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The More Important the Work, the More Important the Rest
For Black people, interrupting the endless cycle of productivity is more important than ever
Over the past few months, the pandemic has caused millions of people to rethink their relationship to work and striving — and to realize, finally, that the relentless obsession with productivity is universally harmful.
For Black people, this reckoning is particularly acute. With an ongoing global health pandemic disproportionately killing us, social distancing orders, an economic downturn mirroring the Great Depression, police still murdering Black people with little consequence, and a resulting national revolt, the world as we’ve known it is being cracked open and our society’s failings are on display.
In the midst of such despair and turmoil, it might feel absurd to talk about productivity. But for many of us, both the internal and external demands for productivity remain. Within a society that reduces us to our production despite our collective trauma and circumstances, we have to prioritize rest precisely because we’ve never been able to.
Black people deserve and are owed a guilt-free break. And we need to take it.
