As a kid, I was obsessed with the Harlem Renaissance and the jazz era of the 30s and 40s. Somehow, somewhere I came across photographs shot by James Van Der Zee of Harlem Black folks in their Sunday’s best. One photo particularly stood out. The year is 1932. A couple in front of a fancy car poses in fur coats. I wondered where they were going. A club? A concert? Or just driving around uptown? Do they know some of the great writers of the time I look up to—Zora, Langston, Claude, Nella? How are they drippin’ like this in the middle of the Great Depression? How are Black folks living like this despite racism?

It was peculiar to see pictures of Black folks dress to the nines, striving for social and economic mobility, and displaying joy. Despite racism—news of lynchings or attempted lynchings, discrimination, red lining, colorism, texturism, economic disinvestment—my people chose to put on their fur coats and get in their expensive cars, hit up clubs or house parties, make music, dance, write literature, usher in an arts and social renaissance, fall in love, raise families, march, protest, start movements, pray, and seek to thrive despite it all.

They weren’t apathetic. They weren’t clueless about the injustices surrounding them, whether in Jim Crow South or James Crow North/West. They were still Black in this racist country yet determined to live full lives despite.

I feel that even today—and I’m sure I’m not alone. Black folks come face to face with trauma everytime we log onto social media. It’s inescapable. So choosing to be vocal about Black joy as much as I am about justice is a deliberate, yet very necessary choice. We need both.

“If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.” — Zora Neale Hurston

I think about this quote often. I want to encourage people to be authentic and emotionally honest. I don’t want to come off as though I’m not reading the room or making light of oppression. I also think about the implications of putting Black grief on display, and who actually benefits.

I’m reminded of lynchings and how racist, white mobs left Black bodies swinging from trees—beaten and mutilated—and took pictures and sold postcards. And it wasn’t to evoke empathy. It was a warning to Black folks and a spectacle for white folks. When enslaved Black people were whipped or beaten in front of the rest of the plantation, that pain was not to evoke empathy in white people, it instilled fear in other enslaved Black people as a warning—do X and you’re dead.

As much as generational trauma (i.e. learned helplessness, fear, etc.) has been passed down from generation to generation in Black folks, generational apathy (i.e. desensitization to Black pain) has been passed down in white folks. Putting my Black pain on display, doesn’t disrupt that pattern.

I want to be mindful about what I share and what messages I’m trying to evoke particular in other Black folks. I can do both—speak against injustices and be unapologetic about my joy. I’m a truth teller, so I won’t be silent about my pain or the injustices others face, but I surely as hell won’t put it on display in a way that creates more desensitizing, apathy, or fear in the hearts of my people.

Think about it: Black joy exists despite. If we can have joy despite the chaos, I wonder what we would be capable of if and when injustices are eradicated. I’m convinced there’s joy, peace, and hope for us despite the chaos and despite injustices.

My joy (and yours) is resistance.