The trick to doing it is asking Americans to pity us while reassuring them with a myth as old as the country’s justifications for slavery—that is, reassuring Americans with the myth that people of color are long-suffering marvels, built to do harder work, built to last longer and handle more, reminding them what America already believes in its soul, which is that we are “impervious to pain,” as scholar Robin Bernstein has put it. We can only tell them we’re sick if we remind them that sick or not, we are able to still be high-functioning machines.
