Disillusioned by the Election, Some Black Women Are Deciding to Rest

Cheri Hall woke up hours before dawn the morning after Election Day and checked her phone anxiously for results. A news notification hinting that former President Donald J. Trump had defeated Vice President Kamala Harris caused her to gasp and grab her chest.

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Black women voters supported Ms. Harris in overwhelming numbers — upward of 90 percent cast ballots for her, according to some exit polls. And her loss, as the first Black woman presidential nominee, left supporters such as Ms. Hall feeling disillusioned. On social media, under hashtags like #blackwomenrest and #restera, some women have emphasized that after turning out strong for Ms. Harris, they feel unappreciated and defeated, and are ready to bow out of the political and culture wars, for now, to focus on their personal well-being.

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The weekend after Mr. Trump’s victory, Ms. Hall told her 4,000-plus TikTok followers that she would be taking what she calls “the great Black step back.” She won’t allow herself to feel consumed by national politics, she said, and she instead plans to focus on her mental and physical health by exercising and no longer molding herself to please others.

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“I think of this as our opportunity to decenter everyone and focus on us,” Ms. Hall said in the video, in which she wears a T-shirt emblazoned with the phrase “minding my black-owned business.”

So what does a “rest era” look like? In interviews and online, some Black women said it could mean striving for more sleep, declining extra responsibilities at work or exploring new hobbies. Others said it might mean volunteering in local Black communities, eating more healthfully, spending time with loved ones or simply allowing themselves to grieve the election’s outcome or distance themselves from national politics.

{snip} Black women have been at the vanguard of political and social movements like #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, as well as mobilizations to elect Hillary Clinton in 2016 and President Biden in 2020.

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Focusing on personal wellness might feel in conflict with the cultural archetype of the strong Black woman — one who cares for others often at the expense of her own physical and emotional needs, said Amani Nuru-Jeter, a professor of community health sciences and epidemiology at the University of California, Berkeley.

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After Mr. Trump was elected, Oinetta Kambui, 52, a recruiter and TikTok creator in Jacksonville, Fla., hopped on a phone call with her sisters. They all agreed: Many Black women “just want to be literally left alone to tend to our own communities,” she said.

Although Mrs. Kambui has joined civil rights protests in the past, she doesn’t plan to participate in any in the near future, she said, unless they involve her own community.

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