Being Black in 2026: Racial Grief and the Globalisation of Hate

You aren’t alone if you are finding yourself feeling exhausted when you consume content (either voluntarily or involuntarily) from the current news cycles. The exhaustion, at least for me, is multifaceted: the upset of hearing racially heightened narratives, while watching a political and social climate that seems to be questioning one’s right to comfortably ‘remain’, belong, and to call the UK ‘home’.

There is a grief underlying all of this. A psychological cost of being Black in the United Kingdom in 2026. I am interacting with a lot of Black people personally and professionally, for whom this grief has a tendency to accumulate quietly until it is shared with a safe other. This is happening for Black people who are already trying hard to hold together the lives that they have built or are trying to build in a country that is sending mixed messages about whether or not we are welcome to do so.

 

The globalisation of hate

It is saddening that what is happening in the UK does not exist in isolation. The rise of the far right, the normalisation of anti-immigration rhetoric, the incidents of racially motivated violence and harassment, the political mainstreaming of positions that would previously have been considered extreme. This is part of a pattern that is visible across Europe, across the Atlantic, and beyond. Hate seems to have found new infrastructure. It appears to organise itself online, travelling across borders, while learning to present itself in language that is just about respectable enough to be broadcast far and wide.

For Black people like myself living in the UK, watching this is not an abstract political concern. It is a lived experience. The news cycle is not something that can be turned off and returned to when one feels ready. Neither is one’s personal experience of explicit and more subtle racial hatred. It arrives on our phones, in conversations and chance interactions. It crackles in the atmosphere of a country that is openly debating questions that for many Black people like myself, feel deeply personal: who belongs here, who is welcome, who counts as British, and who will always be regarded (irrelevant of how long they have been here or where they were born) as ‘other’.

 

The length of time does not change the experience

There is sometimes an implicit hierarchy in conversations about belonging: the assumption that those who were born here, or who have been here longest, have more of a right (even though that right feels increasingly fragile) to feel at home than those who arrived more recently. That hierarchy does not reflect the reality of the experience. Someone who arrived in the UK six months ago and someone who was born here to parents who may or may not have been born in the UK, can be made to feel equally unwelcome by the same headlines, comments, and incidents on the same streets.

For me, belonging is a sense of being accepted, seen, and safe in a place. When that is disrupted, repeatedly and from multiple directions, the disruption is real regardless of how many years of residency come with it.

 

What racial grief actually involves

Although racial grief is not a clinical diagnosis, it is a description of something that many Black people experience that rarely gets named directly. For me, it is the grief of living in a world that consistently communicates (in large or smaller ways) that your presence is conditional, your belonging can be contested, and that your safety is not necessarily guaranteed.

It is the grief of watching incidents of racial violence and recognising that they could have happened to you, or to someone that you cherish dearly. The grief of explaining to children why the world is the way that it is, and not having satisfactory answers. The grief of a country that you have contributed to, built a life in, and called home, currently engaged in a loud public debate about whether people like you should be here at all.

For me, this grief is cumulative rather than acute. It isn’t about one single devastating event but instead it feels like a gradual accumulation of smaller injuries. News stories, comments, looks, questions about where you or your family are actually from. An unreturned greeting or smile. Each one disappointing in its own right. But put together over time, they create something that latches on to the body and mind, mood, sleep, and the ability to feel safe in the world.

The grief underlying all experiences

For Black people like myself who were born in the UK, or those who have spent most of their lives here, the current climate can feel disorienting. This is home, isn’t it? There is nowhere else to ‘go back to’. And yet the language of the current political moment, with its talk of ‘’sending people back’ continues, causing deep rooted confusion.

For those who migrated to the UK, the experience is different in texture but not necessarily less painful. The decision to try to make a life here, to invest in this country, to build something here, sits uncomfortably alongside a political climate that is actively hostile to that choice. The question of whether this was the right decision, and what it means to stay, becomes harder to make sense of.

 

Living with it without being consumed by it

One question might be, how do I stay informed without being overwhelmed. How do I care about what is happening, while caring for myself. Different people find different ways of managing the psychological impact of the news cycle: limiting consumption, sharing experiences with safe and trusted loved ones, family, friends and community - finding spaces where the weight can be shared rather than carried alone.

What tends not to help is putting pressure on yourself to remain stoic, unaffected, or to not let the messaging penetrate - to ‘rise above it all’. Performed resilience in the face of something genuinely difficult has its own challenging consequences emotionally, mentally and physically, and each can create additional burdens to carry.

 

What therapy can offer

Therapy for racial grief helps to normalise your experiences. Helping you to see that you are not alone. Therapy acknowledges that your experiences are real and your feelings are valid.

Therapy offers a space to process all the feelings that have accumulated over time: anger, sadness, confusion, disorientation. The fatigue of somehow having to integrate the news cycle messages into the daily demands of a working and relational life.

Therapy can also offer a space to think about what feels sustainable. How you might stay connected to what and who matters without being consumed by what is harmful. How to locate and protect your sources of safety, community, and joy in a way that makes it possible for you to proceed.

If the current climate is affecting you in ways that you have not yet had adequate space to explore, and you are looking for a safe place to hear your thoughts out loud, therapy might be something to consider.

Dr Erin Reid is a counselling psychologist offering online therapy to individuals, couples, adolescents, and families across the UK and internationally, and 'Walk and Talk' therapy in Northwest London green spaces. Visit drerinreid.com to find out more.