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

by Austin Channing Brown

am too sensitive, and should be careful with what I report. I am too angry, and should watch my tone when I talk about my experiences. I am too inflexible, and should learn to offer more grace to people who are really trying.

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 expansive, and I didn’t need the approval of whiteness in order to feel good in my skin;

How could I know if beneath other amicable interactions, the stereotypes and biases of those in power were operating against students who looked like me?

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.

I have been in the room when promises were made to diversify boardrooms, leadership teams, pastoral staff, faculty and staff positions, only to watch committees appoint a white man in the end. It’s difficult to express how these incidents accumulate, making you feel undervalued, unappreciated, and ultimately expendable.

Whiteness wants us to be empty, malleable, so that it can shape Blackness into whatever is necessary for the white organization’s own success.

It ignores the personhood of people of color and instead makes the feelings of whiteness the most important thing.

If white family members are being racist, we must take Grandpa’s feelings into account before we proclaim our objections to such speech.

If an organization’s policies are discriminatory and harmful, that can only be corrected if we can ensure white people won’t feel bad about the change.

White fragility protects whiteness and forces Black people to ...

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.

if most white people are good, innocent, lovely folks who are just angry or scared or ignorant, it naturally follows that whenever racial tension arises, I must be the problem.

We have not confessed that the end of slavery was so bitterly resented, the rise of Jim Crow became inevitable—and with it, a belief in Black inferiority that lives on in hearts and minds today.

The moment Black Americans achieved freedom from enslavement, America could have put to death the idea of Black inferiority. But whiteness was not prepared to sober up from the drunkenness of power over another people group.

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. They organize worship services where the choirs of two racially different churches sing together, where a pastor of a different race preaches a couple times a year, where they celebrate MLK but don’t acknowledge current racial injustices. Acts like these can create beautiful moments of harmony and goodwill, but since they don’t change the underlying power structure at the organization, it would be misleading to call them acts of reconciliation.

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

Unfortunately, most “reconciliation conversations” spend most of their time teaching white people about racism. In too many churches and organizations, listening to the hurt and pain of people of color is the end of the road, rather than the beginning.

The death of hope gives way to a sadness that heals, to anger that inspires, to a wisdom that empowers me the next time I get to work, pick up my pen, join a march, tell my story.

This is the shadow of hope. Knowing that we may never see the realization of our dreams, and yet still showing up.

And so I stand in the legacy of all that Black Americans have already accomplished—in their resistance, in their teachings, in their voices, in their faith—and I work toward a world unseen, currently unimaginable.