Black Fatigue: How Racism Erodes the Mind, Body, and Spirit BY Mary-Frances Winters
PUB DATE: 9/15/20
Biographical Note:
Mary-Frances Winters is the founder and president of the Winters Group Inc. She has been helping clients create inclusive environments for over three decades. She was named a top ten diversity trailblazer by Forbes and a diversity pioneer by Profiles in Diversity Journal and is the recipient of the prestigious ATHENA Award, as well as the Winds of Change Award conferred by the Forum on Workplace Inclusion. Winters is also the author of We Can't Talk about That at Work and Inclusive Conversations.
Review Quotes:
" Black Fatigue tells the truth. Mary-Frances Winters brilliantly shows us how Black fatigue animates our way of living and how the racism that causes it shapes social structures and affects the distribution of advantage and disadvantage."
--Eddie S. Glaude Jr., author of Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own, and Chair, Department of African American Studies, Princeton University" Black Fatigue is unbelievably well-written, unrelentingly honest, and unapologetically focused on the specific experiences of Black people. This book is indispensable for anyone who wants to thoroughly analyze and dismantle racism."
--Dr. Marc Lamont Hill, award-winning author, social justice activist, and Professor of Media Studies and Urban Education, Temple University"An effective defense to use against so-called good white people when they ask a Black person to educate them about racism. Hand them this book and save your energy for Black people and Black communities instead!"
--Shannon Sullivan, Chair and Professor of Philosophy, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and author of Revealing Whiteness
"Mary-Frances Winters's Black Fatigue is one of 2020's most essential books. Winters's work as a diversity and inclusion leader informs this exploration of the toll that systemic racism takes on Black people every single day, and the need for activism that leads to meaningful, radical change."
--Popsugar
Publisher Marketing:
This is the first book to define and explore Black fatigue, the intergenerational impact of systemic racism on the physical and psychological health of Black people--and explain why and how society needs to collectively do more to combat its pernicious effects.Black people, young and old, are fatigued, says award-winning diversity and inclusion leader Mary-Frances Winters. It is physically, mentally, and emotionally draining to continue to experience inequities and even atrocities, day after day, when justice is a God-given and legislated right. And it is exhausting to have to constantly explain this to white people, even--and especially--well-meaning white people, who fall prey to white fragility and too often are unwittingly complicit in upholding the very systems they say they want dismantled.This book, designed to illuminate the myriad dire consequences of "living while Black," came at the urging of Winters's Black friends and colleagues. Winters describes how in every aspect of life--from economics to education, work, criminal justice, and, very importantly, health outcomes--for the most part, the trajectory for Black people is not improving. It is paradoxical that, with all the attention focused over the last fifty years on social justice and diversity and inclusion, little progress has been made in actualizing the vision of an equitable society.Black people are quite literally sick and tired of being sick and tired. Winters writes that "my hope for this book is that it will provide a comprehensive summary of the consequences of Black fatigue, and awaken activism in those who care about equity and justice--those who care that intergenerational fatigue is tearing at the very core of a whole race of people who are simply asking for what they deserve."