• As you read, fill out the worksheet with your personal reactions to the reading and note when you have these reactions by writing down the page number and inspiring keyword, passage, or paragraph (e.g., “This idea reminds me of…” “I think the author is wrong about this…” “What?”)
• Summarize topic transitions and main arguments and take note of where these occur.
• Note how words are defined and when these definitions occur in the text.

I’m Still Here

the world, They were teaching me to speak up until

those in the back could hear me,

School was over. Time for the real world, Turned

out Dr. Simms was right, even when I didn’t want

him to be,
5

Whiteness at Work

Confession: By the time I graduated from college,

l thought l was the white culture whisperer, I was

fearless, I thought any future encounters of racism

would rear their ugly heads like purple dragons,

and I had no doubt in my ability to slay racist non­

sense wherever I found it, l was so wrong, 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,

Being a Black woman in the professional world

of majority-white nonprofit ministries was far more

difficult than my younger self could imagine, In

school I had been surrounded by whiteness, but

colleges often encourage students to question au­

thority, to navigate cultural conflicts, to be creative

1

White People Are Exhausting

White people can be exhausting. Particularly ex­

hausting are white people who don’t know they are

white, and those who need to be white. But of all

the white people I’ve met-and I’ve met a lot of

them in more than three decades of living, study­

ing, and working in places where I’m often the only

Black woman in sight-the first I found exhausting

were those who expected me to be white.

To be fair, my parents did set them up for fail­

ure. In this society where we believe a name tells

us everything we need to know about someone’s

race, gender, income, and personality, my parents

decided to outwit everyone by giving their daughter

a white man’s name. When I was growing up, they

explained that my grandmother’s maiden name was

Reading:

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Your reactions, thoughts, meditations