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

by Austin Channing Brown

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.

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.

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