When people ask why Americans aren’t fighting back, Black women hear something different underneath the question.

We hear:

Why aren’t you saving us again?

Because historically, when systems break, Black women’s bodies are expected to absorb the damage quietly—then keep going.

What looks like silence is not passivity.

It is containment layered on top of containment.

Black Women Were Never Disconnected — We Were Over-Extracted

Mainstream narratives say Americans are disengaged, apathetic, or not angry enough.

That framing does not fit Black women.

Black women are deeply aware.

• Of corruption

• Of injustice

• Of broken promises

• Of who pays first and longest
  

The issue is not ignorance.

It is that Black women are expected to feel everything and still function.

The U.S. does not disembody Black women by numbing us.

It does it by overloading us.

The “Strong Black Woman” Is a Control Mechanism

Strength, for Black women, has never been neutral.

It has been used to:

• Justify neglect

• Excuse lack of care

• Normalize overwork

• Pathologize rest
  

When Black women are tired, the response is not alarm.

It is expectation.

The system relies on Black women’s ability to:

• Keep families afloat

• Hold workplaces together

• Provide emotional labor

• Absorb stress without visible collapse
  

This is not resilience.

It is structural extraction disguised as praise.

Our Bodies Became the Storage Unit for Systemic Failure

Fatness, fatigue, autoimmune issues, fibroids, hypertension, chronic pain, anxiety, depression—

These are often discussed as individual health issues.

But for Black women, they are also archives.

Records of:

• Generational stress

• Economic precarity

• Racialized surveillance

• Medical dismissal

• Constant vigilance
  

Black women’s bodies carry what the state refuses to hold.

And then we are blamed for showing the evidence.

Why Black Women’s Anger Doesn’t Look Like Uprisings

Black women’s anger is rarely allowed to be:

• Loud

• Chaotic

• Indulgent

• Destructive
  

Instead, it is:

• Contained

• Redirected

• Medicalized

• Turned inward
  

Anger becomes:

• Migraines

• Weight gain

• Autoimmune flare-ups

• Anxiety

• Shutdown
  

Not because Black women aren’t furious—

but because we are punished when we externalize it.

So the body takes the hit.

Disembodiment for Black Women Looks Like Hyper-Functioning

Unlike dominant narratives of numbness, Black women are often:

• Hyper-aware

• Hyper-responsible

• Hyper-vigilant

• Hyper-functional

Disembodiment shows up as:

• Ignoring pain to keep going

• Eating irregularly because everyone else comes first

• Resting only when collapse forces it

• Living in a constant state of readiness
  

This is not absence from the body.

It is being trapped inside obligation.

Why the System Relies on Black Women’s Silence

If Black women were fully supported, rested, and resourced:

• Care economies would have to change

• Labor expectations would collapse

• Moral authority would shift

• Systems of extraction would be exposed
  

So instead, Black women are framed as:

• Naturally strong

• Built for hardship

• Able to handle more
  

That myth keeps the system running.

This Is Why “Why Aren’t You Fighting?” Misses the Point

Black women have been fighting.

• In our bodies

• In our homes

• In our work

• In our nervous systems
  

What looks like quiet is often containment under threat.

What looks like compliance is often calculated survival.

Speak, Goddess Truth (For Black Women)

Black women are not unbothered.

We are burdened.

And the most radical disruption is not proving strength again—

it is refusing to let our bodies be the dumping ground for everyone else’s failures.

Rest is not retreat.

Care is not weakness.

Embodiment is not selfish.

For Black women, coming home to the body is not self-care culture.

It is the beginning of reclamation.