the little newsletter that might get you in big trouble
by Austin Channing Brown
Footnotes
The DEI Disconnect
Image from mana5280 via unsplash
If you listen to the current administration rail against DEI programs, you have probably noticed that the foundation of their argument is that DEI is unfair because it prioritizes identity over merit. What the administration and its supporters fail to realize is that DEI programming doesn't exist because of Black people (and other identities that are pushed to the margins in our society). DEI efforts exist because of whiteness.
Black people have always been capable, intelligent, creative, deserving. The problem around achievement has not been within. It's been external. Before we even officially became the United State of America, whiteness was already in the process of limiting access and opportunity for Black folks. It was illegal for us to read because it was dangerous for us to be able to read- not because we were incapable of learning. We were barred from education because we were capable of success, not because we were incapable. We were barred from voting and certainly from representation in politics- not because we didn't understand it, because we were a force to be reckoned with.
DEI programs exist not to make up for some deficit in us. They exist because whiteness has no idea how to actually identify merit without including racial bias. Whiteness has bypassed merit since before the U.S. founding, and instead intentionally shut out a significant portion of the population rather than compete on an equal playing field.
And by doing so, whiteness learned how to indulge nepotism. It learned how to create tests, programs, and opportunities based only on shared group traits. It learned how to create whole systems prioritizing whiteness and maleness- without even thinking about it. It learned how to exclude people legally and flippantly. And now pretends that it's the bastion of equality and fairness.
No. DEI efforts do not exist to solve a problem with blackness, but with whiteness. And therein lies the disconnect.
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MERCH
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When Kaepernick knelt, the NFL blackballed him. But in the ten years since, the questions his protest raise have not gone away. In The Perilous Fight, Kaepernick delivers his story with the same unflinching conviction that defined his most-watched moment, a single act of protest that changed American sports and culture forever. And ultimately, it is a story about the future we are all still fighting to build.
My book club will be reading at least one chapter of White Rage to better understand this moment of white backlash that we are all living through.
From the Civil War to our combustible present, White Rage reframes our continuing conversation about race, chronicling the powerful forces opposed to black progress in America.
In September I will begin a new mini series Im calling "Riots, Rage and Social Change" I am very interested in the urban riots of the 1960s, particularly in the midwest. The more I learn about northern segregation, the Civil Rights Movement at the local level (and in smaller cities) and the fallacies we have all been taught about the riots- the more I want to share what Im learning with you.
I'll be posting short videos here and on social media a little peek into the stories that struck my heart and what we just might learn for such a time as this.
Bookworm
The learning begins tomorrow on September 1st! The theme for our first book club session is Searing Rage and Quiet Hope in an Age of Authoritarianism. For the next 8 weeks, book club members will be able to freestyle their education as we read about white backlash, fear, authoritarianism, female rage, and hope.
Paid members receive not only a list of resources, but a companion reader, chat group and an invite to our virtual gathering. This session will close with special guest: Ashley Judd!
Austin Channing Brown is the author of NYT Bestseller and Reese Book Club pick, Im Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness. Her newest book, Full of Myself is already a USA Today bestseller but she's waiting to be placed on your bookshelf.
