What doesnt kill you makes you stronger is perhaps my least favorite hackneyed phrase. As a Black woman who rejects the imposition of the strong Black woman myth onto my life, that phrase is one that has always struck me as an unjust demand for us to endure grievous harm. Death, in this framing, is indirectly disentangled from processes of gradually wearing a person down. Theres an immediacy underpinning the clichd saying that suggests that if something occurring doesnt kill you in that moment, then persevering through it makes you better. Theres no room for contempt or anger at the thing that didnt explicitly kill you because allegedly you are now better for having withstood it.

For my most recent book, America, Goddam: Violence, Black Women, and the Struggle for Justice, I spent years looking at what was slowly and spectacularly warring against Black women and girls. And while murder , rape , and physical assaults were the most recognizable forms of violence Black women and girls disproportionately experience, what became abundantly clear through my research was the grievous impact of less direct forms of violence. I had to take a step back to see the full picture of violence beyond spectacular encounters in which Black women and girls were physically harmed or killed. What came into sharp focus was demoralizing and gutting: Weve normalized the wearing down of marginalized and vulnerable communities. Far too many of us have become complacent with the ubiquity of death-bound conditions.

Paying specific attention to Black women and girls, I came to understand that reducing my conceptualization of violence to only its most recognizable iterations erased the injurious and sometimes fatal impact of those struggling to outrun and outlive multiple forms of oppression. Telling the story of contemporary violence against Black women and girls and, more broadly, of violence in the United States meant taking stock of the many ways we routinely harm those on the margins.

To properly map violence in the U.S., we must contend with how systemic and structural forms of oppression, such as racism, sexism, ableism, queerphobia and transphobia, operate and often conjoin in the lives of minoritized communities. The daily experience of being unhoused, hyper-surveilled and or under/unfed is part of this nations climate of violence. When we only recognize forceful acts that hurt, damage or kill someone, we obfuscate all the other ways we relegate millions of people to lives predisposed toward premature death . Everyday injustices and inequities kill slowly, surely and intentionally.