Content warning: This article contains mentions of racism and stereotypes.
“I still struggle with the right terminology for how to refer to myself, whether it’s African American or simply just African.”
Here, first-year social sciences student Ruben Benicio described the complexities of his racial identity. Born in the United States, he teeters between his American nationality and the undeniable connection to his Bissau-Guinean heritage, having also lived in Guinea-Bissau for a little over a decade.
“There’s always going to be the little ignorant prejudices that remind me of the negativity of the world,” he wrote in an interview with The Varsity. “However, I have been much more relaxed in Toronto compared to some places in the U.S. The very diverse community of Toronto does help limit the bad experiences.”
One bad experience to which Benicio pointed is that of ‘Black Fatigue.’ Author Mary-Frances Winters coined this term in her 2020 book, Black Fatigue: How Racism Erodes the Mind, Body, and Spirit. The term Black Fatigue speaks to the historical and present-day experiences of Black people and refers to the lasting effects of the Transatlantic slave trade.
But while Black Fatigue originally signalled the crushing physical and emotional effects of systemic racism on Black communities, the term seems to have adopted a new, insidious meaning today.
The dynamism of the term
Benicio has witnessed Black Fatigue predominantly through social media, having been introduced to the concept by a video that portrayed it as the “second-hand embarrassment” that Black people feel about the actions of other Black people, which they deem “ghetto.” “One of the videos I remember seeing was of a Black man strongly condemning Black women for using [hair] bonnets in public, calling it classless and embarrassing for the community.”
It seems that in recent years, the term has strayed from its original meaning and has turned into a dogwhistle for racist groups to express their resentment towards Black people.
For example, a June 2025 TikTok depicts a white woman defining Black Fatigue as “when I can hear you 10 aisles away in Walmart with your fucking five kids,” and when “you have no idea how to act in public.” Similarly, an October 2025 TikTok by Black user @elijahofferth asserts that there are two types of Black people: one of which is ‘normal,’ and one which is “loud in public” and around whom everyone else should clutch their belongings tightly to them.
In my interview with U of T English professor George Elliott Clarke, he said Black Fatigue is now “simply another way of saying white backlash.” In other words, it’s a way of telling Black people, “We don’t want to hear your complaints anymore about how we have been abusing you.”
Benicio similarly criticized this typification of Black people. He speculated that the term has been circulated by Black people who are likely from higher socioeconomic backgrounds. “They would use it negatively and would get support from white users in the comments, usually agreeing and expressing their own fatigue with Black people.”
The subversion of Winters’ term allows racist people on the internet to construct Black people as monolithically ‘ghetto’ or ‘disruptive.’ Meanwhile, the praise given to those who do not exhibit these vilified behaviours is leveraged as a form of power via acceptance by white people, who retain the most social power today.
This racist subversion of Black Fatigue is not just propagated by white people. @elijahofferth’s post about the different subtypes of socially acceptable versus unacceptable Black people reveals how some Black users seek this white validation, ultimately at the expense of their Black peers.
The new meaning of Black Fatigue has seemingly created an opening for some Black people to establish themselves as allies of white people in the fight against the ‘wrong kind’ of Black people: those who make others feel Black Fatigue.
Black Fatigue on campus and in the media
Coming from a predominantly white high school made second-year political science and African studies student Esther Akindote “more aware of race and belonging.” In our interview, she described how her Canadian nationality and Nigerian (Yoruba tribe) cultural background continue to shape the way she relates to the university environment and her peers.
Starting at U of T, where students come from all over the world, was refreshing for Akindote at first. “However,” she wrote, “by the end of my first semester, I began to notice how few Black students I was seeing in many of my classes and spaces. That realization made the transition feel more isolating than I had expected.”
As a result, she finds herself code-switching in social and academic spaces, adjusting how she speaks or presents herself.
Winters’ definition of Black Fatigue speaks to the pressures of code-switching as a minority — you might feel pressured to perform in order to ‘fit in’ and avoid being othered, as ‘different’ from the majority. “While Toronto is a diverse city,” Akindote explained, “there are still moments where being Black affects how I experience belonging in a community, particularly in academic environments.”
Being othered contributes to the complex struggle that many Black people feel, torn between being accepted into spaces while also asserting a distinct identity.
Clarke spoke to this issue when he discussed the impacts of language labelling blackness on Black communities. In the 1960s, for example, journalists followed official style guides that required a lowercase “b” attached to Blackness and Black people. It follows that “Black people… never even had the dignity of a majestical [capital] letter to certify the fact that we were a people and not just ‘things’ that [had] a colour attached to them.”
However, language can also pose resistance against oppression. Clarke illustrates this when he talks about the historically African Nova Scotians, saying that in order to reclaim their own history and culture, they must identify themselves “as being a distinct people.” In this way, inclusion may come not from assimilating to the majority out of fear of being othered, but in reclaiming the power to identify and distinguish oneself in a space where one is a minority.
Sometimes distinction can be a tool of power, and other times it can be persecutive. Both the original and the hijacked definitions of Black Fatigue relay the concept of racial othering, which involves constructing and categorizing different racial groups into a social hierarchy of being, where whiteness is often assigned the dominant role.
What distinguishes the new version of Black Fatigue from the original definition is that it seeks not to draw awareness to the negative effects othering has on Black people, but to perpetuate histories of othering through modern concepts and tropes.
For example, news of a threat to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits in the US recently circulated in the media. Based on longstanding tropes of Black women as “welfare queens,” reimagined othering tropes re-emerged in some social media depictions of Black Fatigue. AI was used in one such case to depict Black women stealing from grocery stores in response to the loss of SNAP benefits, and notoriously Republican news outlet Fox News “fell for” it.
When distinction becomes discernment
For Grace Johnson, a third-year political science major studying Caribbean studies, visual studies, and business, being a Black Bahamian in Canada has produced a different kind of othering: heightened emphasis on her Blackness, and an overreliance on racial labels. In an email to The Varsity, she wrote that “the Black part” of her identity “became increasingly more implied” since moving to Canada from the Bahamas.
“Black Fatigue to me, especially as a Black woman, means that I do a lot of extra work… that maybe others, who don’t look like me… wouldn’t have to do.” The term makes Johnson question the North American ‘obsession’ with labels. “Being Black has not really changed the way I navigate my time at U of T,” she continued, “but it makes me constantly practice discernment.”
Johnson discussed how, being from a predominantly Black country, she is used to seeing Black people pursue any career path. “I have never… had to prove myself to anyone in terms of my work ethic based on the colour of my skin.”
Akindote offered a similar observation. “From what I understand, the idea behind Black Fatigue can differ in Nigeria compared to Canada. In Nigeria, where most people are ethnically Nigerian, experiences tied to race often carry less weight than they do in Western contexts.”
Both accounts ultimately illustrate the fluidity that the identity marker of race plays in different geographical and situational contexts. In societies where Black people are a minority, Blackness seems to be more of a delineator — you become distinct in your Blackness, which is a truth that U of T students like Johnson nod to.
The problem with the modern hijacking of Black Fatigue is that it either binarizes Blackness to categorize what kinds of Black people are acceptable and which aren’t, or to depict all Black people as universally socially ‘backward.’ Blackness is diasporic, transnational, and non-universal, as the accounts of Johnson and Akindote prove. So by minimizing this diversity of identity and experience into a racist internet dogwhistle against all Black people, proponents of the modern definition of Black Fatigue — including those who are Black themselves — are propagating racist views that stem not from ‘experience’ but plain prejudice.
As Johnson wrote, “Living here and living back home in the Bahamas, reminds me that things carry different meanings and value in different places. I am perceived Black in Toronto, but I am perceived as a Bahamian female in the Bahamas. I am all in most contexts.”
More than face value
Someone, somewhere, will see an X post like @CamgroupCarson’s, which argues that “Black fatigue is every race being sick of hearing black people whine constantly about them being victims.” The person who sees such a post might then type “Black Fatigue” into a search engine and come across a website like Know Your Meme. This entirely user-informed site states that first and foremost, Black Fatigue is a “controversial slang term used to describe the feeling of being tired of living around what some perceive as ‘uncivilized’ Black people and being encouraged to care about issues in the Black community.”
To this person, regardless of their lived experiences, the misrepresentation and memeification of an entire racial and cultural group might inform an entirely racist perspective on Black people. That is the whole problem.
There is no explicit answer indicating what can, should, or will be done to rectify the misalignment between Black Fatigue’s delineations. Instead, the goal of rectification is education and the prevention of increasing racist attitudes.
“Finding out that my view on the term Black Fatigue was wrong and fully formed from social media is very concerning,” explained Benicio. “It goes to show how social media can misinform and become hurtful if no further research is done.”
The racist roots behind Black Fatigue evidently trace far before the advent of the internet. But the subversion of Black Fatigue is thriving on social media, because it allows viewers to easily recognize and categorize algorithmic buzzwords and dogwhistles. A slew of quick 30-second clips of users explaining how Black people exhibit socially unacceptable behaviour can reinforce and perpetuate offensive stereotypes of Black people.
As Benicio wrote, “It is going to require a strong movement to deliver the correct meaning of Black Fatigue to overcome the misinformation that has already made its rounds through social media.”
