“In the end, what matters is this: I survived.”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

“I need a love that is troubled by injustice. A love that is provoked to anger when Black folks, including our children, lie dead in the streets. A love that can no longer be concerned with tone because it is concerned with life. A love that has no tolerance for hate, no excuses for racist decisions, no contentment in the status quo. I need a love that is fierce in its resilience and sacrifice. I need a love that chooses justice.”
― Austin Channing Brown, I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness

“How to Survive Racism in an Organization that Claims to be Antiracist:

10. Ask why they want you. Get as much clarity as possible on what the organization has read about you, what they understand about you, what they assume are your gifts and strengths. What does the organization hope you will bring to the table? Do those answers align with your reasons for wanting to be at the table?

9. Define your terms. You and the organization may have different definitions of words like "justice", "diveristy", or "antiracism". Ask for definitions, examples, or success stories to give you a better idea of how the organization understands and embodies these words. Also ask about who is in charge and who is held accountable for these efforts. Then ask yourself if you can work within the structure.

8. Hold the organization to the highest vision they committed to for as long as you can. Be ready to move if the leaders aren't prepared to pursue their own stated vision.

7. Find your people. If you are going to push back against the system or push leadership forward, it's wise not to do so alone. Build or join an antiracist cohort within the organization.

6. Have mentors and counselors on standby. Don't just choose a really good friend or a parent when seeking advice. It's important to have on or two mentors who can give advice based on their personal knowledge of the organization and its leaders. You want someone who can help you navigate the particular politics of your organization.

5. Practice self-care. Remember that you are a whole person, not a mule to carry the racial sins of the organization. Fall in love, take your children to the park, don't miss doctors' visits, read for pleasure, dance with abandon, have lots of good sex, be gentle with yourself.

4. Find donors who will contribute to the cause. Who's willing to keep the class funded, the diversity positions going, the social justice center operating? It's important for the organization to know the members of your cohort aren't the only ones who care. Demonstrate that there are stakeholders, congregations members, and donors who want to see real change.

3. Know your rights. There are some racist things that are just mean, but others are against the law. Know the difference, and keep records of it all.

2. Speak. Of course, context matters. You must be strategic about when, how, to whom, and about which situations you decide to call out. But speak. Find your voice and use it.

1. Remember: You are a creative being who is capable of making change. But it is not your responsibility to transform an entire organization.”
― Austin Channing Brown, I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness

“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 "state's 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. Jim Crow meant paying taxes for services one could not fully enjoy; working for meager wages; and owning nothing that couldn't be snatched away. For many black families, it meant never building wealth and never having legal recourse for injustice. The mob violence, the burned-down homes, the bombed churches and businesses, the Black bodies that were lynched every couple of days - Jim Crow was walking through life measuring every step.

Even our celebrations of the Civil Rights Movement are sanitized, its victories accentuated while the battles are whitewashed. We have not come to grips with the spitting and shouting, the pulling and tugging, the clubs, dogs, bombs, and guns, the passion and vitriol with which the rights of Black Americans were fought against. We have not acknowledged the bloodshed that often preceded victory. We would rather focus on the beautiful words of Martin Luther King Jr. than on the terror he and protesters 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 sitting at lunch counters and in integrated classrooms to the right to vote and have a say in how our country was run.

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 drew red lines around Black neighborhoods and divested them of support given to average white citizens. We ignore that white people still avoid Black neighborhoods, still don't want their kids going to predominantly Black schools, still don't want to destroy segregation.

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. Whiteness was not ready to give up the ability to control, humiliate, or do violence to any Black body in the vicinity - all without consequence.”
― Austin Channing Brown, I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness

“It shouldn't have surprised me. I serve a God who experienced and expressed anger. One of the most meaningful passages of Scripture for me is found in the New Testament, where Jesus leads a one-man protest inside the Temple walls. Jesus leads a one-man protest inside the Temple walls. Jesus shouts at the corrupt Temple officials, overturns furniture, sets animals free, blocks the doorways with his body, and carries a weapon - a whip - through the place. Jesus throws folks out the building, and in so doing creates space for the most marginalized to come in: the poor, the wounded, the children. I imagine the next day's newspapers called Jesus's anger destructive. But I think those without power would've said that his anger led to freedom - the freedom of belonging, the freedom healing, and the freedom of participating as full members in God's house.”
― Austin Channing Brown, I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness

“Fortunately, Jesus doesn't need all white people to get onboard before justice and reconciliation can be achieved. For me, this is freedom. Freedom to tell the truth. Freedom to create. Freedom to teach and write without burdening myself with the expectation that I can change anyone. It has also shifted my focus. Rather than making white people's reactions the linchpin that holds racial justice together, I am free to link arms with those who are already being transformed. Because at no point in America's history did all white people come together to correct racial injustice. At no point did all white people decide chattel slavery should end. At no point did all white people decide we should listen to the freedom fighters, end segregation, and enact the right of Black Americans to vote. At no point have all white people gotten together and agreed to the equitable treatment of Black people. And yet, there has been change, over time, over generations, over history.”
― Austin Channing Brown, I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness

“It is rage inducing to be told that we can do anything we put our minds to, when we work at companies and ministries where no one above middle management looks like us. It is rage inducing to know my body is being judged differently at every turn - when I am late to work, when I choose to eat lunch along, when I am expressing hurt or anger. I become either a stand-in for another Black female body - without distinction between our size, our hair, our color, our voices, our interests, our names, our personalities - or a stand-in for the worst stereotypes - sassy, disrespectful, uncontrollable, or childlike and in need of whiteness to protect me from my [Black] self.”
― Austin Channing Brown, I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness

“Reconciliation requires imagination. It requires looking beyond what is to what could be. It looks beyond intentions to real outcomes, real hurts, real histories. How just, how equitable can our efforts be? What would it take to enact reparations, to make all things right?”
― Austin Channing Brown, I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness

“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. What more could Black people possibly ask than this - to not be overtly subject to the white will? "Is there more?" white innocence asks before bursting into tears at the possibility that we would date question its sincerity.”
― Austin Channing Brown, I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness

“Tone policing takes priority over listening to the pain inflicted on people of color. People of color are told they should be nicer, kinder, more gracious, less angry in their delivery, or that white people's needs, feelings, and the thoughts should be given equal weight.”
― Austin Channing Brown, I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness

“White people need to listen, to pause so that people of color can clearly articulate both the disappointment they've endured and what it would take for reparations to be made. Too often, dialogue functions as a stall tactic, allowing white people to believe they've done something heroic when the real work is yet to come.”
― Austin Channing Brown, I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness

“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.”
― Austin Channing Brown, I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness

“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 organizations 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.”
― Austin Channing Brown, I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness

“In their book Radical Reconciliation, Curtiss DeYoung and Allan Boesak unpack why this happens. They write, "reconciliation is revolutionary, that is, oriented to structural change." Which means, reconciliation can never be apolitical. Reconciliation chooses sides, and the side is always justice.

This is why white American churches remain so far from experiencing anything resembling reconciliation. 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 of 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. Even worse, when they're not paired with greater change, diversity efforts can have the opposite of their intended effect. They keep the church feeling good, innocent, maybe even progressive, all the while preserving the roots of injustice.”
― Austin Channing Brown, I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness

“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.”
― Austin Channing Brown, I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness

“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.”
― Austin Channing Brown, I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness

“The death of hope begins in fury, ferocious as a wildfire. It feels uncontrollable, disastrous at first, as if it will destroy everything in the vicinity - but in the midst of the fury, I am forced to find my center. What is left when hope is gone? What is left when the source of my hope has failed? Each death of hope has been painful and costly. But in the mourning there always rises a new clarity about the world, about the Church, about myself, about God.”
― Austin Channing Brown, I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness

“Ultimately, the reason we have not yet told the truth about this history of Black and white America is telling an ordered history of this nation would mean finally naming America's commitment to violent, abusive, exploitative, immoral white supremacy, which seeks the absolute control of Black bodies. It would mean doing something about it.

How long will it be before we finally choose to connect all the dots? How long before we confess the history of racism embedded in our systems of housing, education, health, criminal justice, and more? How long before we dig to the root?”
― Austin Channing Brown, I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness

“Because it is the truth that will set us free.

Sadly, too many of us in the church don't live like we believe this. We live as if we are afraid acknowledging the past will tighten the chains of injustice rather than break them. We live as if the ghosts of the past will snatch us if we walk through the valley of the shadow of death. So instead we walk around the valley, talk around the valley. We speak of the valley with cute euphemisms:

"We just have so many divisions in this country."
"If we could just get better at diversity, we'd be so much better off."
"We are experiencing some cultural change."

Our only chance at dismantling racial injustice is being more curious about its origins than we are worried about our comfort. It's not comfortable conversation for any of us. It is risky and messy. It is haunting work to recall the sings of our past. But is this not the work we have been called to anyway? Is this not the work of the Holy Spirit to illuminate truth and inspire transformation?”
― Austin Channing Brown, I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness

“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 that 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.

Though I knew these interpretations to be ludicrous, dealing with these reactions to any hint of my anger was enough to prevent me from speaking it. The boldness I possessed in school melted away in the face of supervisors, performance reviews, benefits packages, and the backlash that came from expecting more out my Church.”
― Austin Channing Brown, I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness

“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. Perfection is demanded of Blackness before mercy or grace or justice can even be considered. I refuse to live this way.”
― Austin Channing Brown, I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness

“They will first think you are beautiful, innocent - and you will be. But as your baby fat disappears and your height comes to match ours, they will start to see you as dangerous - but we will be here to refute the lies. We will be here to remind you that you are worthy of joy and love and adventure.”
― Austin Channing Brown, I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness

“So I have learned not to fear the death of hope. In order for me to stay in this work, hope must die. I do not enjoy the tears that come from these great disappointments. I do not look forward to future racialized traumas. I don't really want to recount all the ways that hope has let me down; it's so damn painful. but all of this comes with living, with struggling, with believing in the possibility of change. 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.”
― Austin Channing Brown, I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness

“and I ask myself, "Where is your hope, Austin?" The answer: It is but a shadow.

It is working in the dark, not knowing if anything I do will ever make a difference. It is speaking anyway, writing anyway, loving anyway. It is enduring disappointment and then getting back to work. It is knowing this book may be read only by my Momma, and writing it anyway. It is pushing back, even though my words will never be big enough, powerful enough, weighty enough to change everything. It is knowing that God is God and I am not.”
― Austin Channing Brown, I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness

“When we win the award, I feel something.
When we get the promotion, I feel something.
When we break barriers, I feel something.

But I also feels something when we are dying in the streets. When we are derided for our bodies even as white women try to imitate them. When feminism is limited to the needs of whiteness, or when Blackness is used for profit without acknowledging the brilliance of the creators.

I feel something when a white woman mocks the body of Serena Williams by stuffing padding in her skirt and top. When First Lady Michelle Obama is called a monkey. When nine men and women are murdered in a church because they are Black.”
― Austin Channing Brown, I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness

“When this happens, people of color in the organization get saddled with the task of constantly fixing the harm done by halfhearted diversity efforts. We find ourselves challenging hiring decisions that don't reflect the company's stated commitment to diversity, pushing allies to speak up in rooms where marginalized voices aren't represented, responding to events or sermons that didn't go far enough (or worse, sermons that perpetuated harmful ideas). But must we always be the prophetic voice, the dissenter, the corrector, the fixer? Organizations would be wise to tap Black women in helping to craft the direction of the organization, the vision of the publication, the purpose of the ministry. When our voices are truly desired, numbers will cease to be the sole mark of achievement.”
― Austin Channing Brown, I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness

“This is the cool place from where I demand a love that matters. In this place, I see the sun setting behind me, its light as far away as the stars, and I let the limitations of hope settle over me. I possess not the strength of hope but its weakness, its fragility, its ability to die. Because I must demand anyway. It is my birthright. It is the culmination of everything my ancestors endured, of all that my parents taught me, of the Blackness that rescued me. How dare I consider surrender simply because I want the warmth of the sun? This warmth has not been promised to me. My faith does not require it.

When the sun happens to shine, I bask in the rays. But I know I cannot stay there. That is not my place to stand. So I abide in the shadows, and let hope have its day and its death. It is my duty to live anyway.”
― Austin Channing Brown, I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness

“The company treasurer playing devil's advocate: "Why don't we want assimilation?...Don't we want to bring in people of diverse backgrounds and then become one unified organization?"

"How could I possibly I explain that the unity he desired always came at MY expense?”
― Austin Channing Brown

“...the organization wanted our racial diversity without our diversity of thought and culture.”
― Austin Channing Brown, I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness

“Whiteness wants enough blackness to affirm the goodness of whiteness, the progressiveness of whiteness, the open-heartedness of whiteness. Whiteness likes a trickle of blackness, but only that which can be controlled.”
― Austin Channing Brown, I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness