You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience

The essays in this anthology explore the relationship between shame and Black communities. Shame, a mechanism for white supremacy and self-hatred, pervades contemporary society. The shame enacted by white supremacy infiltrates people’s lives in intricate and damaging ways. Shame teaches people to disconnect from others, to run away from their identities, to ignore their health or mental illness, to devalue their worth, and to numb their pain. Confronting shame requires vulnerability, which can be difficult, especially for marginalized groups who have been forced into vulnerability throughout their lives. However, the collection of stories curated by Brené Brown and Tarana Burke champions the way vulnerability can help to liberate marginalized communities.

Yolo Akili Robinson explains that white supremacy correlates Blackness with shame. Deran Young asserts that Black people, and especially Black men, feel isolated from themselves and their communities because of this mechanism. However, the relationship between Black people and shame is complicated. While shame limits, oppresses, and destroys, it has also been used to offer protection to members of Black communities. In Black churches, for example, Lewis-Giggetts explains that shame is used to uphold oppressive systems that were originally designed to keep people safe.