Top 70 Austin Channing Brown Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Tone policing takes priority over listening to the pain inflicted on people of color. People of color are told they should be nicer, kinder, more gracious, less angry in their delivery, or that white people’s needs, feelings, and the thoughts should be given equal weight.”

— Austin Channing Brown

2. “Togetherness across racial lines doesn’t have to mean the uplifting of whiteness and harming of Blackness. And even though the Church I love has been the oppressor as often as it has been the champion of the oppressed, I can’t let go of my belief in Church – in a universal body of belonging, in a community that reaches toward love in a world so often filled with hate.”

— Austin Channing Brown

3. “I need a love that is troubled by injustice. A love that is provoked to anger when Black folks, including our children, lie dead in the streets. A love that can no longer be concerned with tone because it is concerned with life. A love that has no tolerance for hate, no excuses for racist decisions, no contentment in the status quo. I need a love that is fierce in its resilience and sacrifice. I need a love that chooses justice.”

— Austin Channing Brown

4. “In too many churches and organizations, listening to the hurt and pain of people of color is the end of the road, rather than the beginning.”

— Austin Channing Brown

5. “This is the shadow of hope. Knowing that we may never see the realization of our dreams, and yet still showing up.”

— Austin Channing Brown

6. “When you believe niceness disproves the presence of racism, it’s easy to start believing bigotry is rare, and that the label racist should be applied only to mean-spirited, intentional acts of discrimination. The problem with this framework – besides being a gross misunderstanding of how racism operates in systems and structures enabled by nice people – is that it obligates me to be nice in return, rather than truthful. I am expected to come closer to the racists. Be nicer to them. Coddle them.”

— Austin Channing Brown

7. “Anger is not inherently destructive. My anger can be a force for good. My anger can be creative and imaginative, seeing a better world that doesn’t yet exist. It can fuel a righteous movement toward justice and freedom.”

— Austin Channing Brown

8. “The death of hope begins in fury, ferocious as a wildfire. It feels uncontrollable, disastrous at first, as if it will destroy everything in the vicinity – but in the midst of the fury, I am forced to find my center. What is left when hope is gone? What is left when the source of my hope has failed? Each death of hope has been painful and costly. But in the mourning there always rises a new clarity about the world, about the Church, about myself, about God.”

— Austin Channing Brown

9. “White people desperately want to believe that only the lonely, isolated “whites only” club members are racist. This is why the word racist offends “nice white people” so deeply. It challenges their self-identification as good people. Sadly, most white people are more worried about being called racist than about whether or not their actions are in fact racist or harmful.”

— Austin Channing Brown

10. “I don’t know what to do with what I’ve learned,” she said. “I can’t fix your pain, and I can’t take it away, but I can see it. And I can work for the rest of my life to make sure your children don’t have to experience the pain of racism.”

— Austin Channing Brown

11. “I am not interested in love that is aloof. In a love that refuses hard work, instead demanding a bite-size education that doesn’t transform anything... I am not interested in a love that refuses to see systems and structures of injustice, preferring to ask itself only about personal intentions.”

— Austin Channing Brown

12. “I determine to offer a challenge toward transformation. For most confessions, this is as simple as asking, “So what are you going to do differently?” The question lifts the weight off my shoulders and forces the person to move forward, resisting the easy comfort of having spoken the confession. The person could, of course, dissolve into excuses, but at that point the weight of that decision belongs to them, not to me.”

— Austin Channing Brown

13. “And even though the Church I love has been the oppressor as often as it has been the champion of the oppressed, I can’t let go of my belief in Church – in a universal body of belonging, in a community that reaches toward love in a world so often filled with hate. I continue to be drawn toward the collective participation of seeking good, even when that means critiquing the institution I love for its commitment to whiteness.”

— Austin Channing Brown

14. “The march toward change has been grueling, but it is real. And all it has ever taken was the transformed – the people of color confronting past and present to imagine a new future, and the handful of white people willing to release indifference and join the struggle.”

— Austin Channing Brown

15. “White supremacy is a tradition that must be named and a religion that must be renounced. When this work has not been done, those who live in whiteness become oppressive, whether intentional or not.”

— Austin Channing Brown

16. “The monster has always been well dressed and well loved.”

— Austin Channing Brown

17. “This is partly what makes the fragility of whiteness so damn dangerous. It ignores the personhood of people of color and instead makes the feelings of whiteness the most important thing... White fragility protects whiteness and forces Black people to fend for themselves.”

— Austin Channing Brown

18. “Dr. Simms wanted us to be emotionally connected to our learning, to sit in the pain, the horror, the absurdity of America’s racist history, and to humanize those who dared stand against the system. Dr. Simms made us believe that we could follow that legacy of resistance, but one piece of his advice stood out to me more than all the others. “Ain’t no friends here.”

— Austin Channing Brown

19. “Our only chance at dismantling racial injustice is being more curious about its origins than we are worried about our comfort.”

— Austin Channing Brown

20. “Because I am a Black person, my anger is considered dangerous, explosive, and unwarranted. Because I am a woman, my anger supposedly reveals an emotional problem or gets dismissed as a temporary state that will go away once I choose to be rational. Because I am a Christian, my anger is dismissed as a character flaw, showing just how far I have turned from Jesus. Real Christians are nice, kind, forgiving – and anger is none of those things.”

— Austin Channing Brown

21. “It’s work to be the only person of color in an organization, bearing the weight of all your white co-workers’ questions about Blackness.”

— Austin Channing Brown

22. “Reconciliation requires imagination. It requires looking beyond what is to what could be. It looks beyond intentions to real outcomes, real hurts, real histories. How just, how equitable can our efforts be? What would it take to enact reparations, to make all things right?”

— Austin Channing Brown

23. “White people who expect me to be white have not yet realized that their cultural way of being is not in fact the result of goodness, rightness, or God’s blessing. Pushing back, resisting the lie, is hella work.”

— Austin Channing Brown

24. “Too often, dialogue functions as a stall tactic, allowing white people to believe they’ve done something heroic when the real work is yet to come.”

— Austin Channing Brown

25. “Far from an imposing beast, I found that white supremacy is more like a poison. It seeps into your mind, drip by drip, until it makes you wonder if your perception of reality is true.”

— Austin Channing Brown

26. “But dialogue is productive toward reconciliation only when it leads to action – when it inverts power and pursues justice for those who are most marginalized.”

— Austin Channing Brown

27. “This is partly what makes the fragility of whiteness so damn dangerous. It ignores the personhood of people of color and instead makes the feelings of whiteness the most important thing.”

— Austin Channing Brown

28. “I fell in love with a Jesus who saw the poor and sick and hurting, a Jesus who had bigger plans for me than keeping me a virgin, a Jesus who loved and reveled in our Blackness.”

— Austin Channing Brown

29. “White people are notorious for trying to turn race conversations into debates, and then becoming angry or dismissive when people of color won’t participate.”

— Austin Channing Brown

30. “There is another way.” Another way of speaking, of thinking, of being that did not need white affirmation to be valuable.”

— Austin Channing Brown

31. “Even when our babies aren’t perfect, even when they are rude or disrespectful, even when they make mistakes or fail, even when their sixteen-year-old brains tell them to do risky, stupid things, we still want them to live.”

— Austin Channing Brown

32. “If my feelings do not fit the narrative of white innocence and goodness, the burden of change gets placed on me.”

— Austin Channing Brown

33. “They will first think you are beautiful, innocent – and you will be. But as your baby fat disappears and your height comes to match ours, they will start to see you as dangerous – but we will be here to refute the lies. We will be here to remind you that you are worthy of joy and love and adventure.”

— Austin Channing Brown

34. “Rare is the ministry praying that they would be worthy of the giftedness of Black minds and hearts.”

— Austin Channing Brown

35. “But reconciliation is not about white feelings. It’s about diverting power and attention to the oppressed, toward the powerless. It’s not enough to dabble at diversity and inclusion while leaving the existing authority structure in place. Reconciliation demands more.”

— Austin Channing Brown

36. “Our life hacks include finding a cohort, a girlfriend, an ally – someone who is safe. Someone to have lunch with who doesn’t need an explanation of our being.”

— Austin Channing Brown

37. “But within my first few weeks of working there, the organization’s stereotypes, biases, or prejudices begin to emerge. Comments about my hair. Accolades for being “surprisingly articulate” or “particularly entertaining.” Requests to “be more Black” in my speech. Questions about single moms, the hood, “black-on-black crime,” and other hot topics I am supposed to know all about because I’m Black.”

— Austin Channing Brown

38. “We don’t talk about white drug dealers this way. We don’t even talk about white murderers this way. Somehow, we manage to think of them as people first, who just happened to do something bad. But the same respect is rarely afforded to Black folks. We must always earn the right to live. Perfection is demanded of Blackness before mercy or grace or justice can even be considered.”

— Austin Channing Brown

39. “The write, “reconciliation is revolutionary, that is orient to structural change.” Which means, reconciliation can never be apolitical... This is why white American churches remain so far from experiencing anything resembling reconciliation. The white Church considers power its birthright rather than its curse. And so, rather than seeking reconciliation, they stage moments of racial harmony that don’t challenge the status quo.”

— Austin Channing Brown

40. “More often than not, my experience has been that whiteness sees love as a prize it is owed, rather than a moral obligation it must demonstrate.”

— Austin Channing Brown

41. “I am convinced that one of the reasons white churches favor dialogue is that the parameters of dialogue can be easily manipulated to benefit whiteness. Tone policing takes priority over listing to the pain inflicted on people of color... But reconciliation is not about white feelings. It’s about diverting power and attention to the oppressed, toward the powerless.”

— Austin Channing Brown

42. “Whiteness wants us to be empty, malleable, so that it can shape Blackness into whatever is necessary for the white organization’s own success. It sees potential, possibility, a future where Black people could share some of the benefits of whiteness if only we try hard enough to mimic it... Rare is the ministry praying that they would be worthy of the giftedness of Black minds and hearts.”

— Austin Channing Brown

43. “It’s work to be the only person of color in an organization, bearing the weight of all your white co-workers questions about Blackness. It’s work to always be hypervisible because of your skim – easily identified as being present or absent – but for your needs to be completely invisible to those around you. It’s work to do the emotional labor or pointing out problematic racist thinking, policies, actions, and statements while desperately trying to avoid bitterness and cynicism.”

— Austin Channing Brown

44. “Our only change at dismantling racial injustice is being more curious about its origins than we are worried about our comfort. It’s not a comfortable conversation for any of us. It is risky and messy. It is haunting work to recall the sins of our past. But is this not the work we have been called to anyway? Is this not the work of the Holy Spirit to illuminate truth and inspire transformation? It’s haunting. But it’s also holy.”

— Austin Channing Brown

45. “We don’t want to acknowledge that for decades, whiteness fought against every civil right Black Americans sought – from sitting at lunch counters and in integrated classrooms to the right to vote and have a say in how our country was run.”

— Austin Channing Brown

46. “In my experience, white people who believe they are safe often prove dangerous when that identity is challenged.”

— Austin Channing Brown

47. “The white Church considers power its birthright rather than its curse.”

— Austin Channing Brown

48. “White people need to listen, to pause so that people of color can clearly articulate both the disappointment they’ve endured and what it would take for reparations to be made. Too often, dialogue functions as a stall tactic, allowing white people to believe they’ve done something heroic when the real work is yet to come.”

— Austin Channing Brown

49. “The ideology that whiteness is supreme, better, best, permeates the air we breathe – in our schools, in our offices and in our country’s common life. White supremacy is a tradition that must be named and a religion that must be renounced. When this work has not been done, those who live in whiteness become oppressive, whether intentional or not.”

— Austin Channing Brown

50. “Fortunately, Jesus doesn’t need all white people to get onboard. For me, this is freedom. Freedom to tell the truth. Freedom to create.”

— Austin Channing Brown