I’M STILL HERE: 2020 Reflections from a Black Woman in a White World
By YaMinco
I recently read Austin Channing Brown’s, I’m Still Here, Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness and its relevance hit me like a ton of bricks. Yes, as a country we are dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic (which has claimed the lives of over 219,000 Americans), but as Black woman, I am also living with a racial pandemic. Police brutality is killing Black people physically—not to mention that daily we are dealing with the spirit murdering of our people.
A prime example of this was made clearly evident in the recent Amy Coney Barrett Confirmation Hearings. As a highly educated Black woman, listening to Barrett describe her daughter Vivian cut me in a way I didn’t know a white woman’s words could. I played the clip a few times because I was so taken aback by her blatant disregard for her own daughter. I mean seriously: did she even recognize that she spoke of both of her white daughters’ intellect and described Vivian as,
Coming to them from Haiti,
Arriving so weak that we were told she might never walk or talk normally,
Dead lifting as much as the male athletes at our gym, and
Has no trouble talking.
She legitimately said that she sees her oldest daughter, Emma, as likely following in her footsteps as a lawyer. But she only described Vivian as physically strong and talkative. I want to be clear that this is not an Amy Coney Barrett problem alone; this world often doesn’t see Black women outside of certain stereotypes. As Brown points out in her book, the organizations in which we work often see us through many of the same biases and prejudices. Working in education, I have lost count of the times I have heard someone label me or a student “articulate,” as if that adjective somehow doesn’t belong to people who look like me.
Brown goes on to talk about the mental gymnastics Blacks are often taught as children that, once grown, they have internalized beyond repair. She recounts a time she was in the store with her father and she picked up a toy. Her dad told her that she couldn’t have it so she put it back on the shelf and stuffed her hands into her pockets. Her father sternly lectured her about why she couldn’t touch items and then put your hands in your pockets. The lesson: if you are Black, they will assume you are trying to steal. I was absolutely taught that same lesson as a young Black girl, and as an adult, I find myself shying away from going through my purse while in the store and I still struggle with going through stores and not purchasing anything. I feel the stares as I walk through certain stores, and I am all too conscious of the assumptions people are placing on me when I enter spaces where I am not in the majority.
In an attempt to describe what it is like to be a Black woman trying to survive in a culture of professional whiteness, Brown walks us through one of her days in the office and points out the not-so-micro aggressions that she encounters. They are so common to so many Black women. In an attempt to help readers understand what it is truly like, I will share a few with you here:
If you work in a service industry (especially if the demographic that you serve is predominately Black and brown), people may mistake you for a client instead of an employee.
If you wear your hair differently in the workplace, people will likely make comments and may even attempt to touch your hair.
Your supervisor/boss will reprimand you for your tone or how you made others feel. You will also be warned about coming off as angry. Any and all behaviors will be scrutinized and seen as something that you are doing because you are Black (even if other people in the office do the same thing all of the time).
You long for break/lunchtime to go be around other Black women who will assure you that you are not crazy and offer support and encouragement.
You will be asked to explain things that other Black people have done.
You will be mistaken for another Black woman in the company (even if the two of you look nothing alike).
You will be spoken over in meetings and/or people will repeat the same thing you just said and it will then and only then gain the approval of your team.
As Brown points out, these are just a few of the daily reassurances that whiteness is ever-present and my Blackness is either questionable or non-distinct. Despite being a living witness that my Blackness is real, Brown’s words resonated so deeply with where I am in this journey to be seen, to have hope in a country I currently don’t believe in, and for the generations that will come after me that I may never know. Channing refers to it as the “shadow of hope.”
“Knowing that we may never see the realization of our dreams, and yet still showing up. I do not believe that my children or grandchildren will live in an America that has achieved racial equality…. And so I stand in the legacy of all that Black Americans have already accomplished-in their resistance, in their teachings, in their voices, in their faith-and I work toward a world unseen, currently unimaginable.”