I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness

by Austin Channing Brown

She didn’t know a name like Austin could be stretched wide enough to cloak a little Black girl.

White people who expect me to be white have not yet realized that their cultural way of being is not in fact the result of goodness, rightness, or God’s blessing. Pushing back, resisting the lie, is hella work.

I learned pretty early in life that while Jesus may be cool with racial diversity, America is not.

White supremacy is a tradition that must be named and a religion that must be renounced. When this work has not been done, those who live in whiteness become oppressive, whether intentional or not.

Black is not monolithic. Black is expansive,

“I don’t know what to do with what I’ve learned,” she said. “I can’t fix your pain, and I can’t take it away, but I can see it. And I can work for the rest of my life to make sure your children don’t have to experience the pain of racism.” And then she said nine words that I’ve never forgotten: “Doing nothing is no longer an option for me.”

It’s amazing how white supremacy even invades programs aimed at seeking racial reconciliation.

The role of a bridge builder sounds appealing until it becomes clear how often that bridge is your broken back.

Whiteness constantly polices the expressions of Blackness allowed within its walls, attempting to accrue no more than what’s necessary to affirm itself.

Whiteness wants enough Blackness to affirm the goodness of whiteness, the progressiveness of whiteness, the openheartedness of whiteness. Whiteness likes a trickle of Blackness, but only that which can be controlled.

The memories of her care for my body are a reminder of the care my body deserves.

white people become disturbed because they often can’t fathom Black people have something important to teach them about themselves and about the world.

This is partly what makes the fragility of whiteness so damn dangerous. It ignores the personhood of people of color and instead makes the feelings of whiteness the most important thing.

White fragility protects whiteness and forces Black people to fend for themselves.

When you believe niceness disproves the presence of racism, it’s easy to start believing bigotry is rare, and that the label racist should be applied only to mean-spirited, intentional acts of discrimination. The problem with this framework—besides being a gross misunderstanding of how racism operates in systems and structures enabled by nice people—is that it obligates me to be nice in return, rather than truthful. I am expected to come closer to the racists. Be nicer to them. Coddle them.

White people desperately want to believe that only the lonely, isolated “whites only” club members are racist. This is why the word racist offends “nice white people” so deeply. It challenges their self-identification as good people. Sadly, most white people are more worried about being called racist than about whether or not their actions are in fact racist or harmful.

Our only chance at dismantling racial injustice is being more curious about its origins than we are worried about our comfort.

It’s haunting. But it’s also holy.

To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious, is to be in a rage almost all the time. So that the first problem is how to control that rage so that it won’t destroy you. Part of the rage is this: it isn’t only what is happening to you, but it’s what’s happening all around you all of the time, in the face of the most extraordinary and criminal indifference, the indifference and ignorance of most white people in this country. Baldwin wasn’t lying.

Because I am a Black person, my anger is considered dangerous, explosive, and unwarranted. Because I am a woman, my anger supposedly reveals an emotional problem or gets dismissed as a temporary state that will go away once I choose to be rational. Because I am a Christian, my anger is dismissed as a character flaw, showing just how far I have turned from Jesus. Real Christians are nice, kind, forgiving—and anger is none of those things.

Every woman has a well-stocked arsenal of anger potentially useful against those oppressions, personal and institutional, which brought that anger into being. Focused with precision it can become a powerful source of energy serving progress and change…Anger expressed and translated into action in the service of our vision and our future is a liberating and strengthening act of clarification.

We don’t talk about white drug dealers this way. We don’t even talk about white murderers this way. Somehow, we manage to think of them as people first, who just happened to do something bad. But the same respect is rarely afforded to Black folks. We must always earn the right to live. Perfection is demanded of Blackness before mercy or grace or justice can even be considered.

For all their talk about being persecuted, white Christian Americans don’t know this kind of terror. Generations of Black Americans have known nothing but this kind of terror.

or shy, funny or serious, adventurous or introspective. We would rather wonder about your humanity than ruminate on the ways the world will try to take that away from you.

Reconciliation is not a magic word that we can trot out whenever we need healing or inspiration.

reconciliation can never be apolitical. Reconciliation chooses sides, and the side is always justice.

The white Church considers power its birthright rather than its curse. And so, rather than seeking reconciliation, they stage moments of racial harmony that don’t challenge the status quo.

dialogue is productive toward reconciliation only when it leads to action—when it inverts power and pursues justice for those who are most marginalized.

Too often, dialogue functions as a stall tactic, allowing white people to believe they’ve done something heroic when the real work is yet to come.

The march toward change has been grueling, but it is real. And all it has ever taken was the transformed—the people of color confronting past and present to imagine a new future, and the handful of white people willing to release indifference and join the struggle.

More often than not, my experience has been that whiteness sees love as a prize it is owed, rather than a moral obligation it must demonstrate.

The persistence of racism in America—individual and societal—is altogether overwhelming. It doesn’t lay the best fertilizer for hope to grow.

And so, instead of waiting for the bright sunshine, I have learned to rest in the shadow of hope.