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

by Austin Channing Brown

Oftentimes the responsibility to extend compassion falls on me. “You really ought to go back to talk to him. Perhaps if you were more patient, you could see his heart.” So I move on. Rather than dwell on individuals, I speak about the system. About white boardrooms and white leadership teams. About white culture and the organization’s habit of hiring people who perpetuate that culture rather than diversify it. But the white consensus doesn’t want me to point out these things. I was only supposed to name the “bad apples,” so now whiteness has a few names for me. Divisive. Negative. Toxic.

At my Christian elementary school, we sang, “Jesus loves the little children…red and yellow, black and white, all are precious in his sight.” In alignment with this song, white people often professed, “I don’t even see color,” reassuring me that I would be safe from racism with them. And yet, I learned pretty early in life that while Jesus may be cool with racial diversity, America is not. The ideology that whiteness is supreme, better, best, permeates the air we breathe—in our schools, in our offices, and in our country’s common life. 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.

“I’m just not sure integration has actually helped Black Americans,” she said. Her hands danced in front of her as she continued the impassioned monologue, her afro nodding in agreement. “Well, what was the alternative, Karen?” one of my uncles retorted. “Remaining in segregation?” Her eyes flashed. She knew she had them. “Of course not. I’m just saying that segregation didn’t have to be followed with integration. Surely relegating us to the back of the bus could have stopped without us having to give up all the businesses that died because we started going to white folks. Think about all that we lost—the doctors’ and dentists’ offices, the grocery store owners and auto mechanics. I mean, could we have kept a great number of Black teachers if we had demanded equal funding for our schools rather than busing ourselves to theirs?”

In every previous classroom, I had been responsible for decoding teachers’ references to white middle-class experiences. It’s like when you’re sailing…or You know how when you’re skiing, you have to…My white teachers had an unspoken commitment to the belief that we are all the same, a default setting that masked for them how often white culture bled into the curriculum. For example, when teachers wanted to drive home the point that we should do something daily, they often likened it to how you wash your hair every morning. It never occurred to them that none of the Black girls in the class did this. Knowing it was true for white people, and having gotten used to white teachers’ assumption of universality, we would all nod our heads and move on. Who had time to teach the teacher?

The white students defended their family histories as the Black students searched for the words to express how it felt to stare at ours in those photos from the museum. Then, as we pulled into a parking lot to break for lunch, another white student stood to speak. But instead of a different variation on “Please don’t make me responsible for this,” she took a deep breath and gave in to the emotion of it all. “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.”

I had worked for a number of organizations that struggled to create meaningful opportunities for people of color, but I had never heard anyone make an overt case in favor of assimilation—particularly at an organization that promoted diversity in its mission statements and messaging. Granted, many people of color on our team had grown suspicious of those statements, suspecting that the organization wanted our racial diversity without our diversity of thought and culture.

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

It wants to see a Black person seated at the table but doesn’t want to hear a dissenting viewpoint. It wants to pat itself on the back for helping poor Black folks through missions or urban projects but has no interest in learning from Black people’s wisdom, talent, and spiritual depth. 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.

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 sees potential, possibility, a future where Black people could share some of the benefits of whiteness if only we try hard enough to mimic it.

Beneath the volatility, the combativeness, 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.

If my feelings do not fit the narrative of white innocence and goodness, the burden of change gets placed on me.

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.

But the truth is, even the monsters—the Klan members, the faces in the lynch mob, the murderers who bombed churches—they all had friends and family members. Each one of them was connected to people who would testify that they had good hearts. They had families who loved them, friends who came over for dinner, churches where they made small talk with the pastor after the service. The monster has always been well dressed and well loved.

Entertaining a discussion about race with someone who believes in white innocence often feels like entering the twilight zone. This is largely because those who believe in white innocence don’t have enough of a knowledge base to participate meaningfully in the discussion. They haven’t educated themselves through books or courses. They are unfamiliar with the lexicon on race, not realizing their words have particular meanings. Their understanding of both America’s racial history and current racial landscape is lacking. But this does not prevent them from being convinced of their rightness and need to reassert dominance. White people are notorious for trying to turn race conversations into debates, and then becoming angry or dismissive when people of color won’t participate. White people believe this is because people of color haven’t thought it through or are stumped by a well-made point. But the truth is, oftentimes people of color don’t have the time, energy, or willpower to teach the white person enough to turn the conversation into a real debate. To do so would be a ton of work. Even on the occasion when a conversation actually proves itself productive, Black folks still have to be on the lookout for white fragility’s cousin: white guilt.

I don’t have much use for white guilt anymore. I used to interpret white guilt as an early sign of a change in heart, a glimpse that a movie, program, or speaker had broken through and was producing a changed mind. While that may or may not be true, for those on the receiving end, white guilt is like having tar dry all over your hands and heart. It takes so much work to peel off the layers, rub away the stickiness, get rid of the smell. Unsolicited confessions inspired by a sense of guilt are often poured over Black bodies in search of their own relief.

On and on the confessions went, but none was healing to my soul. Clearly the congregation had been moved by our story. They were thinking through their personal histories. But the stories of hate—only minor incidents in the lives of the confessors—reminded me of the ease with which racism is practiced on a daily basis.

Black women were bearing the brunt of these stories as white attenders sought relief from guilt over the ways they had participated in racism.

It felt that way because for every confessor, my body had become the stand-in for the actual people who had been harmed in those situations. I was left with the weight of these moments I hadn’t experienced. I was expected to offer absolution. But I am not a priest for the white soul.

Racial injustices, like slavery and our system of mass incarceration, were purposeful inventions, but instead of seeking to understand how we got here, the national narrative remains filled with comforting myths, patchwork time lines, and colonial ideals. Like the sobbing woman in the workshop, many Americans try to live comfortably in ignorance of America’s racial history.

We have not thoroughly assessed the bodies snatched from dirt and sand to be chained in a cell. We have not reckoned with the horrendous, violent mass kidnapping that we call the Middle Passage. We have not been honest about all of America’s complicity—about the wealth the South earned on the backs of the enslaved, or the wealth the North gained through the production of enslaved hands. We have not fully understood the status symbol that owning bodies offered. We have not confronted the humanity, the emotions, the heartbeats of the multiple generations who were born into slavery and died in it, who never tasted freedom on America’s land. The same goes for the Civil War. We have refused to honestly confront the fact that so many were willing to die in order to hold the freedom of others in their hands. We have refused to acknowledge slavery’s role at all, preferring to boil things down to the far more palatable “states’ rights.” 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. We have painted the hundred-year history of Jim Crow as little more than mean signage and the inconvenience that white people and Black people could not drink from the same fountain. But those signs weren’t just “mean.” They were perpetual reminders of the swift humiliation and brutal violence that could be suffered at any moment in the presence of whiteness.

Even our celebrations of the Civil Rights Movement are sanitized, its victories accentuated while the battles are whitewashed.

We would rather focus on the beautiful words of Martin Luther King Jr. than on the terror he and protestors endured at marches, boycotts, and from behind jail doors. We don’t want to acknowledge that for decades, whiteness fought against every civil right Black Americans sought—from

We like to pretend that all those white faces who carried protest signs and batons, who turned on their sprinklers and their fire hoses, who wrote against the demonstrations and preached against the changes, just disappeared. We like to pretend that they were won over, transformed, the moment King proclaimed, “I have a dream.” We don’t want to acknowledge that just as Black people who experienced Jim Crow are still alive, so are the white people who vehemently protected it—who

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

Meanwhile, whiteness twiddles its thumbs with feigned innocence and shallow apologies. Diversity gets treated like a passing trend, a friendly group project in which everyone takes on equal risks and rewards. In the mind of whiteness, half-baked efforts at diversity are enough, because the status quo is fine. It is better than slavery, better than Jim Crow.

Whiteness has never needed much of an excuse for our deaths. Accused of looking at a white woman. Resisted arrest. Scared the officer. Thought he had a weapon. Had a criminal record (that the officer knew nothing about). Looked suspicious. Looked like someone else. It doesn’t really matter. At the end of the day, Blackness is always the true offense. Whiteness needs just a hint of a reason to maintain its own goodness, assuring itself that there’s no reason to worry, because the victim had it coming. He was a drug dealer. A criminal. A thug. 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.

White people often want me to be grateful for America’s so-called racial progress. When I lead trainings, discussing America’s history, they want me to praise America for “how far we have come.” This is where they want me to place my hope—in the narrative that says things are getting better. But I cannot.

I am not impressed that slavery was abolished or that Jim Crow ended. I feel no need to pat America on its back for these “achievements.” This is how it always should have been. Many call it progress, but I do not consider it praiseworthy that only within the last generation did America reach the baseline for human decency.

We have avoided discussing how we will tell you about the world. Of course we will. But we don’t like to think of it yet. We would rather wonder if you will be precocious or subdued, bold 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.

When an organization confuses diversity or inclusion with reconciliation, it often shows up in an obsession with numbers. How many Black people are in the photo? Has the 20 percent quota been met, so that we can call ourselves multicultural? Does our publication have enough stories written by people of color? Are there enough people of color on the TV show? But without people of color in key positions, influencing topics of conversation, content, direction, and vision, whatever diversity is included is still essentially white—it just adds people of color like sprinkles on top. The cake is still vanilla.

When white people stop short of reconciliation, it’s often because they are motivated by a deep need to believe in their own goodness, and for that goodness to be affirmed over and over and over again. These folks want a pat on the back simply for arriving at the conclusion that having people of color around is good. But reconciliation is not about white feelings. It’s about diverting power and attention to the oppressed, toward the powerless. It’s not enough to dabble at diversity and inclusion while leaving the existing authority structure in place. Reconciliation demands more.

Christians talk about love a lot. It’s one of our favorite words, especially when the topic is race. If we could just learn to love one another… Love trumps hate… Love someone different from you today… But I have found this love to be largely inconsequential. 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. Love, for whiteness, dissolves into a demand for grace, for niceness, for endless patience—to keep everyone feeling comfortable while hearts are being changed. In this way, so-called love dodges any responsibility for action and waits for the great catalytic moment that finally spurs accountability. I am not interested in love that is aloof. In a love that refuses hard work, instead demanding a bite-size education that doesn’t transform anything. In a love that qualifies the statement “Black lives matter,” because it is unconvinced this is true. I am not interested in a love that refuses to see systems and structures of injustice, preferring to ask itself only about personal intentions. This aloof kind of love is useless to me. I need a love that is troubled by injustice.

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 hope for me has died one thousand deaths. I hoped that friend would get it, but hope died. I hoped that person would be an ally for life, but hope died. I hoped that my organization really desired change, but hope died. I hoped I’d be treated with the full respect I deserve at my job, but hope died. I hoped that racist policies would change, and just policies would never be reversed, but hope died. I hoped the perpetrator in uniform would be brought to justice this time, but hope died. I hoped history would stop repeating itself, but hope died. I hoped things would be better for my children, but hope died.

I cannot hope in whiteness. I cannot hope in white people or white institutions or white America. I cannot hope in lawmakers or politicians, and I cannot hope even in pastors or ministries or mission statements. I cannot hope in misquoted wisdom from MLK, superficial ethnic heritage celebrations, or love that is aloof. I cannot hope even in myself. I am no one’s savior. The longer this list gets, the more elusive hope becomes. And so, instead of waiting for the bright sunshine, I have learned to rest in the shadow of hope.