“What is your greatest fear?”
…is the exact question asked of Dr. Hotchkins’ by his son Osiris in 2012, shortly after the untimely demise of Trayvon Martin. His answer “a hashtag,” which he considers as an eternal marker of time captured and/or lost, whether celebratory or tragic. The last five years have been the most racially hostile in recent memory. Whether we are discussing the Charleston Church murders (2015), Atlanta spa killings (2021) or Buffalo, NY massacre (2022), the outcome is an increased anxiety about what it means to be safe while being a person of color. In his new 192 page comprehensive book My Black is Exhausted. Forever in Pursuit of a Racist-free World Where Hashtags Don’t Exist, Dr. Hotchkins eloquently unpacks how we arrived these moments, what to do about it and how to successfully navigate the geographies of racism while doing so. As evidenced by numerous historic and present occurrences, Racism literally kills and in order to overcome it we must collectively act toward creating a world that is beyond racism.
In order to do so, we must examine the societal harm racism causes, monitor the trauma, plot a plan for recovery and track our collective healing. This book provides the quintessential blueprint for not only identifying the why, but also exercising the how through what Dr. Hotchkins has coined as transgenerational memory conjuring, which “is the process of story repairing where the lost and/or silenced voices of ourselves and elders overlap to create a healing mechanism where the rebuilding of the broken amongst us occurs. This process involves multidirectional narrative sharing, but only after the spiritual, intellectual, emotional and digital settings have been cleansed of impurities” (p. 180). Across sixteen chapters he vividly shares a variety of memories that frame and explain his experiences with negotiating race in order to stay safe while thriving. The halo effect is that although readers may not be of African descent there is plenty to learn about how we see, understand and appreciate racial difference.
Dr. Hotchkins is a tenured professor, creative and culture curator who has dedicated his life’s work to educating people about how to value persons of African descent by being racist-free. This highly sought-after speaker and thrives at the intersection of nerdy awkwardness and racial activism in order to manage his Black exhaustion. How do you cope with being racially exhausted? How do you have questions about race? Who is your racial accountability partner? These type of questions are broached by Bryan in his My Black is Exhausted book and serve as the catalyst for finding solutions about bringing diversity, equity, inclusion and antiracism to fruition. Join him in this quest, your vulnerability and transparency are needed… #MyBlackIsExhausted #BeyondRacism