was meant to empower. And because these comments get likes and replies, the algorithm amplifies them, ensuring the misuse spreads even further.
Why Travel Is the Answer to Ignorance
Here I am exploring Singapore (which is in Southeast Asia), so far away from my home in Africa. When you walk through places like this, surrounded by people from all walks of life, ignorance and stereotypes lose their grip.
When I look at how the term Black fatigue is being twisted online, what strikes me most is how much of it comes from ignorance. People who sit behind keyboards, typing out stereotypes, have often never stepped outside of their bubble. They’ve never walked through a market in Accra, shared a meal in Kuala Lumpur, or stood shoulder to shoulder with strangers at Singapore’s Marina Bay.
That’s why I believe travel is one of the most powerful answers to racism and ignorance. Travel pulls you out of your echo chamber. It introduces you to people whose lives look nothing like yours and yet, when you talk and laugh together, you realize how much you actually share.
On the road, stereotypes crumble. Prejudice feels hollow. You can’t easily dismiss someone once you’ve shared a bus ride with them, gotten lost in a city together, or connected over something as simple as food. Travel shows you the world as well as the humanity in people you were once taught to fear or mock.
For those misusing Black fatigue as a punchline, I genuinely believe a passport and an open mind could change everything. Racism thrives on distance. Travel closes that distance. It replaces ignorance with experience, and hate with empathy.
As a traveler, I’ve seen it firsthand. And as a storyteller, I’ll keep saying it: the more we explore, the more we understand. And the more we understand, the less room there is for ignorance to breathe.
