Do Better

by Rachel Ricketts

  What is of particular importance is not succumbing to the tactics of the oppressor. We cannot dismantle the master’s house using the master’s tool, as Audre Lorde so wisely proclaimed.3 We must work to stay vigilant of how and when we act, or intentionally refrain from action, and do our best to dismantle systems of oppression with the deep understanding that we are deeply immersed in them. We must remain teachable and humble and know that being unfuckwithable doesn’t make us better than anyone else, just further along in a journey with no destination. We will always have further to go.

  Owning our power and privilege is also crucial. Continously doing our work to expose and enlighten where we most need to grow and appreciating that our evolution is a lifelong journey. Your work is to not only call in others, but call in yourself. Especially those with the most power and privilege (hi, white folx!). With every choice and every breath. And to have gratitude for those who help hold you accountable.

  #4—Protect Your Energy

  The final key element in your becoming unfuckwithable is protecting your energy. Boundaries play a major role, but they are not enough. You cannot rise to your highest being or help dismantle all systems of oppression if you are exhausted or burned out. Trust me, I’ve tried! Wasn’t cute. Part of dismantling all systems of oppression is to rage against the capitalist machine keeping us oppressed. As Tricia Hersey of the Nap Ministry says, “Rest is resistance.”4 Particularly for queer and trans Black and Indigenous women+, who have been socialized to overdo and over-accommodate in order to carry an unequal share of the collective’s mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual labor. The capitalist powers that fund and fuel white supremacy want us distracted, sick, and tired. Your rest and your healing are the revolution. Black women+ more than anyone. Ask for help, and learn how to receive it. In addition to rest, we need to practice managing how and where we expend our energy. The urgent, entitled demands of white supremacy are violent in and of themselves. Time and energy are some of the most valuable resources we have. They are also a privilege to possess. Choose how you expend them with care.

  THE ACT OF BECOMING

  I didn’t wake up unfuckwithable one morning. It was, and remains, a process. A journey. An ongoing and never-ending one at that. I get so many messages from BI&WoC asking me how. Who observe me telling it like it is while declaring fierce boundaries and think, I could never, but let me tell you: Yes, you absolutely can. I wasn’t always so outspoken. Okay, maybe a little! But not too long ago, the mere thought of saying “white supremacy” to white folx, let alone schooling them on it, would have had my tummy in a twist. For me, the act of remaining silent became more painful than speaking up. And the deeper I dove into my inner work, the more I was able to heal my own heart and share my truth, because my truth is inextricably linked to the truth of who you are, who we are, and who we can be as a collective. My pain is a reflection of the pain of the planet.

  I am also acutely aware that my privilege has granted me the ability to cut ties with whiteness in a way many BI&WoC cannot. We have no choice but to navigate white folx and white supremacy, so we have a lot of healing to do. When I began calling out white supremacy, some BI&WoC found they couldn’t relate to me anymore. They abandoned me in favor of whiteness because they didn’t want to deal with the pain that comes from facing how oppression harms us. I was there too, once upon a time. Still, I would like to encourage us to prioritize our peace above that of our oppressors wherever and whenever possible. Black women and femmes more than anyone.

  For white women+, becoming unfuckwithable means holding other white people accountable and taking intentional action to ensure there are consequences when they refuse to do so. Unfuckwithableness is giving up your allegiance to your “innocence,” rolling up your sleeves, and getting in the damn ring. It means canceling white solidarity, supporting BI&WoC, especially Black and Indigenous women+, with your body as well as your words, and giving few fucks about the ways white supremacy will label you problematic for doing so.

  No matter your race or identity, the act of becoming unfuckwithable defies white supremacy through an embodied appreciation for every element of who you are, be it your thick thighs, bold opinions, or unique talents. And that shit will ruffle feathers. Many, especially other women+, will be angered by your ability to embody your truth and freedom because they feel they’ve been given no opportunities to express their own. In many cases, they’re right. They haven’t. But becoming unfuckwithable demands we take it. That we reclaim our power, our truth, and our liberty so we can help ensure equitable power and liberty for all. Let me remind you that you are not difficult or hard to love. You aren’t too much. You are worthy, you are loved. You are enough. You are UNFUCKWITHABLE.

  Spiritual Soulcare Offering/Call to Action

  Rest & Respite

  We cannot become unfuckwithable if we’re too tired to give a fuck.

  We need to lean into our need for rest, whatever that means for us. Rest, which is not always the same as sleep, is part of how we take our power back. As Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith explains, some forms of rest include:

  Mental—a need to quiet the inner chatter or critic and clear away mental baggage

  Emotional—a need to both feel and express your emotions, and stop prioritizing others first

  Social—a need for connection and to spend time with folx who energize and support you and eliminate/reduce interactions with those who don’t

  Creative—the need to be inspired, find stillness, and experience serendipity

  Spiritual—the need to connect and align with Spirit and find inner peace

  Sensory—the need to reduce ceaseless audible or other noise, like the light pollution from screens or notifications from your phone

  Physical—the need for mind and body restoration from sleep, reduced effort, etc.5

  SOME WAYS TO GET REST, AS INSPIRED BY TRICIA HERSEY, INCLUDE:

  saying no

  quiet time alone (which could be a nap, meditating, sitting in stillness)

  not rushing to respond to emails, texts, or DMs (or deleting those not deserving of a response)

  releasing the need to be helpful

  doing something for the sake of it (not to make money)

  a long shower or bath

  taking a break from social media6

  My call to action is for you to take no action at all. Practice giving yourself permission to rest and try at least one of the forms of rest above this week. I also invite you to check in with your state of rest. Do you feel rested when you get up in the morning? Do you feel tired throughout the day? Are there certain people or places that make you feel more tired? Observe. Reflect. Set boundaries as and how necessary. You are worthy of your needs and you cannot become unfuckwithable from an empty cup.

  If, or when, you feel sufficiently rested—find a way to create more rest and ease for Black women and femmes (particularly queer and trans and/or otherwise additionally oppressed).

  NINETEEN

  Rise Up

  It’s not about supplication, it’s about power. It’s not about asking, it’s about demanding. It’s not about convincing those who are currently in power, it’s about changing the very face of power itself.

  —KIMBERLÉ WILLIAMS CRENSHAW

  Well, my loves, here we are. Our time together is nearly complete, and I hope you are feeling grounded, empowered, and unfuckwithable in your ability to move forward and take the actions necessary to dismantle oppression however and whenever it manifests. To do the inner work required for critical collective change. It may seem like shit is about as bad as it can get, but here’s the real: things are going to get a hell of a lot worse before they get any better. On an energetic level, they have to. Because the people with the most power and privilege have not been motivated to truly change… yet. Despite the increasing global chaos, they feel sufficiently comfortable. They still have money in the bank. Their well-being isn’t compromised, and they can more or less continue business as usual. There i
sn’t sufficient collective pressure to incite them to change. Some of you are these people. Society is more abundant than ever before, and yet over half of the global population—4.2 billion people—lives in poverty, most of whom are BI&PoC.1 And the top eight billionaires (all cis white men) own more than the poorest half of the planet’s population combined.2 But the tides are beginning to turn. At some future moment we will hit a collective point so low that the consequences will be borne by all. No one will suffer more from the deleterious impacts of world catastrophes driven by capitalist white supremacy than those most oppressed. As the U.S. barrels toward civil war with global consequence, many, mostly white, Americans have newfound fears and anxieties that over half of the global population have been battling for lifetimes. Will we have enough food? How will our kids survive? Am I safe? Black and Indigenous North Americans have been at war all our lives. While non-Black and non-Indigenous folx participated in our oppression. But the status quo can only last so long. The unprecedented impact of the COVID-19 global pandemic has changed the game, and the world along with it. We are in a collective healing crisis that requires collective crisis for our healing. Many believe crises—be they perceived or real—are the only ways in which we collectively produce real change. Now, more than ever, is the time to get shit done.

  It is no surprise that a pandemic of the lungs broke out shortly after much of the Amazon and Australian bush burned to the ground. Energetically, the lungs are affiliated with grief, and we are in the midst of a global collective catastrophe. Humxn supremacy has led to violent oppression of our planet and all species in it. Mother Earth herself is massively mourning. It is on us, and no one more than wealthy cis straight non-disabled white folx, to change the status quo and pressure the powerful and privileged into action. But we are running out of time to overthrow these systems of oppression before they become grossly inflated. These inequities have already become exaggerated, as we can observe through various global trends like:

  Epidemic inequities—With the increase in global health crises comes an increase in global health and economic disparities. For example, the COVID-19 pandemic led to crushing situations for the poor, LGBTTQIA+, Latinx ethnicities, and Black and Indigenous communities, who were disproportionately impacted. The CDC confirmed that due to long-standing social and health inequities, both non-Hispanic Blacks and non-Hispanic Native Americans contracted COVID-19 at five times the rate of non-Hispanic whites.3

  Environmental racism—The impact of colonial capitalism is most heavily endured by BI&WoC and the poor. For example, oil pipelines are regularly placed through Indigenous territories against Indigenous people’s will, impacting their water, soil, and way of life on a good day but decimating them upon a spill.4 Corporate pollutants like toxic waste, oil smoke, and soot are more prevalent in communities of color,5 and Black and Indigenous folx are the most adversely impacted by climate change, as we have witnessed with Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy in America, the Australian wildfires, and the desertification in Africa. Climate justice is absolutely part and parcel of racial justice.

  Digital colonialism*—American multinational corporations like Facebook can control our data, what information we receive, and how we receive it. In many countries of color, this occurs without consent.6 These organizations have also shared the data of protesters of color, especially Black Lives Matters members, with private companies that partner with U.S. law enforcement to track, target, and silence us.7 Many Black activists, myself included, have had our accounts shadowbanned or deleted for denouncing white supremacy.

  DNA discrimination—More than twenty-six million people have shared their DNA with multinational corporations for analysis, but our most private information, our genetic code, can be used to oppress as well as assess.8 The Chinese government has partnered with an American company to analyze DNA samples in order to target and oppress Uighurs, a Muslim ethnic minority.9 The DNA of the most marginalized could be used similarly by any oppressive institution, including health insurers.

  Racial wealth divide—All of the foregoing contribute to a growing racial wealth divide in America and beyond. The capitalist divide of wealth by race, along with the unequal economy, based on enslavement and stolen land, was created by and for the white and wealthy, and this divide is only growing.10

  * * *

  Inequities or not, the state of the world and the systems dominating it are not sustainable. For anyone. India and China are following the destructive development practices created by America’s and Europe’s capitalist white supremacist models,11 perhaps the reason COVID-19 exists in the first place, and we are all on a path to devastation. Our systems prioritize wealth over well-being, leaving us ill-equipped to handle global pandemics or lead joyful lives. Climate experts have confirmed we need to halve climate emissions by 2030 in order to avoid massive global disruption from climate catastrophes.12 As I write this, rogue federal troops have been unleashed in cities across the United States to silence, harm, and incarcerate those who defy the status quo. As more civilians rise up, those in control will seek to further entrench their power. We must act while we still can. We all have much to lose if things do not change, including humxnity itself. I’m not saying this to scare you, though many should likely be more scared than you are. I say this to arm you with the information for inspired action. This is not the first time we’ve had opportunity to create critical collective change, but it will almost certainly be our last.

  RISING IN RESISTANCE

  It is nearly impossible to imagine a world outside of capitalist white supremacy because it has never existed. Not while any of us have been here. I can fantasize as to what an anti-oppressive, divinely feminine, and spiritually aligned planet may be, but I don’t know of any tangible examples. And though I work night and day to help overthrow the systems as they currently exist, it is impossible for me to escape them. All of our anti-oppression and racial justice work is done inside of global capitalist white supremacy, and because of this, all of us are still very much mired in it. I often question whether it is possible to truly dismantle a system from the inside out, or if it all needs to burn down for us to have any chance. We can only get so far utilizing technology to fuel our activism when Instagram, Twitter, and all the other platforms we use are created by and for the toxic and tainted system. When I take in the vast state of worldly inequities, I frequently wonder whether we’re too far gone to make the changes necessary for a just world. Whether it’s better we all be taken by Spirit so Earth can begin again without us, as it has before. Super depressing shit, I know. But it’s real. Oppression of this scale has been around for the last few centuries at least, and though we’ve made vast improvements in many ways, not much has changed in many others. Sojourner Truth and all that. As a queer Black woman, I know better than to expect white people to get their shit together, but I am nothing without hope. Hope that this time will be different because we will open our hearts as well as our minds. Hope about all that will be possible when we commit to collective healing, when we begin to seriously peel back the bullshit and have the audacity to not only hope, but unify and act. Hope is ours to take and cultivate. No one can give it to us, nor can anyone take it away.

  One of my biggest concerns, shared by other Black activists, was that Trump would not win the 2020 U.S. presidential election and white “progressives,” especially cis white women, would go back to sticking their heads in the sand in the false and convenient hope that all would be well. For them. A consequence of their white (and other) privileges. As MLK Jr. said, the biggest obstacle for Black liberation is likely “the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice.”13 What I know for sure is that irrespective of who is or is not the president of the United States, things will not be well for anyone other than the top 1 percent. For queer and trans Black and Indigenous women+ especially. Yes, we need to do what we can within the systems as they currently exist. But the entire system, rooted in white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, ableism, c
lassism, and every other form of oppression that exists, is fundamentally fucked. There is no single person or political party that can change that. Though it is unquestionably helpful to have folx from oppressed identities with “radical” (i.e., equitable) policies in power, their participation still requires them to play the game, and the game is stacked. This is true in America as it is everywhere else, in many places even more so. What is needed is an entire overhaul of the global systems we operate in and abide by altogether. And we have hit a collective rock bottom as a means to help us get there. It didn’t have to be this way. But now our divine and Earthly assignment is a collective uprising, as led by queer and trans Black and Indigenous women+, to help change the very face of power itself. But we cannot achieve our ends by any means necessary. To do so would have us quickly reverting to the oppressor’s tactics. This does not mean we refrain from radical action, quite the contrary. But our action is led with as much love as it is rage. It means we never forget the interconnectedness of humxnity and refuse to oppress others as justification for overcoming our own oppression. Sadly, within the systems we currently operate, this oppression is all too common, even in racial justice circles.

  As certain Black and Indigenous activists and educators amass followers, taking on the cult of celebrity, they also amass the often oppressive power and privileges that come with it. We are observing how media and money continue to corrupt the mission. White supremacy infects even those whose work claims or seeks to rail against it, resulting in greed, ego, abuse, anti-Blackness, and white-washed discourse. This is no big surprise, given that most Black and Indigenous folx have never truly been listened to or validated by the white status quo. And many in the racial justice space have yet to do the inner work required to heal their racial traumas, which is precisely why it’s vital we discern between those playing the system to elicit change and those who have been caught up in the system itself. Caught up in centering whiteness. Sadly, there are several folx claiming to be in this work to support Black women+ while simultaneously stealing from and silencing us, especially those of us with less privilege. I don’t care what race you are or how many followers you have, if you knowingly cause harm to Black or Indigenous women+, you’re not about deliverance but domination. We will all need to be held accountable and welcome being held to account. Especially those of us in the spotlight leading the way. Myself included. Racial justice demands we engage critically not only with the work but with those from whom we are learning it. If collective liberation stands a chance, we will all need to unplug from the matrix to envision the world, and our roles in it, anew.