What’s in it for me? Discover one woman’s perspective on being Black in the United States today.
At seven, Austin Channing Brown discovered why her parents chose her distinctive first name. Ever since, she has been grappling with the realities of America’s troubled relationship with race. As she grew up, she felt a stark difference between her mostly white school and the Black communities she found through her family and her church.
Austin went on to work for Christian organizations that preach love and understanding. But she was seldom far from the realities of racism. We’re clearly very far away from a truly equal society. Still, she has remained committed to working toward that goal.
In these blinks, you’ll learn
just how tough it is for a Black woman to work at a white organization;
the effort it takes to help white people admit to their racism; and
why it’s still possible to feel hopeful for the future.
As she grew up, Austin Channing Brown realized that being Black made white people see her differently.
One afternoon years ago, when the author was seven, she made her way to the front desk in her very favorite place – the library. She had a big pile of books to check out.
But the librarian was confused. She peered at the library card, eyebrows raised. Was this really her card? The author realized the problem. “Yes,” she sighed, “my name is Austin.”
This wasn’t the first time Austin’s name had caused confusion. So she asked her parents why they’d called her that.
Her mother explained: they’d chosen a name they thought would help her get ahead in life. A name that, on paper, made it look like she was male and white.
Austin’s mind was blown. She already knew “Austin” was usually a man’s name – but she hadn’t realized it was a white man’s name. This was only the start of her dawning realization of the significance of race.
The key message here is: As she grew up, Austin Channing Brown realized that being Black made white people see her differently.
Austin’s family was Black, but the schools she attended were largely white. This was the late 1980s and early 1990s. Back then, the preferred approach to race issues was color blindness – the idea that people should simply pretend not to see racial differences at all.
But that approach didn’t always guarantee a comfortable atmosphere for Black students like Austin. At elementary school, she was called the N-word. Even in senior year, she overheard a white classmate blaming affirmative action for her failure to get into her first-choice college.
Other incidents gave her pause too – like when one well-liked teacher made a startling admission to her class. The teacher told her students she’d just realized that she’d been making a racist assumption. The teacher had thought that if two Black students sat next to each other, they would disrupt the class.
Austin saw the teacher’s good intentions in admitting this, but the revelation made her uncomfortable. She hadn’t realized that sort of stereotyping really existed. Suddenly, she became aware that all her school’s teachers might be silently judging her.
Ever since that library incident, Austin had known that her race shaped people’s perceptions of her. Now, she was starting to see how deep those perceptions ran. Racism went beyond name-calling and violence. It was everywhere.
At college, Austin saw that many Americans still struggle to come to terms with Black history.
Outside of school, Austin got to know several Black communities. When Austin was ten, her newly divorced mother moved to a predominantly-Black Cleveland neighborhood. Visiting her there was a culture shock, and the Cleveland children teased Austin for “talking white.” Eventually, she made friends and came to embrace the Black culture she discovered.
She found another new community when her father took her to a warmly welcoming Black church. Austin immediately felt at home there.
And then she went to college. For the first time in her life she had Black teachers, who were inspirational to her. But some of the most important lessons she learned came from time spent with fellow students, and a harrowing trip to the South made that especially clear.
The key message here is: At college, Austin saw that many Americans still struggle to come to terms with Black history.
The trip was designed to teach the students about slavery, but the first part of it was a strange, offensive experience. On a Louisiana cotton plantation, the guides offered them a sanitized version of history. They even claimed the enslaved people were happy. And then the students – half of whom were Black – were invited to try picking cotton.
It made for an interesting bus ride afterward. The Black students expressed their anger at this romanticization – but the white students were inclined to believe what they’d just been told. It was an awkward divide. It would soon become even more awkward.
They made a stop at a museum of the history of lynching, lined with shocking photographs of people swinging from bridges, burned corpses, and happy white people looking on.
Back on the coach, the white students expressed their shock. Some wanted to distance themselves from what they had learned. They said it wasn’t their fault.
But the Black students had found the exhibition intensely personal. One even said that she was starting to think white people were just inherently evil. The atmosphere became extremely tense.
One white student offered a conciliatory thought. She said that she felt helpless in the face of what she’d learned, but no longer felt she could sit by and do nothing. It was time for her to get involved.
Austin realized that she, too, wanted to devote her life to working toward racial justice.
Being a Black woman at a white-majority company is exhausting.
When Austin started work, it was for Christian ministries that were mainly white. These organizations often claimed to be diverse and inclusive. The reality was quite different. Even when people were trying to be kind, work was still a draining experience.
Just imagine: you turn up to the lobby in the morning, and several people ask you if you’re looking for the outreach center rather than your own office. Then you get to your office, where perhaps a white colleague compliments your hair – and suddenly reaches out to touch it. When you pull back, she looks offended and confused.
This is the sort of stuff that happens every single day.
The key message here is: Being a Black woman at a white-majority company is exhausting.
Next, imagine this: Your boss invites you into her office. The colleague who reached for your hair has complained that you made her feel uncomfortable. Your boss criticizes your attitude, and asks you to improve your team-working skills.
When you try to respond, she criticizes your tone, too. She doesn’t think about how you might be feeling right now.
That afternoon, you’re working with some headphones on to block out the noise around you. Lots of employees do that. But someone comments – only to you – that the headphones make it seem like you don’t want your colleagues’ company.
A colleague also asks you about something they’ve seen on the news about urban violence. You’re assumed to be the resident expert on all things race-related.
Another person comes up to you and starts talking about a project you’ve never even heard of. After a while, you manage to work out which Black colleague she’s confused you for. You politely tell her. She looks mortified, and runs away.
Later, you give a presentation, which meets with a cautious reception. A colleague interjects with his thoughts on what you “meant” to say. Only then do people start to indicate they understand.
None of these incidents are exceptional. They’re all part of daily life for someone like Austin. And even though none of them are intended to cause offense, they still do.
And stacked on top of one another, they become seriously hard to deal with. People spend all day assuming you’re poor, exotic, and aggressive. They expect you to act as a spokesperson on race whenever they want you to. They ignore you until your views have white support.
Who wouldn’t be exhausted?
Helping white people work through racism takes a toll on Black people.
Part of Austin’s work is encouraging white people to think about racial issues. And she’s been successful. In fact, she’s sometimes been too successful.
One year on MLK Day, Austin and a white college friend, Jenny, presented their own stories to a church congregation – including an account of that coach trip to the lynching museum. They were hoping their personal experiences would get through to the congregation – and they did.
Austin came off the stage to a whole line of white people wanting to confess things to her. One after another, they confided their secrets: I once used the N-word, I’ve never dated a Black person, I don’t stand up for a person of color I work with, and so on.
Meanwhile, nobody approached Jenny. All of this white guilt was being piled exclusively onto the Black woman.
The key message here is: Helping white people work through racism takes a toll on Black people.
Of course there’s a positive side to white guilt: it’s a sign a white person is interrogating their own behavior and privileges. But for Austin, it’s clear that white guilt is closely linked to white fragility. These white people hand all their guilt over to her, because it’s just too much for them to bear.
At other times, though, the people Austin has tried to help haven’t been willing to confront their prejudices.
One example took place when she was organizing trips around a Black neighborhood in Chicago. The two-day-long trip was designed to show people the work her mission was doing to help the community. But one youth group who had signed up was overcome with fear before the end of day one. Petrified by fears of gun violence, they could barely get off the coach.
An angry father of one of the group members refused to believe that Austin was really in charge. He berated her for the supposed danger she’d put the group in. That was when she finally lost it. She told the group to leave.
On one level, she’d simply had enough. But she was also protecting the Black community members she was meant to be introducing this racist group to, as well as her own staff. It’s likely they would have ended up feeling hurt if the youth group hadn’t left.
There are limits to how much you can do to help other people improve themselves. Working toward a more just society is sometimes painfully slow.
America needs to do better at telling the true history of its Black citizens.
In a diversity training workshop that Austin was part of, the group had been talking about slavery. One woman was sobbing and sobbing. She couldn’t believe what she’d learned.
“I had no idea,” she cried.
The woman felt ashamed, and angry that nobody had ever taught her all this before.
She hadn’t realized, she said. She didn’t know that slavery had been on purpose. She’d thought it was all just some sort of terrible accident.
In a strange way, that woman had a point. The history that’s taught in America isn’t honest enough. It’s time to tell the story better.
The key message here is: America needs to do better at telling the true history of its Black citizens.
It’s too easy to glide through an American education without properly confronting the horrors of slavery. Take the astonishingly violent way in which people were kidnapped in Africa and transported across the Atlantic. Or the way the Southern economy was built on slave ownership. Or just the fact that so many Southerners chose to fight in the Civil War, for their right to enslave people.
To too many people, America’s “Jim Crow” racial segregation laws only recall offensive signs and supposedly minor inconveniences like Black people having to use different facilities – but segregation affected every aspect of Black lives. And too often, we celebrate the civil rights movement without understanding how hard-fought it was, and how much blood was shed.
The history we teach is still mired in white supremacy. It’s only by overcoming this, by telling the truth about our history, that we can work toward a better future.
Coming to terms with the history of slavery can be tough for white people, like the sobbing woman in the workshop. But for Black people, even the day-to-day realities they face can be truly infuriating. The essayist James Baldwin wrote in 1961 about the constant rage he felt about the way Black people were treated. The same holds true today.
But, Austin has discovered, anger can be a force for good. It’s her anger that fuels her work and motivates her to make a difference.
Think of Jesus in the Temple: filled with rage at the corrupt merchants, and casting them out. This was anger, yes. But it was anger that cast out the rich and corrupt – and welcomed in the poor and wounded.
Living in a white-centered world, Black people justifiably feel fear.
Austin’s white friends often look amused when, just after she meets up with them, she calls her husband. It probably seems cute to them – like they’re inseparable. It doesn’t seem very feminist.
But Austin has a good reason for making the call. It’s their way of confirming to each other that they’re safe. Because that’s not something they can take for granted.
In fact, she’s surrounded by fear – for herself, and for those close to her. Fear for her father driving through white rural areas; for her husband, in case he gets frisked by the police; and for her unborn son, and all the injustices he will experience.
The key message here is: Living in a white-centered world, Black people justifiably feel fear.
The sad story of Austin’s cousin Dalin is a good example of why this fear exists. He was arrested and imprisoned several times for drug offenses. The third time, he received a mandatory minimum sentence of ten years.
He died before his sentence was up. One day, the prison guards forgot to tell Dalin about a thunderstorm – and he was outside when it hit. He was struck by lightning.
Processing the story, Austin came to realize all the ways the system had failed her cousin – and not just in the terrible error that had led to his death. His ten-year mandatory minimum sentence was disproportionate to the crime he had committed. And what about how the police had treated him before he was locked up?
Yes, Dalin was a drug dealer doing time. But did he deserve that fate? Of course not.
There are plenty of other reminders of the dangers all around for Black people. Ferguson was one example. After Michael Brown was shot by police in August 2014, protesters took to the streets. But so did the police – and they prepared as if they were going to war, with riot gear, tear gas, and even tanks. The contrast with the casually-dressed protesters – who had a valid reason for protesting – was extreme.
And then, of course, there was Charleston in June 2015: the white supremacist shooting at a Black church. Church was one place Austin had always felt safe – until then.
Still, it was from her church’s community that Austin regained strength: praying together, singing together, standing together in solidarity.
We’re far away from an equal society, but we must believe in gradual progress.
In his powerful memoir Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote powerfully about something that tends to get overlooked – just how long slavery lasted.
An African-American born around 1750 would have had great-grandparents who were enslaved – and their own great-grandchildren might have been enslaved, too. What hope did they have of ending slavery in their own lifetime? None at all. Yet they still persevered, and resisted.
Austin, too, knows that her own grandchildren are unlikely to live in a racially equal society. The task is bigger than that, and broader than that – it’s not just going to resolve itself over a couple of generations. All we can do is work slowly toward that goal.
The key message here is: We’re far away from an equal society, but we must believe in gradual progress.
A lot of the work that gets done around race issues is superficial, especially at white-majority organizations like the Christian ones familiar to Austin. They might boast that some Black people attend their events, that they employ people of color, or hold discussions about racism. But that’s far from enough.
We need to think more carefully about what racial reconciliation really means. Because it isn’t just about getting white people and Black people to get along with each other. It certainly isn’t about helping white people feel good about themselves just for making an effort.
Reconciliation needs to be geared toward real, structural change. We need to create a world in which powerless people have a seat at the table – where they don’t have to spend their whole lives fighting to get their voices heard.
A truly equal society may sound impossible – and sure, we’re a long way off. But over many generations, we can see progress. Slavery did end; so did segregation. Little by little, we are getting there.
Those alive today may never see their dreams achieved – like that enslaved person born in 1750. It can be difficult to hold on to hope. While we like to think of hope as strong, in reality it can feel weak and useless.
What’s important is that we keep going and have faith — that we do our part in working toward a better future.
Final summary
The key message in these blinks:
It’s exhausting to be Black in a society built for white people. Even when white people are well-meaning, they often betray a deep lack of understanding. But through gradual, persistent work and a more thorough and unflinching look at America’s history, we can inch ourselves closer to a truly equal society.
Got feedback?
We’d love to hear what you think about our content! Just drop an email to remember@blinkist.com with I'm Still Here as the subject line and share your thoughts!
What to read next: Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates
I’m Still Here is an honest reflection of Austin Channing Brown’s experiences as a Black woman in modern America. Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me, referenced by Brown, tells its author’s own story in the form of an open letter to his son. For those interested in how Black writers have reflected on the experience of racism, it’s an indispensable read. Head over to the blinks to this modern classic, which has been directly credited with changing the conversation about race in America.