Reflections on “I’m Still Here,” Or What Ms. Brown Taught Me, To Shut Up and Listen

Austin Channing Brown not only has an interesting name, which she deconstructs in the book, but she also has compelling perspectives and stories. Several friends had spoken enthusiastically about the book, primarily women friends on Facebook, so it was with some trepidation that I engaged the book, a book written by a woman, a Black woman. Then, later, another good friend reminded me that I had read other books at her recommendation, one by Toni Morrison and others by Maya Angelou. That said, the book was a challenging read, and one that I could only put down because there was so much to absorb and ponder, and, besides, it was time to go to sleep.

So, what did Ms. Brown teach me, and how did she engage this 70-year-old reader?

In some ways, she helped me put into words some of my emotions and beliefs about justice and advocacy. She as a Black woman insisted that I sit in a chair in the back and listen and listen intently to what she as a woman of color can teach me, a white person, a man, an elderly man, a white elderly man, and a white elderly man who is a professed Christian, can learn from her.

People like me, white people, are in her words, “exhausting.” We ask ridiculous questions, make insulting accusations and insinuations, and gather comfort from our whiteness which excludes people like her. I am a white man and I have probably been exhausting through the years to my Black friends. For that, I apologize.

People growing up as Black in Black families carry extra burdens. Living while Black in white cities or neighborhoods, or walking while Black in their own neighborhood, or having to have the talk, “what to do when someone someday calls you a n****r.” Or, how to conduct yourself in public spaces such as always walk out with your purchases in a bag, never open them up in the store, and always carry the receipt because you may be accused of stealing the items you bought. I have worked in retail businesses before, and if I treated a person of color with suspicion, and I probably did, I apologize.

People experience growing up differently. For Ms. Brown, she comments about her education and neighborhoods and all, and going back home to relatives’ homes during the holidays. She said at one point in the book that she was too Black for her white friends and too white for her Black friends. Speaking as a young woman who was maturing into adulthood, that must have been difficult to negotiate those paths. This spoke to me as a white male living in this world.

Her Black church gave her a sense of identity and aliveness that other white churches could not. Worship experiences, rituals, the preaching, the singing, the energy, and all, captivated her and gave her meaning and purpose, as I understand her. As a white, older male, I resonate with her, not in terms of identity, but in terms of the beauty of Black worship experiences. My wife and I have been to numerous through the years, and I am typically moved to tears by what I hear and feel and experience as a worshipper in Black churches where we are the only white faces in the crowd.

Her educational experiences were provocative. The white teacher who apologized to her and her classmates for seating charts that would keep the Black kids separated. The awful challenges at times of feeling compelled to speak for the entire Black race. Then there was Mr. Slavinski and the “Why We Wear the Mask” and her emotional reactions to this realization. She articulated this as a woman, and I recall men telling me through the years how they have to switch from talking the way they talk to talking the way they need to talk around white people so as to protect themselves and to not make the white people feel uncomfortable.

In college, the empowerment that she felt with Ms. McMath, her first Black teacher, was profound. Then, the Sankofa experience of traveling through the South, teamed up with another college student and her experiences and those of the white students. Then tension in Louisiana and the power of speakers and leaders. The nine words of one white student, “Doing nothing is no longer an option for me.” This was after brutal and emotional learning experiences. Ms. Brown’s history and her life collided. There was no longer distance. She says, “I did start showing up.” White people sanitize if we even address slavery and plantation life. We do not listen well to the historical narratives or to the lived experiences of people of color. We don’t show up in spaces and places that are important for them. I hear Ms. Brown as she grows in her sense of self with her history and her own lived experiences. I would love to talk face to face with her.

She critiques the misconception that she was made for white people. She realized that white people are centered in social justice efforts and all. She says, “And so I contorted myself to be the voice white folks can hear.” Then she met Dr. Simms who believed in the “power of Black history and Black culture. He believed it could change our lives.” Among other things, he made her aware of racial bias as they learned in class, analyzed news stories, and movies. Living in a racialized society within America, she heard him say, “Ain’t no friends here.” That apparently had a profound effect upon her.

Dr. Simms, Professor McMath, and a few others helped her to understand her Black self in white spaces, how to speak her voice and opinions, how to respond to racist white people, and how to find meaning and comfort in Black history and Black community.

Her stories of being a Black woman in white work spaces, even Christian work spaces was painful to read. The insensitivities of her co-workers and bosses as they critiqued her clothing, hairstyle, personality, means of communicating and problem-solving, and how she figured out how to be herself in environments that appeared welcoming but were not really welcoming. She chronicled an entire day of the forces that she met. At one time a white woman captivated by her hair tried to reach out and touch it. A conversation with her supervisor with the underlying message that she is responsible for white feelings and that her boss would not defend her. And on and on went her day. Ultimately, she realized that those environments were oriented toward shaping her to become like them, to do like them, think like them, behave like them, and to deny her own sense of self as a Black woman. Those were teachable moments for me. I’ve heard stories of white people presuming themselves into the spaces of Black people, hair touching, dress commenting, insulting double messages clothed in generosity and whiteness and all.

Her chapter on white fragility was one that I approached with much interest. Would she speak generically or would she speak out of her personhood as a Black woman to this problem? White fragility is that thing that makes people who look like me become hostile, defensive, angry, uneasy, anxious, and all manner of other things. White fragility she writes, “protects whiteness and forces Black people to fend for themselves.” In particular she deconstructs one volatile scenario with a white leader and then it dawns on her that the conversation has shifted into a mode of one that describes and defines how she should behave so as to protect the white guy’s fragile nature. She called him on it, that he was “centering” the conversation around white feelings and she was having no part of it. There are other stories like the one when she was working in the inner city of Chicago and kids and parents would come and go for a week at a time.

Nice white people, one of her chapters, was a challenging read. I consider myself a “nice white person,” pretty informed and pretty engaged, not mean-spirited toward people of color, pretty accepting. But people like me, nice white people, have to be taken care of. We need to be affirmed that our motives and agendas are good and that we are doing good things for the Black community and its people. We have that “relational defense” thing going: I have Black friends, I’m not a racist, there’s not a racist bone in my body, and other such machinations. To be called a racist is an insult. However, racism can be buried deeply within us because we have been raised in a racialized society that categorizes people by race, culture, class, and so on. We don’t want to know that Black people know us. Then there is white guilt with all of its manifestations, weeping after conference talks, apologies for “my people” doing X, Y, or Z, and her summation she was expected to “offer absolution.” And she says, “But I am not a priest for the white soul.” Ouch. Truth.

Her chapter on “the stories we tell” was convicting. There is the white collective silence that is deafening to Black people as we do not engage their stories with all of the nuances and pain and suffering and degradation that they feel and would like us to know, at least some of us. Slavery was no accident, she asserts, and neither are racism, mass incarceration, and on and on. White people tell one set of stories. Black people tell another set of stories. America tells another set of stories. We do not admit our failures. We could have ended slavery and uplifted the spirits and stories of Black people. We didn’t. We told ourselves stories of their inferiority. This chapter I will need to read again and again and again because it is rich with things that I need to ponder. I must admit that I have told inaccurate, ill-informed stories out of my own ignorance or because my education was woefully limited.

Coming to grips with her anger, as she quotes James Baldwin’s famous line, comes full circle when she engages her own anger and speaks to the anger of God at the atrocities committed against her people. God’s anger connected with her people and the freedom of belonging, healing, participating as “full members of God’s house.” As an ally, I resonate with her.

Her chapter on how to survive racism in an environment that claims to be antiracist was eye-opening. Ten things to do: ask why they want you, define your terms, hold the organization to the highest vision, find your people, have mentors and counselors, practice self-care, find donors who’ll contribute to your causes, know your rights, speak, and remember that it is not your job to change an entire organization. Practical wisdom here. This chapter should be a must-read for all leaders of organizations that want to “diversify” the organization.

Her stories of her cousin, Dalin, and the injustices that he experienced cut across two chapters, one on fear and one on God being the God of the accused. Her story is engaging as the reader can see the family, Dalin, and his presence and his absence in their lives. Her deconstruction of her rage when he died in prison felt like sacred ground. The cross and the lynching tree come to mind, a powerful work of James Cone.

Black people, she asserts, are “still here,” having survived slavery, Jim Crow, lynchings, and on and on. Racism was never eradicated, but rather it evolved. The Black Lives Matter movement speaks to the unspeakable things that Black people experience that white people are clueless about. No, not much progress has been made although we white people want to say that things have improved. Again, this chapter is rich in its descriptions and merits its own space, especially the notions that her walls collapsed between her past and history and her present in the face of the murders of the 9 people in the church against the story of the 4 girls killed during Sunday school.

I wept reading her story to her unborn child. I’ll leave that there. The story is too sacred for someone like me to attempt to summarize it.

She challenged me around the notions of racial reconciliation and justice. First, she says, we have to have justice and then we can talk and move toward reconciliation. To do otherwise is to center white feelings of needing to have done the right thing in our churches, numbers, outreach efforts, and the like. Reconciliation must be more than a window dressing. It must involve structural changes in leadership, foci, and the importance of people for sake of their value, not for what we get by having them in our sanctuaries. White churches, she says, consider our power as our birthright. And thus, we “stage” moments of reconciliation. I am convicted here, seriously convicted. Dialogue is important as are “marches and protests, books and Scriptures, art and sermons, and active participation in the coalitions seeking change-----are equally transformative.” Reconciliation, she says, is what Jesus does. Let that sink in. “What Jesus does” is reconciliation.

She concludes her book with a chapter on hope. To get too hopeful is dangerous, to be cynical appears equally dangerous, but to “stand in the shadows of hope” is hopeful, not love or niceness or patience but 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.” And she says more than that on page 176. Sacred material there.

She challenged me to think about some things. She challenged me to go deeper in things that I’ve been thinking about and working on for a while. She challenged me to do something for the sake of justice and then reconciliation.

The book is well marked up. That’ll make it a challenge when Charla reads it. Sorry, my Beloved. I have a feeling that this book will sit front and center on my desk and in my head and heart for a while.