Suggested Reading: Austin Channing Brown's I’m Still Here
Austin Channing Brown (ACB) is tired—exhausted really—even angry, and I’m the cause of it. The opening line of Brown’s wonderful book I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness is the truest of truisms: “White people can be exhausting. Particularly exhausting are white people who don’t know they are white, and those who need to be white.”
From here, she gives us a glimpse into the world of black women in majority white spaces, and it does sound exhausting. Brown describes how she felt captured by her locations where “white” objectives, missions, methods ruled the day, and she was relegated to being alternately the diversity representative within her school/job/ministry, as well as the person responsible for answering every single question that happened to pop into a white mind concerning people of color.
Due to her location in these spots, as well as her clear commitment to caring for people, Brown soldiered on hearing white confessions of guilt, which only eased the troubled minds of the confessors. She taught courses on faith and race, while enduring hostile reactions from white men who rejected her authority. Ditto for the times she led service efforts for majority white groups who did not know “Austin” was a black female, only to realize so after hopping off the bus. Most difficult to read was Brown’s confession about how bottled up she feels:
“I feel anger. Even more frustrating, there are so few acceptable occasions for my rage to be expressed. 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 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.” (123)
I realized upon reading I’m Still Here the number of times I have put friends on the spot, because I deemed my question to be of the utmost importance. Maybe I can count them on one hand, but the recollections were enough to give me pause about the ways in which I have made others mere satellites around me, the bright shining star. White earnestness is no substitute for just letting someone breathe a little bit.
Three beats:
1. Her name: Austin was named for her grandmother (the Austin family), but also as her mother explained to her, “We just wanted to make sure you could make it to the interview.”
2. Whiteness at Work: Brown’s chapter is a bit of wordplay that describes how a typical day of work can be filled with moments of racial tension, most of which would be unnoticed by her white co-workers, that create the aforementioned exhaustion. ACB describes that because her presence in the organization is remarkable or unique, her every action becomes a moment of potential scrutiny. As a white man who can be particularly ornery if my particularities are not catered to—which let’s be honest, they are most of the time—this description left me with second-hand exhaustion. Whiteness works in obvious and subtle ways. This chapter nails it.
3. Justice before Reconciliation: While the uncharitable reader might think ACB is throwing Molotov cocktails here, it’s a clear surgical strike right into the well-meaning, majority white church. For many white folks, reconciliation has too often become an easy cure-all for the complex ills of race in the 21st century. ACB writes, “Reconciliation is not a magic word that we can trot out whenever we need healing or inspiration. Deep down, I think we know this is true, because our efforts to partake of an easy reconciliation have proved fruitless in the world.” (167) Pulpit and choir exchanges are nice, but as long as power, resources, and systems remain static reconciliation is welcomed as an alternative to justice.
Who should read this?
Anyone who works or serves with women of color. Any minister, teacher, or coach of young women. Any really, really well-meaning white person who wants an “insider” look into another’s experience but doesn’t want to wear out the individual with a thousand questions or confessions.
Austin Channing Brown Site/Book
(© 2020, Justin Phillips)