43 pages • 1 hour read
Austin Channing BrownI'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Key Figures
Austin Channing Brown
Brown is an author and media producer who creates content centered on the experiences of Black women. Born in Toledo, Ohio, Brown was raised in a predominantly-White middle class suburb and attended majority-White schools through high school. Around the age of 10, she began attending a Black church with her father and stepmother, and her work bears the profound influence of her identity as a Christian.
Early on in her professional career, Brown worked for a series of nonprofit ministries, many of which devoted their energies to issues of housing and homelessness. Her time in this predominantly White sector presented numerous challenges, and her struggles to maintain her dignity and Black identity in this environment make up much of the first half of I’m Still Here. Brown also chronicles her struggles to reconcile certain teachings amplified by her church that run counter to her dogged pursuit of racial justice. Many of these contradictions emerge following the death of her cousin Dalin, a man sentenced to 10 years in prison on nonviolent drug charges: “I had to reject the notion that my cousin’s life was somehow less valuable because he did not meet the ‘Christian criteria’ of innocence and perfection” (145).
Brown concludes that it is impossible for her to hope for a better future, given the systemic and individual racism she encounters daily. Yet rather than fear hope’s death, she embraces it as a driving force behind her efforts to achieve restorative justice and reconciliation for Black people. Since the publication of I’m Still Here, Brown co-created “The Next Question,” a web video series featuring interviews with journalists and social justice leaders, including The New York Times’ Nikole Hannah-Jones and famed lecturer Dr. Brené Brown.
Dalin
Dalin is one of Brown’s cousins on her mother’s side. A funny and vibrant young man, Dalin faces challenges growing up in Cleveland that are wholly unfamiliar to Brown. Brown recalls a formative memory of Dalin searching for a gun so he could retrieve his stolen sneakers. Although his grandmother eventually cools him down, Brown vividly remembers the fear in Dalin’s eyes—the fear of a young man who believes it is safer to carry out vigilante justice than to call the police.
An aspiring rapper, Dalin sells drugs to fund his music career. Because of President Clinton’s 1994 crime bill, Dalin receives a 10-year sentence for his third nonviolent drug offense. While caught in the prison yard during a thunderstorm, lightning strikes and kills Dalin. Only a few weeks earlier, Brown and Dalin exchanged letters, their first communication in years. Angry at God, the state, and the police over Dalin’s death, Brown resolves to pursue justice for all Black men and women, even those who don’t fit into a narrow Christian definition of “goodness.”
Dr. Simms
A professor at North Park University who teaches African American and Mexican American History, Dr. Simms has a profound effect on Brown’s intellectual development during her college years. He came along, Brown writes, “[j]ust when I was about to lose myself to whiteness” (60). After taking his classes, racial bias in literature, film, and the news became impossible for Brown to ignore. Most memorable for Brown was Dr. Simms’s common refrain when confronted with a moment in history when a presumably progressive White person betrayed the fight for racial justice: “Ain’t no friends here.” Brown writes, “For the rest of undergrad, my professor’s words would come back to me whenever white people acted a fool” (65).
