Austin Channing Brown: Getting in Touch with our Anger

Written By Alexandra Brockman

Austin Channing Brown has the ability to distill essential truths always sends chills down my spine. Austin is a powerful and resonant public speaker, racial justice advocate and educator, and author, whose bestselling book, I'm Still Here, has catalyzed an indelible impact on how we perceive and discuss what it means to be a Black person, let alone a Black woman, in America. She just released a Young Adult version, which is required reading for all of our children as we work to build an equitable future. Austin is also the CEO of Herself Media, a platform creating content and narratives to provide a supportive space for those who find themselves on the outskirts of traditional power.

Today, Austin joins me in unveiling the facade of what it means to be good and how culture detrimentally enforces this burdening standard of goodness on women. We discuss the importance of anger and how it can be a navigational tool. By examining her own anger, Austin learned to move that energy toward creating community and literature that relentlessly fights for the future that America needs. Okay, let’s get to our conversation.

TRANSCRIPT:

(Edited slightly for clarity.)

ELISE LOEHNEN: Yeah, no. I mean, let's start there, [being a high achiever growing up]. I'm curious about how it showed up for you? For me, as like high achieving and earning awards and whatnot. How did it show up for you?

AUSTIN CHANNING BROWN: Oh, same. I was always a straight A student. I didn't get a B on a report card until I was in college and I called my dad crying because I was so used to, yes, just like achieve, achieve, achieve. Well, it was just expected, right? So we, I didn't get like money for doing chores or a celebration for having a good report card. It was like, well, of course, of course you do because you're a part of this family. Like, that’s what we do. So get back out there kiddo.

ELISE: Yeah. When you were crying, when you hit that B, like what was inside of you? Fear or shame?

AUSTIN: I think it was shame. I think I was like, oh, I'm not perfect. I’d been trying so hard to be perfect and um, thankfully my father, I'm not God to tell him he said. Austin, do you know what they call doctors who got B’s in in, in medical school? Was like, no. What? He was like, doctor. I was like, huh?

ELISE: That's amazing.

AUSTIN: That's what he said. And I think honestly since that moment, it has been a process of me undoing at least what I thought was the expectation. Right? And now after that talk, I was like, maybe it wasn't my parents. Like maybe this was an internal thing, right. Of trying to be. Good enough of trying to be wanted, trying to make my parents proud, trying to write and just having my sense of self deeply rooted in achievement. So it's been a process of allowing myself to be human.

ELISE: Hmm. Yeah, I mean, similarly, I was an incredibly performative child and I've spent a lot of time trying to get close to that, to understand exactly what you were saying. Well, that's in some ways what the book is about, but also is this familial and then I have hit a point of recognizing how cultural it is and, yes, my parents demanded and expected excellence, but they sent me to a school without grades. They, in so many ways, cushioned me from these sorts of achievement standards, and so I can't say that it was them. I went to this hippie alternative school where we jumped the ditch at lunchtime and went rock climbing and skiing. You know, they weren't grinding on me like that.

AUSTIN: My parents never punished me. Right. And yet I knew. I knew that some part of their pride in me was rooted in the achievements. Right? But I'm also my parents got divorced when I was eight. And that was a time when people didn't really discuss what divorce did to children. And because I was in a Christian school, there weren't a whole lot of us who had divorced parents. So, and then I was raised by my dad, which nobody was experiencing around me. So I also just felt like unrooted, unmoored a little bit, and I think school then became the place where I felt safe, where everything was the same, and so eI think it was a also just a natural place for me to excel because I really liked being there. I really liked being at school.

ELISE: Yeah, same. It’s funny, I wrote this piece. For the New York Times, that hasn't run yet, but it's about my relationship with my mom and her ambivalence about parenting or wanting to be a mother, sort of the distinction between loving us and wanting us or wanting that identity.

AUSTIN: Ooh, you're not gonna get talk about this today?

ELISE: And sort of too, what I think, as I go into sort of the performative parts, I think a lot of it was like a desire to reflect glory back onto my mom who wasn't interested. She's not a narcissist like that. She's not, she was never, she never, to this day, has taken anything I've done as her own. In a way that's almost a little bit like, aren't you proud of me? Like she really doesn’t do that. She doesn't play that game. And so it's been interesting to sort of wonder also how much of that was me saying like, look how, what a good job my mom did. Even though she kind of hated the rituals of motherhood.

AUSTIN: Yeah, I definitely felt like a burden as a child. I felt like my parents spent a ton of like, basically every dime they had on my education. And then because of the divorce, we were constantly being carted back and forth between whoever's house we needed to go to and I think, I've never said this out loud before, but I think I was just desperate for my parents to like and enjoy me but I spent most of my childhood feeling like I was just a burden.

ELISE: Mm. Austin. I mean, I get it. And it makes me think it's funny as I was working on this piece and getting closer and closer to it and this instinct that I have to defend my mother. She’s honest. She loves the piece. That's the other thing. She completely is like, this is true. This is accurate, this is true. But that feeling of, you know, and I write about this in honor, our best behavior in the chapter on sloth, like being my mother's baggage, you know, being carted around, um, not as an accessory, not as something that was displayed, but as, yeah, as a burden and feeling so much that my mother's ambition, cause she grew up in the, you know, second wave feminism and, you know, read Mrs. Magazine, but grew up in a very poor Catholic family. Total scarcity, that, you know, her ambition was sort of the pire for my own life. And that's hard, you know, but I don't think I'm alone. I don't think you're alone in, in this carrying that forward.

AUSTIN: I think that my parents, just hearing you say that, I think that my parents also felt like they had to be good, they had to be high achieving. Well, even when I was a teenager, I used to joke that my mother was born a grown up and she's just slowly gotten younger because she's been, the older she's gotten, the more she's been allowed to just be herself, you know? But the expectations, or at least the expectations she held herself to, were so high. And then my dad, actually, is one of the youngest, he's the fourth in line of five. And when he was, um, a teenager instead of going to the school that they all went to the school down the street, the school in the neighborhood, he got pulled out and sent to boarding school because he was so good at sports. And so now suddenly he is thrust into this environment where he's, you know, maybe one of 10 black people in the entire school, let alone his class, where now he has to excel, you know? And so I think both of my parents, like their identities are kind of rooted in that. And then I became a product of that in addition to their own marriage, you know?

ELISE: Yeah. Well, it's interesting hearing you say, what boarding school did your dad go to?

AUSTIN: I can't come up with it. It was in Ohio.

ELISE: Okay. When you're talking about your mom becoming progressively more childlike too, I think for so many people in the country, you know, my mom didn't really have a, I mean, she had a, a mom who was very young, very poor, no Catholic, no birth control. She did not like her children equally, you know, so my mom says like, that really helped because she didn't have favorites. She just didn't like them and so my mom is the oldest too, you know, was never mothered herself. And then you think about that tradition. And then also, you know, I write about this a a little bit in the chapter on envy, but sort of envying your children for having you as a mother is, I think alive. This therapist, Galeid Atlas, talks about that and it's really interesting, right?

AUSTIN: Yeah. That also makes me think about how the women in my life, because of those expectations around being good, also weren't allowed then to make similar choices that I made. So my mom did what she was supposed to do. She went to college and then she got married, and then she had the two kids and she followed her husband to a place she didn't wanna live. And suddenly she had this life that was like, wait a minute. Wait a minute, you know, and she couldn't pretend anymore that that was the life that she wanted, you know? Whereas I met my husband when I was in college, but I didn't feel like, oh, I have to marry him now. Right? And then we waited eight years before we had a child, cause I didn't feel like, oh, this is what I have to do now. You know, and so I was able to wait until I was ready, until I felt stable, until I felt like I had established my career until, you know, and so I have the privilege of being a different kind of mom because of the shift in societal expectations and what it means for me to be good.

ELISE: Yeah. Do you feel like you've, you've thrown that sort of, that yolk of goodness off. Do you feel like it doesn't drive your life, or is it still present for you?

AUSTIN: No, it's definitely still present. It is definitely still present.

ELISE: I know.

AUSTIN: So I'm very much a cliche in that I feel like I don't know if I'm a good mom. I don't know. You know, I'm still here. You know, the first one hit the New York Times bestsellers list, but it didn't immediately hit the New York Times bestsellers list. And so I feel like, I don't know, like, is this good?Was this good? But like, but it was good before, right? I didn't rewrite it to make it better so that it would hit the New York Times. I still struggle all the time, even when I'm on stage speaking about racial justice. I am very intentional about thinking about my audience as the person who has the least power in the room. But there's usually someone who also has their benefits tied to this place, who also is relying on them for a salary who is also right, like things that I don't. And so then what does it mean then for me to come in, in an act of solidarity with whoever has the least amount of power in the room and say what needs to be said? Right? And that is how I have to redefine goodness, right? So now, goodness isn't about who gave me the check.

It isn't about impressing whoever gave me the check, right, now, goodness is about how can I affirm and empower, right? The other generally black women in the room, you know? And so, it is definitely still an undoing and a reimagining of how I define goodness.

ELISE: Yes. I wanna talk to you about Jesus a little bit.

AUSTIN: No, I love Jesus. Let's talk.

ELISE: I know you love Jesus. I love Jesus too. And I'm a latent life, Jesus lover. I hadn't really thought much about Jesus, and I came to Jesus through Mary Magdalene. One of the things that I love so much and, and when we think about these cultural codes of goodness, which are outside of us and adjudicated by exterior authorities, et cetera, judges, professors, experts. What I love so much about Mary Magdalene and her gospel, her gnostic gospel is that, you know, and this exists I think in the Bible too, but that it is so much about, like the good is inside. This is an interior journey to the goodness inside of each of us. And so thinking about you on that stage, telling the truth so that others can tell the truth about their lives too, is much more aligned, I think, with what Jesus seemed to actually be saying.

AUSTIN: Well, I was really grateful at a young age to have two, actually a lot of, a lot of different church experiences, because I went to, you know, a private Christian school that was Assemblies of God. But then my father and my stepmom went to a black Baptist church, and then my mom skipped all over the place. So she was Presbyterian and she was Episcopalian, and she was, she was like, woo, my little butterfly, she's my little butterfly. But consequently, I figured out pretty early in my life that even though these were all Christian traditions, they all believed something different. There was no, other, than I love Jesus, there was, other than that, there was a whole lot of variation and interpretation and, you know, and, and I think that allowed me the freedom to say, oh, I like this one over here. And the one that I liked was essentially a black Jesus, right? A Jesus that understood and saw the poor and that wanted to meet needs and that would carry you through anything. And who is just so present as opposed to the God who had so many expectations on how you behave. Now let me be very clear. Black churches have plenty of expectations. Okay. I wanna be very clear. Depending on which one you go to, Ok. There could be lots of rules and many of them stupid. Okay. So I just wanna put that out there. But at the particular church right, that I was growing up in, it was so much more about the presence of God in our lives, God with us than who we were supposed to be in order to be loved by God. Right? That part didn't exist in the church that I went to, and so that was the God that I fell in love with. And consequently, right, that has helped me redefine goodness because that's so much of what Jesus was doing, right. That's why he made all the church people so mad.

ELISE: I think people, it seems like people are starting to actually recognize and acknowledge him for who he was in the Bible, but he wasn't like creating this apostolic all male tradition or, or megachurches. Like he was wandering around in the desert with 12 people, you know?

AUSTIN: Good time by himself.

ELISE: Yeah. It's pretty wild.

AUSTIN: One of the 12 betrayed him.

ELISE: Yeah, certainly. And it's interesting to think about, again, I mean the seven deadly sins, which is the super structure of my book. Again, not in the Bible. Not in the Bible. And you know, it's like Nora McInerney is like they're bible fanfic, right? So much of this is.

AUSTIN: I like that a lot.

ELISE: But so much of this is sort of, we pass it on to each other without going to the source or examining the actual meaning. And it really takes us farther from who we are.

AUSTIN: We rely on the interpretation of others, right? And, and that was actually another thing that, um, my pastor used to say all the time. He was like, you don't. You don't have to take my word for it. Like you could, you could go read it. Like you could go, you could go get dictionaries. You can like, you can study this for yourself. So here's what I see, but you don't have to take my word for it.

ELISE: yeah. The other thing that I think is so revolutionary about Jesus, when you look closely, and this very much aligns with what you talk about at length in I'm Still Here, is that he was, he was very much a proponent of right action, not right speech. And we are in, I mean, I'm guilty of this too. I'm saying it. We are such a performative culture. Throw up a post. Move on with your life, you know? It's like, here are my black friends as a white woman, using diversity as a defensive shield. And, you know, I talk to myself, well, I talk to myself anyway, but I do talk to myself about this all the time. Like, how can I say anything about any issue if I'm not actively engaging with it.

AUSTIN: Right.

ELISE: Yeah. And I mean, where do you think we are? I mean, it's been a ride in the last couple of years. Even I worry we're more performative than we've ever been. And at the same time, I feel like we have made progress. But where are you? How do you feel?

AUSTIN: I have no idea. I mean, I know how I feel. I have no idea where we are. I have no idea, things have changed so quickly that doing, you know, racial justice work and anti-racism education looked like one thing before Ferguson and then Ferguson happened and there was this major shift with Black Lives Matter. Right. And all the community organizing that came with it, right?So not just the hashtag itself, but what it meant for people to organize around that hashtag and to use that as a rallying cry for the work in their own lives, right? But then there was another shift when we got a certain president. Right. And then another shift in 2020 with the murder of George Floyd, so because there have been so many like seismic, you know, events that have happened, it's honestly really difficult for me to even say where we are right now because it hasn’t been long. We haven't been in this long enough for me to be able to even say. So I think there's only one thing that I know for sure, and the one thing that I know for sure is that there are people of color still working for change Right where they are.

That's what I know for sure. I know for sure that there are people of color who are in the work, who are doing the work for their own survival and out of a sense of calling and passion, and they are doing it with the people who say that they believe the same. Right? All the rest is fluff, right in the media, out of the media at the conference on social media. You know, it's like, who knows, right? Those things are always sort of shifting and we never know what's happening behind those posts. Right. Because it's certainly possible that there's a black woman who's like, all right, all you white women today, what you're going to do is Right. You know what I mean? Like, we have no idea. And so, yeah, I think it remains to be seen, but the history, the racial history in America has always been circular. And so we get wins and then America's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Nope, we don't like that. And tries to go backwards, and then we get wins, and then America tries to go backwards and then we get wins, and then America tries to go backwards. And I think those cycles have gotten shorter because of all the seismic shifts that have happened in the last 15 years.

ELISE: And it also feels, I don't even know how to phrase this comment or question, but I feel like hopefully maybe we're getting into a place where we can be extra nuanced around all of these Venn diagrams of oppression, for anyone who hasn't read Women, Race, and Class, the way that these, these intersect. Cause that's so much of, you know, growing up in Montana where it's rural and there's a lot of, it's just not a wealthy state, and so you run into, you know, when I go home, it's also very white, aside from a pretty large indigenous population. And so you get into these conversations where people are like, I don't, but my life is hard, you know?

AUSTIN: That's right. And it's true. Yes.

ELISE: Yes. And so it's like if we could get into deeper and deeper and more nuanced conversations where we understand the intersecting filters of all of these factors—I also feel like, I don't know if you feel this way, that there's just so much blatant misogyny happening in our culture right now, and sort of circular firing squads amongst women. I don't know. It's really interesting to me to watch where I feel like I'm watching a lot of white men just completely escape all of these conversations, all accountability. It's actually pretty rare to see a white man engaged in any social justice conversation. Right? Again, I think it goes to goodness and women being like, how do I prove my goodness?And men being like, I don't need to prove my goodness. I just need to be powerful. It's what I'm conditioned for.

AUSTIN: That's interesting. Yeah, I guess I've never really thought about what's behind it  except for power. Right. Just like a real blanket statement. Right.

ELISE: Yeah. No, I was just gonna say, I think the worst thing that you can say about a woman is that she's bad.

AUSTIN: Hmm. Ooh. Yeah. You know, because the vast majority of my community, particularly like the people that I would model my life after, right? Because those are black women, right? The only framework that I have for them is the people who move the world.

ELISE: Yeah.

AUSTIN: Right. And so men get a lot of credit, right? For whatever, right? I.e., Dr. King, right? And, he should. The man was brilliant, don't get me wrong, but he also did not create change all by himself. Black women printed those flyers, okay, to bring everybody to the church. Black women cleaned up the church after everybody was gone. Black women were sitting in meetings where they were helping to organize and simply didn't get their names listed. Black women were, you know what I mean? Like I feel like I come from a tradition where black women are the forces of change everywhere. They just don't get the credit for it.

ELISE: Yes, I agree. I think it seems, at least in progressive circles, like that's far more recognized than it was.

AUSTIN: Yeah. I think it's becoming more recognized. Right. But it's, but it's also becoming more recognized because black women have been like, listen to black women. Right. Like, that's our hashtag that's like, listen to us. Right? We, we do actually know what we're talking about, you know? And so, yeah, but it's, it's nice to have some of these, you know, we talk about nuance and that nuance is so crucial and I spend a lot of time when I do racial justice work going, trying to go deeper and trying to be like, okay, so here's how these things clash. Like here's where they come together, but here's how they clash too. Right? Trying to have that nuance conversation, But it's also really nice that there are some. I don't wanna call 'em cliches, but easy go-tos, right. That actually honor black women, because that's new for us, right? Like listen to black women and to just like, have that stop the whole room. Like that's new. And so, yeah, I would, I would say that, and this is where it becomes so tricky about social media, right? Is there is an argument to be made that it does change the world. Right. You know what I mean? And that it's not just throwing up the post.And so I think the question is, are you living what you're posting?

ELISE: Yes. A thousand percent. Is it aligned, the action and the speech?

AUSTIN: Is it aligned?

ELISE: It’s interesting, you know, you write at length about black women's anger and in that chapter in my book is about a fair amount of it is about allyship and poor allyship on the behalf of white women and the lack of tolerance culturally for angry women at all. And how this is stopped, how we're not trained in conflict as children, how girls are, you know, pressured to turn it into covert forms, whispering lions, building gossip, exclusion, et cetera, which is then attributed to us as our nature falsely. Whereas men, boys, are allowed to be verbal, be physical, be aggressive, openly, but, and then you think about social change driven by black women. And I'm curious if you think this is just an an outsider's perspective that black women have learned over time how to use their anger and metabolize it, transmute it, and take good anger and use it in the world and are far more equipped for this than any other group.

AUSTIN: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Right. And I, again, it has been out of our need for survival, right? When you are quite literally told that you are not human. What option do you have? What’s the other option other than to overthrow the system that is telling you you're not human, you know? And so this is work, this is generational work. And we have had to do that generational work largely alone, because when women got the opportunity to vote, we were purposefully left out. When the civil rights movement was happening, we were the backbone of that mission. But our names don't appear in the books, in our history books. Right. That we know how to move through systems that weren't built for us because there are so few that are. The only systems that are built for us are the ones we build together. Otherwise, we spend our entire lifetime in this country moving through systems that were not made for us, and in fact that weren't, not just not made for us, but made to squash us, made to make sure that we do not succeed and so in order to live into our own human dignity, the only option. Is to change the world because this is unacceptable.

ELISE: Austin. So when you feel that rage, when you feel that violation, when you see injustice, how do you have like a conscious process or do you understand the information and you understand, you know, cause I think a lot of white women don't know. We have not been trained, we don't know how to access it, process it, use it. Do you have a process or is it just, you just have been doing it for a long time?

AUSTIN: First of all, I think that it shows up differently for different women, right? And so it’s not prescriptive. And that's what makes it so hard, right? Because you do actually have to do the work to figure out how does anger show up for you and what happens with that anger. And so the truth is, when I was a kid, I was actually upset with myself because when I felt anger, what I wanted to be was the black woman who would start shaking her head and snapping her fingers all in your face and be like, I wish you would try me again. See what happens. But that wasn't me. Right. It's a little bit me now, but it wasn't me as a kid, you know, because I was busy being good. I was a delight to have in class. Right? It’s kind of just not me, right? Like I don't really enjoy confrontation despite being a racial justice educator, right? I would so much rather find peace, right? And that is just in me, is just who I am. And so for me, the way anger first started showing up was in creating whatever was missing.

So in my, you know, Catholic high school, the Bible was being interpreted in ways that I was like, that ain't what we think. I was like, that's very interesting, but that ain't what we'd be saying over here. And so I started a little bible study. For anyone who was interested in other interpretations of the same things we were learning in school. Right? But I didn't consciously realize that that is how I was channeling my anger. That only happened in reflection, right? Where I would look back and go, oh, I actually like I just, I don't do this with my anger, right? What I do is I go create what I want. That's what I do, right? And I invite other people to come along, right? Eventually, that rage got turned into writing. So when I first started writing my blog, it was very educational. It was, okay, here is a metaphor for how you can understand racial justice work, right? By the time we get to Ferguson, I'm like, now listen here people, I have just about had it with you, America. You know? And you can actually watch the growth of my rage through the blog. And so I think that we have to honor our anger. I think we also need to realize how often anger has fueled social change. I'll speak of the civil rights movement, cause that's what I know the most, right? It's not like black folks were like, yay, let's go on a march. Oh, I can't wait to make my sign right. Black people were pissed. Like, I'm not sitting at the back of that bus. Not one more day.

You know, I'm not doing it. I'm not, I'm not walking to the bus all early in the morning only to see it drive away purposefully. And slamming the doors in front of my face. I'm not doing it. I'm not doing it again. If I have to stand in front of this voter registrar and fill out this little application 27 times, that's what I'm gonna do because I am tired of living in a place where I am a citizen and having no say in my local government, I'm not doing it. I can't do it anymore. Right. That so much of social change is driven by rage. The question then becomes, what do you do with that rage? And I honor the black women who are like, oh, no, no, no, no. We're not doing this today. Mm-hmm. Nope, nope, nope, nope. Right? Because sometimes that's exactly what needs to happen. Sometimes what needs to happen is everybody in the room needs to get quiet, right? And a black woman needs to say, this isn't happening. Not one more time, right?

But sometimes what needs to happen is a new system needs to be built. And sometimes what needs to happen is we need an alternative. And sometimes what needs to happen is we need a movement. And sometimes what needs to happen is we need a new policy, right? Because we need, because with systemic change comes lots of opportunity. There are all kinds of ways that the system needs to be changed. But you gotta get in the game and you have to appreciate your way of channeling that anger. And truth be told, I still struggle with that and I am, I'm trying to like dig my roots, you know what I mean? Like Austen, you are a writer and it's good, and it's okay that what you are is a writer because I feel like I should be organizing the protest. Because that feels like the higher form of work, right? But the truth is, is that if I was, if that was my job, we would be walking down the wrong street, okay? That is not my gift, okay? I will get a very crucial detail wrong. I will have people there at the wrong time. I will send out the email, the wrong email on the wrong day like that is not what I should be doing. What I should be doing is writing about why we are marching. And that is the way that I channel rage into social change, in addition to showing up and speaking for the person with the least amount of power in the room.

ELISE: Yes, and you mentioned building movements and I think about women and as a collective and a lot of women who are, who I have a lot of compassion and empathy for, who are very dependent on patriarchal power for their own safety and security. They don't know how to shift, move into a different framework. I think a lot of women are stuck or feel stuck in between.

AUSTIN: Yep. Yep.

ELISE: And I have a lot of empathy for that. I get it. Because fear of security has run my life. Scarcity, all of that in the way that it ran it for my mom, what does that look like in your mind? If we could really get women, cause that's all I care about is getting women on side with other women, doesn't mean we have to all be a block in terms of every single issue, but like women supporting on side. How do we stop this madness? What does that movement, in your mind, look like?

AUSTIN: I think it requires a, a lot of things, and I think one thing it requires is vulnerability, which is something that there are only specific white women in my life who've practiced vulnerability as opposed to reaching for power. And that reach for power means that they cannot be vulnerable. It means they cannot share the deepest, darkest things that are happening in their lives. It means they cannot identify with me because I don't have power. You know, it would require a certain level of vulnerability. Right. And not defensiveness, not, well, I have problems too, right? But like a real, I might lose my child to suicide. I have a chronic illness and I'm in pain every day. I have depression. You know, like the hard things that we are dealing with. And to be able to share them with one another, to be able to say, can you see me and say, yeah, I see you. And then to take that same care and concern and be able to talk about the systems right here is, I know that you are not getting paid as much as the men in your life. I am not getting paid as much as you. What are we gonna do about both?

Right, but it requires that and then the other side is the reaching for power. You can't keep reaching for power. You have to fall in love with power, you have to fall in love with being on the outside. You have to fall in love with not being invited onto the yacht or onto the golf course or at to the resort, or whatever the privileges are right of following the system of power. You have to fall in love with being on the outside. You have to fall in love with being surrounded by your sisters, and you have to fall in love with the fight, that it brings you energy that it brings, that it keeps you alive, that it's meaningful, that it gives you a sense of purpose that you are invigorated by, what you're learning about yourself and what you're unlearning about yourself. But there, yeah, if I could sort of sum all of that up, I don't have one word for all of that, but I think that's where it lives, right? I think that's where the connections live.

ELISE: It's beautiful. And I think that part of it, being a white woman myself, even though, you know, I have a very feminist, progressive husband, I'm the primary breadwinner, et cetera, but definitely understanding my whiteness in that context, there's something too about, for a lot of these women, when you're like, oh, it’s not turning. It's not a binary fight, right? It's not men are bad, women good. It is where women feel torn, right? Like they're condemning their sons or condemning their partners but it's this like, actually the movement is not against something. It's for something. It is for a more balanced, equitable future where, yeah, men are gonna have to give stuff up, but we promise it will be okay. Right. There's not this sort of inherent antagonism that require, that feels, I think, for women, like, you've gotta burn your house and denounce your children. And I don't think that it's positioned like that, but I think that's how it's often internalized. Like, how do I burn my life? Instead of saying, actually, we're gonna evolve, we're stepping up here, we're evolving a new paradigm. and maybe you disagree. I mean, maybe it does require burning the house. I don't know.

AUSTIN: Oh no. Sometimes I get asked questions about whiteness that I'm like, I have no idea.

ELISE: You're like, I don't get you.

AUSTIN: Well, only cause I don't experience it. Right. At least not in that way, right? The fight is all I know. I don’t really know what it means to be comfortable, whether that comfort is healthy or not, right? Like, I don't, I don't, I don't really know. Well, I think we're all being in terms of sexism.

ELISE: Yeah, please. Yeah.

AUSTIN: So I am sort of constantly talking to my husband, right? About what I experience because there's so many experiences we share because we're both black, right? But then I often have to do the work of being like, oh, but honey, you would never experience this because you're a man, right? I would experience this because I'm a black woman.

ELISE: Mm-hmm.

AUSTIN: Actually one of the recent conversations that we had, was about how much more black women understand what black men go through and are willing to fight for it and are willing to explain it, and are willing to show up at the local whatever in order to, you know, demand better. But how few men really understand and can do the same for black women.

ELISE: Mm-hmm.

AUSTIN: But I don't think when I talk about sexism, I don't feel like I'm betraying my husband.

ELISE: Right.

AUSTIN: Right. I think I agree with your words. What I feel like I'm doing is calling people higher. Like, it's your choice, but you could embody this if you want.

ELISE: Yeah.

AUSTIN: Or you could come higher, right? Like you could be better and you could do better. Right. And so I think because of the work I do, right, the white women that I encounter far more are those women who believe that they are. Being called higher, right? Who are now determined to raise anti-racist children and who, right? They essentially, they're functioning out of hope. Right? And not just a like arbitrary like, oh, things are gonna get better. Right? Like a positive, you know, about like, oh, I'm going to do the work that is required in order for things to get better. so I'm gonna call my family hire and I, but, but I think we also, or at least it helps when we have each other, right? And,  you know, for all those women who are not the breadwinner, right? Who are relying. Who are getting an allowance, right? They need a sisterhood first, right? They need a sisterhood first.

ELISE: Austin, I could talk to you all day. I love you. Thank you for everything that you do.

Well, Austin Channing Brown is a writer, that is her service and her gift. And if you haven’t read I’m Still Here, what are you waiting for? And now there’s a YA version, which I perfect for every child in your life. I am going to read to you a bit from the end of the book. She writes, “This is the shadow of hope. Knowing that we may never see realization of our dreams, yet still showing up. I do not believe that I or my children or my grandchildren will live in an America that has achieved racial equality. I do not believe this is a problem that America will fix within any soon-coming generation. 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. I am not enslaved, and yet I look back and see centuries of creative evolution of the hatred for Black bodies. I look at the present—police brutality, racial disparities, backlash against being “politically correct,” hatred for our first Black president, the gutting of the Voting Rights Act, and the election of a chief executive who stoked the fire of racial animosity to win—and I ask myself, Where is your hope, Austin? The answer: It is but a shadow.” I’ll see you next week.

Alexandra Brockman
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