Black Fatigue
A phrase making its way into conversations today surrounding equity and diversity in the workplace, but what does it actually mean and where did it come from?
The phrase was coined by Mary-Frances Winters, founder and CEO of The Winters Group Inc., a global firm specialising in diversity and inclusion consulting. “Black fatigue” describes the adverse psychological, physical and emotional effects of racism, which is conveyed in her book title “Black Fatigue: How Racism Erodes the Mind, Body, and Spirit.” A book to which many black people have found solace in validating their experiences, particularly in the workplace.
“Black Fatigue: How Racism Erodes the Mind, Body, and Spirit.”
For many black people, although the phrase “black fatigue” may be new to them, the experience is all too familiar. It describes the processes, incidents and scenarios which lead to their mental and physiological exhaustion and the future implications of this. Many describe experiences that make them feel ostracized amongst their white counterparts such as questions and comments about their hair, skin tone and mispronunciation of names.
“How do you say your name again?”, and “but where are you really from?”
“How do you say your name again?”, and “but where are you really from?” are comments that become knackering for a black person who hears such questions repeatedly. However, what is possibly more exhausting is the claim of ignorance, which begs the question: are companies doing enough to educate their employees? As businesses make the effort to become more inclusive and diversify their workforce, a magnified look into what steps are being taken and the thoroughness and vigour of these steps is necessary.
In order to effectively facilitate the learning around inclusivity and racism, employers need to genuinely understand the experience and perspective of their black employees. The predecessor to this is having more black people in leadership positions, who can relate to such issues and therefore use their influence to direct positive change. Without this initial first step, there is little basis for understanding which will subsequently poorly inform decisions around diversity, inclusion and ultimately, racism. In light of the pandemic, many conversations have been sparked up surrounding mental health and how businesses can better support their employees, however, black fatigue seems to be something that appears to still be something in the background, or low on the agenda despite it being essential to improving mental health. Understanding black fatigue also takes having an earnest commitment to understanding issues such as microaggressions, unconscious bias and tokenisation.
For businesses to have the most productive employees, and end “black fatigue” it is paramount to invest time and resources into HR activities such as training days, research focus groups and policy examination and audits. Employing an equity, diversity and inclusion (ED&I) consultant and/or company is a good initial step in tackling black fatigue and making their workplace integral. ED&I can evoke difficult conversations and realities and this uncomfortability can be a barrier to taking these measures, however, the phenomena amongst black millennials particularly is that they feel “marginalised, unheard and overlooked”. The same attention that mental health in the workplace has should also be given to the topic of black fatigue as the two go hand-in-hand, therefore neither should be ignored. With such attentive efforts being made, black people can begin to feel comfortable and safe at work, trusting that their wants and needs will be recognised alongside other minority groups. Find out more on how Can?Did! Can help your business tackle black fatigue, here.