I am borrowing other’s words more and more as I try to listen and learn and care more about learning the right thing rather than being right all the time. And that paraphrase is just another gut punch moment from the podcast episode I listened to on my run today. Brené Brown again, because I love her, but this time interviewing Austin Channing Brown, a Black writer, speaker, creator, and activist. She wrote I’m Still Here: Black Dignity In A World Made For Whiteness which is firmly on my reading list after listening to her speak.
I could’ve quoted most of the episode back to you, but I wanted to call out one section that particularly struck me. Mostly because I felt so called out. It’s about white people liking rules . . . here’s my transcription:
Austin Channing Brown says: “White people really rules when it comes to racial justice so they can do it the correct way.”
And here’s Brené Brown’s response:
“White people like rules not so they can do it the correct way . . . it’s so that we can protect ourselves. It’s not to do the work the right way. It’s so that when we do something, like ‘you told me African American was the right thing. You told me that you don’t capitalize Black. You told me that I can say this’. So we want the rules. The rules are the fence around the ego. ‘You told me where I could go and couldn’t go and now you can kiss my ass because these were your rules.’
Let me give you an example right now. People telling Doctor Bernice King what her father meant. ‘Martin Luther King told us the rules. He told us that we should be peaceful.’
The people I talk to, even my students for the past twenty years, graduate students, me teaching classes on race and gender and policy, are saying ‘can we get a list?’
But you know what, I will also go on a PFLAG website and see what terms we should be using right now. Some of it’s good intention because I want to be in the know, but a lot of times we want rules because they protect us and they are weapons for our defense.”
Team — I like rules. I like things I can memorize and get right and if I’m honest with myself there is some self-protection woven into my good intention. But I’m learning it’s more about listening and educating yourself and doing the work not for just this week or month but for years. It’s not checking a box of the right things to say.
With Love,
Natalie