I'm Still Here (Extra Book)

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

by Austin Channing Brown

Thanks to Tyler Miller for suggesting I read I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown. The book was suggested as an additional reading for my class on campus communities, which I think fits very nicely.  The author shares her real life experience as a black woman in a white world.  She begins by sharing how she is a ‘minority’, one of only a few black children in her school, and the experience of hearing the “n” word used by a classmate. She also details the tiring role of being an educator when a well-meaning white person shows both their privilege and their ignorance through words/actions.  What I appreciate in the book is the author’s honesty and transparency, not hiding the exhaustion resulting from her daily work as a racial justice educator.  Brown’s book differs from others by bringing in the Christian perspective, which speaks to me.  She packs a great deal of lessons in this very short 180+ page read.  For being such a young woman, Brown provides valuable life lessons, and I would add this as a must-read for all white people who really want to understand the daily challenges of living in the skin of a black person.  Ignorance doesn’t cut it, so read books like Brown’s or Renee Watson’s book (from the perspective of a high school student) or Ta-Nehisi Coates’ (a contemporary black author) who also shares his life experiences, raw and personal.  White America still needs to hear the lessons that MLK, James Baldwin, and Malcom X shared fifty years ago, many of which seem to have gone unheard.  It is more than time to be uncomfortable and hear first-hand how we are stuck as a society in the US, still bound in the chains that don’t let people of color be truly free from the verbal and non-verbal, conscious or unconscious, attacks that occur each and every day.  Important read for all.