There is something profoundly disturbing about living in a society where the suffering of Black people has become so familiar that it barely interrupts the day.

Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley recently put words to something many of us have experienced for generations:

— Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley

Think about what that means.

Our pain has become so deeply embedded in the American experience that it is often treated as an expected part of being Black.

We have reached a point where we can encounter reports of Black people found hanging, watch another family plead for answers, witness another community demand an investigation, and then watch the conversation disappear.

And somehow, we are expected to continue with our day.

Go to work. Attend meetings. Meet deadlines. Raise our children. Build our businesses. Maintain our relationships. Take care of our communities.

All while trying to process what we have just witnessed.

And if we express our anger, grief, exhaustion, or fear, we may find ourselves having to explain those emotions to people who have the privilege of treating these events as distant news.

The normalization of suffering is learned

America has a long history of making Black suffering publicly visible while simultaneously denying Black people the full humanity that should make such suffering intolerable.

Enslavement was an economic system built upon the exploitation of Black bodies. Lynching became a form of racial terror, frequently carried out before crowds. Segregation institutionalized racial inequality, while discrimination continued to shape access to housing, education, employment, and economic opportunity.

These histories matter because they help us understand how societies learn to tolerate suffering.

Consider the photographs of lynchings where crowds gathered, sometimes with children present. Consider the postcards that circulated images of murdered Black people.

Those photographs document something beyond the violence itself. They document spectatorship. People gathered, watched, participated, and, in some instances, treated these events as occasions worth commemorating.

That history raises uncomfortable questions about the present.

What does it mean when images of Black death circulate across our screens, generating brief periods of outrage before disappearing into the next news cycle?

What have we learned about whose suffering deserves our attention? And what have we failed to unlearn?

The historical circumstances are different, and we should be careful about treating them as identical. But examining the relationship between violence, spectatorship, and indifference remains necessary.

Who gets to grieve, and who is expected to endure?

I want us to consider another dimension of this conversation.

Black people are routinely expected to demonstrate extraordinary resilience.

We celebrate our ability to survive, adapt, persevere, and build communities despite tremendous adversity. And there is much to honor in that history.

But I question what happens when resilience becomes an expectation imposed upon people rather than a capacity they are free to exercise.

When do we get to be devastated?

When do we get to be afraid?

When do we get to say that we are tired of watching people who look like us die under circumstances that leave their families searching for answers?

And why must our grief so frequently become organized labor?

We become investigators, advocates, organizers, educators, fundraisers, and public relations representatives for our own humanity.

Families are sometimes forced to become public figures simply to keep attention on the deaths of their loved ones.

Meanwhile, life continues around them.

There is an enormous difference between honoring the strength of a community and creating conditions in which that community has little choice but to be strong.

When awareness fails to become accountability

One of the most troubling aspects of this conversation is the distance between knowing that something happened and demanding to know why.

On September 10, Pressley and congressional colleagues requested federal investigations into multiple cases involving Black people found hanging. Their request called attention to questions about investigative procedures, transparency, and the historical significance of these deaths.

Every death deserves an investigation grounded in evidence. We owe families accurate answers, whether those answers establish homicide, suicide, an accident, or another cause.

But we also need to examine whether families receive equal access to investigative resources, institutional attention, and public concern.

The Equal Justice Initiative has documented thousands of racial terror lynchings between 1865 and 1950. Its research also describes how government officials frequently failed to intervene or hold perpetrators accountable.

That history makes questions about institutional accountability particularly important.

Who investigates? Who reviews the findings? What happens when families dispute an investigation? What mechanisms exist to examine potential institutional failures?

These questions deserve answers that can withstand public scrutiny.

What happens after the headline?

There is another uncomfortable conversation we need to have about our own relationship with media.

We consume suffering at an extraordinary pace.

A video circulates. A name becomes a hashtag. People express outrage. Organizations issue statements. Then the next story arrives.

But the families are still grieving long after public attention has moved elsewhere.

I wonder how often we mistake awareness for meaningful engagement.

Sharing a story can help bring attention to an injustice. But there is also work involved in understanding what happened, following developments, supporting affected families when appropriate, and examining the institutions responsible for investigating these cases.

We should also consider how we tell these stories.

Black people deserve to be remembered for the lives they lived, their relationships, their accomplishments, and the communities they belonged to.

Our humanity extends far beyond the circumstances of our deaths.

The question I want to leave with you

What would change if we examined our collective response to Black suffering with the same urgency we devote to the suffering itself?

How do our workplaces, news organizations, communities, and public institutions respond? Who receives support? Who is expected to remain productive? And who is held accountable when systems fail?

I also want Black people to have the freedom to disengage from traumatic imagery without being made to feel that doing so represents indifference. Protecting our well-being and remaining informed should be compatible.

We can honor those who have died, support families seeking answers, and examine institutional accountability without requiring every Black person to repeatedly expose themselves to traumatic images.

Our humanity should be recognized in how we live, how we are treated, how we are protected, and how we are remembered.

Sources and further reading

Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, September 10, 2026, announcement on calls for investigation into Black people found hanging: https://pressley.house.gov/2026/09/10/breaking-pressley-leads-nearly-60-lawmakers-demanding-investigation-into-black-people-found-hanging-invokes-legacy-of-lynching-in-america/

Equal Justice Initiative, Lynching in America: https://eji.org/reports/lynching-in-america/