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

by Austin Channing Brown

Even though white folks tried to steal our histories—our lives, our labor, our culture, our origins—we recover the records. We find the census, the photos, the certificates, the inscriptions.

So I don’t accept confessions like these anymore. Nowadays, when someone confesses about their racist uncle or that time they said the n–word, I determine to offer a challenge toward transformation. For most confessions, this is as simple as asking, “So what are you going to do differently?”