Do Better

by Rachel Ricketts

  White supremacy shows its face in a myriad of ways, one of which is the belief that individual white people are miraculously outside the collective global structures of white supremacy. This is white exceptionalism*, and it’s a farce. Straight up—it is impossible to address racism in an authentic way without addressing yourself, the harm you have caused, and the grief and loss that white supremacy inherently creates for all. If we want to burn the systems of white supremacy to the ground, and my hope is that’s why you’re here, we first have to examine ourselves. You need to explore the ways your racism, misogyny, transphobia, homophobia, classism, ableism, and/or internalized oppression are embedded in your body and how they infiltrate your every breath and relationship. Racial justice work mandates we address our own race and other oppression-based traumas and the traumas inflicted on humxns as a whole, especially queer and trans Black and Indigenous women+. It is a form of collective healing for our anger, our shame, and, most of all, our grief.

  INVESTIGATING OUR INNER CHILD

  Healing requires facing our shadow self and our wounded inner child. As we’ve discussed, all of us have endured some struggle, none of us were loved perfectly as children, and most of us still have childhood hurts and trauma in need of healing, all of which results in a wounded inner child. It is believed that a large part of our character is written in the first five years of our lives, and this plays an integral role in how we view and relate to the world.2 Mix that with the fact that, as most neuroscientists agree, around 95 percent of our mind operates at an unconscious level (including those parts storing traumatic memories),3 we come to understand that much of our worldview, including biases, are implicit and thus go unnoticed without intentional inquisition. This is precisely why we must do the inner work to acknowledge our wounded inner child and our shadow side. Our shadow self is very much present and often shows itself in inadvertent ways such as sarcasm, slips of the tongue, dreams, fantasies, oppressive worldviews, and/or projections characterized by immediate and intense emotional reactions. Our shadows contain our rage, jealousy, criticism, and ability to cause harm. We need not categorize the shadow as negative or in need of fixing; it is simply part of who we are. But issues arise when we refuse to acknowledge and accept those parts of ourselves so we can ensure they are addressed and expressed nonviolently. This becomes all the harder when we have not yet acknowledged or addressed our inner child, as our inner child is quick to behave like a toddler in a great tantrum. Our inner child is also always present and can provoke self-sabotaging, self-criticizing, passive-aggressive, or violent behaviors.4 When we acknowledge the harms we endured as a child, and the childlike needs still present within us, it creates more compassion for the fullness of who we are, including if not especially our shadows. Then we can give ourselves the tender care we require to heal our hearts and thus help heal the hearts of others.

  No matter who you are or where you come from, committing to authentic racial justice requires an upheaval and questioning of everything you once knew—be it about yourself, others, or the world. For white people and other oppressors, it often results in feeling as though the floor is falling out from beneath their feet—nothing is what they once believed it to be (whether that belief was a form of willful ignorance or not). When we engage in racial justice it is an investment in witnessing the world beyond the white supremacist status quo that has been carefully curated by those with the most power and privilege to keep them powerful and privileged, to the detriment and exclusion of all else. This requires a serious act of unlearning and relearning and, depending on your proximity to the oppressor, it can be an all-encompassing task. As I always say in my workshops, when we educate ourselves and begin to witness the world through an authentically anti-racist lens, we detach from the world as we’ve known it. For my fellow Matrix fans (hayyy!), it’s akin to Neo popping that red pill from Morpheus, dissolving the state-sanctioned illusions he had bought into, and witnessing the world as it truly is. Committing to authentic anti-racism is unplugging from the matrix of white supremacy. It is an act of awakening our hearts and minds to the racial reality and confronting all the ways we have harmed and/or been harmed within it. As a Black woman, it is deeply painful to come to terms with the omnipresence of white supremacy and the ways it has resulted in my external and internal oppression. For white folx, the pain predominantly comes from realizing their racism and how they have been complicit in global systems of dominance. And all of us feel anguish in accepting the ways we have oppressed other BI&PoC, women+, and queer or trans folx as well as ourselves. This is why the inner work is the hardest work we can do. We must first face our actions, our privileges, our beliefs and emotions. We must first face and question ourselves. Fucking scary, right?!

  I appreciate why pointing to external factors is so damn tempting. Self-growth and personal development are uncomfortable, messy, life-altering (and lifelong) commitments. Our desire to avoid pain, change, and the work necessitated by growth is strong. Our ego tries to convince us that we are in life-and-death situations—that a change to our worldview or self-identification is the same as facing a lion in the jungle. We get mired in flight, fight, freeze, or fawn. This shit is no joke! And this is precisely why we must commit to racial justice with all we’ve got—from the inside out. If we are not addressing the shadow self that resides within each of us, how can we expect to bring those facets of ourselves to the light for our personal and collective healing?

  Doing the deep inner work to connect with our inner child, shadow self, and unconscious is imperative for addressing the inner harms that may be impairing our ability to show up for ourselves and others as well as illuminate the oppressive behaviors formed in early childhood. As Carl Jung said, “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious [which we will!]. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular.”5

  White supremacy has us operating from the head over the heart, such that making the darkness conscious is an inconceivable task. We’ve been conditioned to fear ourselves. Our emotions. Our hearts. When we are unable to access our intuition or acknowledge our feelings, we cannot show ourselves kindness, let alone those with an experience entirely different from our own. We are rewarded when we move from the rational, logic-based, or scientific spaces and reprimanded when we operate from the intuitive, emotional, spiritual, or unknown. Leaning into our emotional intuition is deemed irrational, unworthy of trust. There is good reason why so many of us, especially women+, are terrified to reveal our own shit, tap into our intuitive knowledge, and heal our hearts—it can feel like emotional if not physical death. For many of our ancestors, it has. If you believe in past lives (I do), then perhaps you yourself have been oppressed or otherwise burned at the stake for embodying your emotions.

  This is precisely why Spiritual Activism—invoking Spirit and partaking in culturally informed practices to help us face our shadow, better withstand our discomfort, and transmute our pain so we can fight racial oppression and contribute to raising the collective consciousness—is so damn vital. It gets to the root of our individual and shared evils. It is how we can personally and collectively get, and stay, free.

  THE GRIEF INHERENT IN RACIAL JUSTICE

  I define grief as the normal and natural humxn emotional response to a loss, change, or lack of change of any kind, usually exhibited by deep sadness and/or other conflicting feelings. This is a big, long, wordy definition (sorry not sorry), so let’s slice it up into bite-size chunks, shall we? We shall.

  First off, grief is entirely normal. Many of us were taught that grieving is some maladaptive, overdramatic reaction. It’s not. It is a natural response to a change or lack of change of any kind. Any time we experience a change—like a move, breakup, job loss, miscarriage, end of a friendship, even happy shit like marriage, a job promotion, or becoming a parent—grief may arise. Grief can also come from a lack of change—for example, financial hardship, infertility, or four hundred yea
rs of violent oppression. Our grief presents itself as uniquely as the stars in the sky. We may feel sad, depressed, hopeless, guilty, or remorseful. But we may also feel a range of other emotions, be it before a triggering event, after, or all at once. Emotions like anger, relief, shame, resentment, hope, or joy. Grief is less of an emotion and more of an experience. When I hold space for people in my racial justice workshops, I am mostly holding space for their grief. The personal grief we each feel as a result of being the oppressed and/or oppressor. And the collective grief we endure at the hands of a hateful system that seeks to stamp out people who do not fall within the “correct” category of race, gender, identity, age, religion, citizenship, language, ability, sexual orientation, class, beauty standards, and the like. Somatic educator and intuitive Dr. Vanissar Tarakali states, “Oppression is a social trauma that traumatizes—although in very different ways—both the targets and the agents of oppression.”6 For targets of racial oppression this social trauma is continuous because it has existed for generations, and omnipresent because it is perpetuated by every system and institution around the globe. Racism traumatizes BI&PoC by restricting our social, civil, political, and other basic humxn needs required for survival. It also engages physical, emotional, mental, and/or spiritual violence as a tool, be it actual or potential.7

  As a queer Black woman, white supremacy has caused me a lifetime of pain, from the loss of professional opportunities, love interests, and friendships, to constantly being deemed as less smart, pretty, worthy, or capable, to witnessing Black people murdered without repercussion solely because they’re Black. As Claudia Rankine titled her New York Times article, “The Condition of Black Life Is One of Mourning.” She goes on to share that “the unarmed, slain [B]lack bodies in public spaces turn grief into our everyday feeling that something is wrong everywhere and all the time, even if locally things appear normal.”8 This is exacerbated by our gender socialization, as Black women and femmes are most often the primary caretakers of our communities. As Audre Lorde said, “Black women traditionally have had compassion for everybody else except ourselves.”9

  The grief created by white supremacy is egregious for Black folx, both historically and present-day, but we are by no means alone. First Nations communities in Canada and the United States are forced to endure national celebrations of Indigenous genocide every Thanksgiving, not to mention continuous assaults on their land and identity. Latinx* children of a variety of races are dying in cages at the U.S.-Mexico border while detained migrant Black, Indigenous, and Latinx women+ are being sterilized without consent. Trans folx, especially Black trans women, are murdered at epidemic rates worldwide, and on it goes. The constant assault on my welfare and the welfare of BI&PoC worldwide is designed to keep us stuck, distracted, and fighting for our right to simply exist. There can be little if any thriving when the system is designed to keep us focused on merely surviving.

  HOW WHITE SUPREMACY HARDENS OUR HEARTS

  White supremacy creates and perpetuates grief for all, but no one more than Black and Indigenous women+. It is a system of oppression that includes and perpetuates heteropatriarchy, transphobia, homophobia, fatphobia, ableism, classism, ageism, anti-Semitism, colorism, xenophobia, and all forms of oppression. It requires oppressors such as men+, white folx, and cis straight folx to cut themselves off from themselves, their humxnity, their own worthiness and inner peace, in order to believe in the oppression of others based on race, gender identity, sexual orientation, or otherwise. As such, social trauma is continuous and omnipresent for oppressors as well as the oppressed. Transphobia harms cisgender folx by subscribing to a false gender binary and reprimanding those who don’t fit within subscribed “male” or “female” gender identity roles. Patriarchy harms men+ by causing them to feel shame for having basic humxn needs like vulnerability. The result of internalizing dominance is deep disconnect.

  White supremacy requires all oppressors, especially white folx, to deny, dissociate, and defend. It robs oppressors of their inner peace and the ability to fully arrive in their heart space or genuinely connect with those they oppress, especially Black and Indigenous women+. In the words of white queer feminist Mab Segrest, “The pain of dominance is always qualitatively different from the pain of subordination. But there is a pain, a psychic wound, to inhabiting and maintaining domination.”10 There is a lot of inner, unconscious work required for oppressors to subjugate others based solely on race, gender identity, sexual orientation, or the like.

  White supremacy requires all oppressors, most notably white folx, to internalize dominance. As Dr. Tarakali states, dominance requires:

  numbness

  obliviousness to the oppression and those they oppress generally

  denial and defensiveness

  avoiding, attacking, and blaming those they oppress

  refusal to take responsibility for oppression

  self-absorption11

  What all of this adds up to, whether you are Black or white, man+ or woman+, gender conforming or not, oppressor or oppressed, is a whole lot of grief. Now, straight up, the grief white supremacy causes white people pales in comparison to what BI&PoC endure at the shit end of the discrimination stick. BI&PoC, especially queer and trans Black and Indigenous women+, have little choice but to contend with multiple systems of oppression that seek to exterminate us because of our race, gender identity, and other marginalized identities. Alternatively, the race-based grief experienced by white people is often so subtle it goes unnoticed, to themselves and the collective alike. Still, learning about the ways in which they have undoubtedly oppressed others, caused harm, and perpetuated white supremacy is tough! I know because I witness it in my work every day. To deny the existence of grief endured by all humxns is doing racial justice a serious disservice. Harm is cyclical. And the extent to which white people are unable or unwilling to address their grief and trauma is the extent to which we can rest assured a world free from the systems of white supremacy they created, perpetuate, and benefit from will never come to pass. Like, ever. The same holds true for anyone attempting to address the oppression they perpetuate on other grounds.

  It is imperative to make space and honor all of our grief, both personally and collectively, so that we can heal our hearts and do the work required to create a just and free world for all and particularly for those who have been the most marginalized. Listen, I know this shit is hard. Unpacking white supremacy and its impact is triggering on a mental, spiritual, emotional, and physical level. It takes courage, bravery, and resilience. It is daily, lifelong work. It is hard AF. And—it must be done. You’ll be learning how to do that inner work in these here pages.

  Facing our shadow and committing to authentic, as opposed to performative or superficial, racial justice is some of the hardest work you will ever do. White supremacy has intentionally conditioned us not to do this work. Because our healing will set us free from the prison created by the most powerful and privileged, and a liberated society will overthrow oppressive systems and stakeholders. This revolution, led by queer and trans Black and Indigenous folx, has already begun.

  Trust me when I tell you that embracing my shadow side and facing the racial reality are not things that just fell into my lap. Shit took work. When I began to confront my shadow self and address the ways in which I perpetuated white supremacy and other forms of oppression, it was physically and psychically painful. I had to acknowledge the ways I had favored white people in my relationships. How I had toned myself down in order to appease whiteness, ensure I did not make white people uncomfortable, and, in a word, survive. I got real honest about the ways I had participated in colorism and the ways I had oppressed other BI&PoC and queer or trans folx through thought, speech, action, or inaction. I’m not proud to admit that I laughed along with my white high school friends when we partied on the Musqueam First Nation reserve. It sickens me to recall when I believed bisexuality* wasn’t real. And it aches to think back on my four-year-old self and the ways she felt she had to
stifle her truth and conform to whiteness in order to be accepted. Still, facing my truth has allowed me to accept and transform it. I still feel all the feelings because I am humxn, but I’m no longer stuck in grief, anger, fear, or shame. Instead, I am devoted to and have the capacity for healing—mine and others. This is why committing to racial justice requires working toward healing our own pain in order to get to the vital work of creating a world where the most oppressed can find freedom.

  SOULCARE VERSUS SELF-CARE

  Spiritual Activism requires us to do the deep inner anti-racist work required for collective external shifts, and that inner work starts with and is sustained by a spiritual self-care I call “soulcare.” This is a care that tends to our hearts, helps process our pain, and nourishes our souls. Though the term “self-care” has partial roots in Black feminist activist circles (like those of Audre Lorde), it has become an overused and white-washed capitalistic term void of meaning. I’ve witnessed far too many white women+ (especially cis women) tell me they are not engaging in politics or watching the news as a form of self-care when they never engaged with it in the first place. That may seem caring for you, but your inaction is also perpetuating white supremacy and the oppression of others. I’ve witnessed ignorance, denial, spiritual bypassing, tone-policing, and gaslighting—all forms of emotional violence—justified under the guise of self-care. Under white supremacy, self-care is often equivalent to self-indulgence and selfishness. Prioritizing ourselves is not the problem, but the issue arises when our self-care is not about care at all but indulgence that causes harm. All of which is in fact the least caring act you can take.