Do Better

by Rachel Ricketts

  We are in a time of significant strife. Collective hurt. Personal pain. Psychic, emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual anguish. These are trying times, and learning how to navigate our way through the hot dumpster fire that has become our planet is no easy or small feat. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic my heart physically ached with grief in the same way it did after my mom died. I knew Black and Indigenous folx would be hit first and hardest, and then, of course, we were. Not to mention the four-hundred-year pandemic of anti-Blackness on top of it all.

  Our lives are uncertain. We are overwhelmed by the 24/7 global news cycle highlighting violence, scarcity, and division. Climate change* has us living under a ticking time bomb, and future generations are unsure if they even have a future. Though my ancestors have been screaming from the rooftops for centuries, there is something distinctly different about the state of oppression and global disconnection at play today. I believe we are at a collective crossroads and the actions we take—or do not take—right now will change the future of our shared humxnity for all time. Shit is do or die.

  The quest for racial justice is no different. Racial tensions have been increasingly high the past few years, particularly since the 2016 election of Donald Trump, but the floodgate is about to burst, and either we prepare ourselves to cultivate the energy of the day to truly dismantle systems of white supremacy, or we will all perish beneath it. Emotionally, mentally, and spiritually if not physically. We are all right here, right now, for good reason. We are at the threshold of an entirely new era. A new way of living, being, and connecting. The white supremacist systems that have governed the majority of the globe for centuries can finally be overthrown. But if there is ever to be a chance to change the world for the better, we gotta get it together. And we have to come together. Right now.

  Many of us know this. We feel this. Hell, it’s why you’re reading this book! Still, we struggle with connecting our head with our heart. We struggle with knowing what to do and how to do it. And most important, we struggle with getting out of our own damn way. For all of these reasons it is imperative that we address the places we are prone to getting stuck. And after guiding thousands of folx through the work of racial justice I can tell you, there are some very specific areas where we repeatedly trip up. So we’re going to unpack the six obstacles I repeatedly observe getting in the way of an authentic commitment to racial justice and how they play out for white women+ and BI&WoC, and of course, we’re going to cover how we can best address the shit keeping us stuck so we can contribute to meaningful change! Can I get a hell yes?!

  #1—The Need to Be Good & Right

  The biggest obstacle that arises for women+, no matter their race, is when the need to be good and right supersedes the commitment to racial justice. In our heteropatriarchal world we are taught that being right is more important than being fair. And most, if not all, of us socialized as women or femmes are taught to be good from a young age. At all costs. We are told to be “good little girls.” To please others. To follow instructions, do as we are told, and never rock the boat. We are taught to achieve for validation, so our self-esteem is often sourced from external achievements and perceptions. Consequently, as numerous studies on the gender* confidence gap have shown, we’re afraid to fail, and when we do we are more likely to take it as an assault on our sense of worth.1 In an internal report published by Hewlett-Packard, men were found to apply for a job or promotion if they met only 60 percent of the qualifications, while women applied only if they had 100 percent of the qualifications.2

  As a recovering perfectionist myself, I can speak to this all damn day. I was obsessed with being right, doing things perfectly, and being perceived as good, worthy, and enough. I happen to be a Virgo and a Projector, so we tend to be annoyingly right about a lot of shit a lot of the time (just ask my husband); still, I can safely say my obsession with being good and right was not exactly fun for those in my midst (or for me). As a queer Black woman in a white world, I was always seeking validation and confirmation in a society constantly telling me I was wrong and less than. I also had a deep need to control, because it was a coping skill I learned to help keep me safe in response to childhood trauma. I still struggle with wanting to be right and a desire for control. But I understand that these behaviors no longer help, they hurt. Myself and those around me.

  The need to be good and right is entirely counterproductive to racial justice. You will get it wrong, without question. And this deep, inner work of exposing and addressing the ways in which we have been harmed and caused harm to others does not feel good. If you’re authentically anti-racist, you will fuck it up. And you will feel bad. In some way, shape, or form. I assure you. I have made many mistakes along the way. This book itself is an example of perfect imperfection—I can pretty much promise you I’ve fucked up somewhere. Somehow. That my imperfections will show their asses. But I strive to follow the lead of those most marginalized, do the best I can, rectify the harm I cause, and continue to learn to do better. My desire for perfection cannot become the enemy of progress. Had I let my perfectionism run the show, this book would never have come to fruition. When we are committed to being right as well as being perceived as good, to ourselves or others, we cannot get into the complicated, messy, and mistake-ridden work of addressing our privileges and minimizing our harm. For example, as a non-disabled*, cisgender, thin, light-skinned, Canadian, neurotypical*, traditionally attractive, financially secure, English-speaking, highly educated humxn in a hetero-passing relationship, I possess a lot of privilege. If I am obsessed with being good and right, then I have no capacity to understand the ways in which I am an oppressed oppressor, nor will I understand those whom I oppress and do what is required to cause less harm and dismantle systems of oppression. You cannot be committed to being good and right and be anti-racist. It just ain’t gonna work, honey. We need to be open to humility, to fucking up, to getting it wrong. To receiving and learning things that rock us to our core. Racial justice requires resilience. It commands accountability, honesty, integrity, and action. All of which are undermined by perfectionism, people pleasing, and conflict aversion. These are present in most women and femmes in differing degrees and manifestations. And our brains literally get huge hits of dopamine when we think we’re right, so we’re working against our own physiology in a sense.3

  White women+ stay all the way caught up in the need to be good and right, which is a form of white wildness*. They detect the words “racist” and “white supremacy” and immediately assume I am personally attacking them, their worthiness or their identity as a good person. But the truth is when we dive into this work, we come to realize that we’re not as “good” as we likely thought we were. We’ve caused harm. Some of it major. And though we may not have done so intentionally, we have to reckon with the consequences all the same. Most white women+ endure an identity crisis when they undertake this work, and that is painful and hard and requires loads of self-compassion to move through, for sure, but it doesn’t come close to what BI&WoC have to endure at the hands of the white supremacy white women+ perpetuate. Since white women+ aren’t used to having their identity or inherent goodness challenged in the way BI&WoC often are, especially cis white women, they are less able to tolerate feeling bad or wrong; but it’s a muscle white women+ are gonna have to flex if they want to be anti-racist. It shows up in all kinds of insidious ways, including the need for accolades simply for engaging in racial justice or anti-racism* (aka seeking “cookies”). To be clear, there will be no cookies here.

  For BI&WoC, the need to be good and right often results in dimming our light. We minimize our voice and ensure the comfort of whiteness above all else, because to be considered “good and right” as a BI&WoC, especially a Black or Indigenous woman+, is to defer to white supremacy. For example, there were many times in my life when I wanted to name an action of a white friend or colleague as racist and anti-Black, but I also wanted to be accepted and “successful” (as much as it pains me to admit).
Being good and right, according to white supremacy, meant ignoring the harms inflicted upon me. BI&WoC often can’t call racist shit out for what it is because we’ll be labeled angry, ostracized, and excluded. White women+ committed to being good and right are damn sure to inflict consequences when they are called out on their racism—be it emotional violence or otherwise.

  So how do we untangle ourselves from this ugly-ass web? We gotta get like Rumi and cross “beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing.”4 Observe when your need to be good and right is at play. When you feel defensive or uncomfortable, get curious if and how it’s arising. And when it is, know that this process of unlearning is a serious fuck you to the establishment. It is unplugging from the matrix. It is an act of deconditioning and deprogramming from the shit you’ve been taught by white supremacy from the get-go. And your mother before you and her mother before her. It is so ingrained in our way of being it may as well be part of our DNA. It’s a cancerous growth and we need to cut it the fuck out. ASAP. So, have compassion for yourself and why these harmful behaviors exist and get your booty in gear to do what is required to change. At the end of the chapter I share some soulcare prompts to help you tune in and turn up the compassion to fuel this inner and outer shift.

  #2—White Gaze*

  As a Black woman I am used to having to overfunction, overexplain, and overdefend in almost every way, but especially when it comes to explaining my race-based oppression to white folx and to white women+ specifically. Growing up in a predominantly white and wealthy community meant the folx in my midst were unwilling to learn about, let alone engage with, race. When I engage in this discussion now, I often grapple with this inner conflict: How much do I need to explain? How can I best make my case to all the white folx who will disagree? It’s an exhausting and demanding state of hypervigilance created by and for whiteness and the white gaze. Unsurprisingly, it reared its ugly head many times as I wrote this book.

  The white gaze is a concept most notably articulated by Toni Morrison, who explained that most literature, no matter whom it is authored by, is written to and for a white audience.5 And in doing so, as a non-white person, I am expected to cater my writing to white readers—to their comfort, experience, and understanding. For example, when you read “a young person rides their bicycle down the street,” what race did you imagine that person to be? When I ask this in my workshops, the overwhelming response is: white. Irrespective of the participant’s race. This expands far past the written page. The white gaze exists in nearly every book but also every home, school, church, relationship, and workplace. Be it through word, speech, or action, BI&PoC constantly live under and appease the white gaze. Whether we realize it, and so often we do not, we have all been socialized to consider white perspectives first and formulate our behaviors with the opinion of white people in mind. No matter your race, the white gaze is present right here right now. As I write, and as you read. It is one of the many insidious elements of whiteness that goes unnoticed and unaddressed. Much like the “male gaze” and the ways in which women+, consciously or unconsciously, operate within and consider the male perspective whether men are present or not.

  As a Black woman educating about race, the presence of the white gaze means I am expected to explain white supremacy, through word and speech, in a way that will best be understood and received by white people so they do not feel attacked, upset, or uncomfortable. It means I am conditioned to reducing my argument to its most basic elements, to overjustifying each and every point because I fear, based on lived experience, that the white reader will discount and disbelieve me. This exercise requires constant internal evaluation and self-policing and, to be blunt, entirely fucks with my ability to write and teach. As Toni Morrison once said, “What happens to the writerly imagination of a [B]lack author who is at some level always conscious of representing one’s race to, or in spite of, a race of readers that understands itself to be ‘universal’ or race-free?”6 Let me remind you that we are all racialized people. Nothing is neutral. Including whiteness.

  White supremacy is rooted in facts (of its own creation), figures, and left-brain analysis. As an attorney, I can do that all day. But it isn’t how we can best learn. I am not here to “prove” anything to anyone, I am here to declare and share the reality of the oppression faced by myself and people of the global majority. Especially Black and Indigenous women. I refuse to defend my humxnity or argue with those committed to debating against it. When it comes to racial justice, appeasing the white gaze is to enable white violence*, and this means we’ll never get where we need to be because BI&PoC often fear sharing their truth and white folx are too accustomed to avoiding their own discomfort (and silencing BI&PoC in order to do so). That shit will simply not fly here, my loves. We are diving deep. We are learning to tolerate our unease. Whether you’re Black, white, or otherwise—watch for the ways in which the white gaze arises as you read. This is not an if but rather a when. White and non-Black folx aren’t gonna like a lot of what I share, so y’all need to watch your ego because it will get defensive. Luckily you are not your ego, so you don’t have to give in to that noise. No matter your hue, observe the moments you want to discount what I say. Be with the instances when you feel uncomfortable with the way I brazenly call out whiteness. Be with the big emotions you will likely feel at my audacity to do so. And notice when you feel the need for more “proof” and why.

  #3—Disavowal

  Next up we have disavowal, which can be described as a denial or repudiation of responsibility. In a word: gross! Disavowal occurs when we “split the ego” by recognizing the existence of something, even if only unconsciously, and simultaneously deny its existence or our role in it. Clear as mud, right? In racial justice it plays out like this: I name that I hold a racial privilege as a light-skinned (albeit Black) person—which I just did a few pages back—and in naming that, I am acknowledging that colorism is a thing that exists but I am also, mostly unintentionally, creating distance between myself and those light-skinned Black folx who don’t name their light-skinned privilege. By naming the harm, I’m disavowing my role in the harm I am speaking to. More often than not, though, disavowal is perpetuated by white folx—no big surprise really since they have the most work to do to unlearn their white supremacy. The “anti-racist” practice of white people naming whiteness and their racism can actually reinforce white privilege*. Issa mindfuck, I know. Here’s why: it creates a sense of the “good anti-racist” white person versus the “other” unconsciously racist white person, which does nothing to dismantle the systems of white supremacy but rather reinforces them. It’s still about being good and right. Naming the oppression you cause is critical, but it does not actually eliminate that oppression. It’s the beginning of the conversation, not the end. There is no “good white people versus bad white people.” There is white people and white supremacy. Same holds true for all forms of oppression. Our naming it does not make us better or wiser or less harmful, and, ironically, believing it does, consciously or not, causes more harm. Not to mention that many white folx have now learned how to use anti-racist language without doing a damn thing to be anti-racist. As we learn about the ways in which we oppress others, let’s get more comfy with calling ourselves out, but let’s not confuse that with being anti-oppressive—there’s much more to it than that.

  #4—Lack of Meaningful Care

  Another obstacle to racial justice is that we may not actually care as much as we think we do or would like to. We want to want to care, but do we actually possess the meaningful care required to commit to massive inner and outer change? And I mean massive change, folx, a little bit here and there isn’t going to fucking fly anymore. We’re past that. Like, way. So, if we don’t sufficiently care about racial justice, we aren’t going to do what is required to make it a reality. Periodt. Many folx want to care, and they know they should. They recognize racial justice is an increasingly important issue. They know individuals and institutions need to do better. And they’re aware
that they are perpetuating white supremacy and anti-Blackness somehow. The issue is that they don’t want to have to change or give up their power and privilege—and that, my friends, means they frankly don’t give a damn. Not really. If you care, like really and truly care, you act. You change behaviors. You do what is necessary to get shit done. Every person who comes to my workshops cares about racial justice. All of you reading this book, you care. Amen! My question to you is: Do you care enough? Are you ready, able, and willing to prioritize this work? Because people are dying day in and day out at the hands of white supremacy, and I ain’t got time for you to try this half-assed. Get fully involved, or get the hell out the way.

  #5—Inability to Face Our Shadow

  This entire book is more or less based on this barrier, so of course, it’s a biggie! Our inner child is that part of us that represents and yearns for play, innocence, wonder, awe, and curiosity. We all began this life as a child, and that child still resides within us. Many of us have not acknowledged our inner child, let alone the needs of that inner child or the wounds inflicted upon us as children that are still in dire need of care. In a white supremacist society, we are taught to deny the inner child and forgo our birthright to play and heal, leaving the inner child to kick, scream, and lash out on an unconscious level. This is where the shadow self is created. Our wounded inner child gets suppressed, and thus so do all the parts of ourselves we prefer not to address or own up to, like our stubbornness, sensitivity, or jealousy. Our shadow self is the often unconscious parts of ourselves we would rather hide. But our inner child and shadow are very much part of our identity. They are important and integral parts of who we are, and our healing must include owning up to and addressing these parts.