Do Better

by Rachel Ricketts

  Unfuckwithable—

  The state of leaning into your power, owning your privilege, using your voice, and prioritizing your needs so you can best serve the collective, particularly those most marginalized.

  Weaponized kindness—

  Created by Leesa Renee Hall, this is using the quality of being friendly, gentle, tender, or considerate as a tool to guilt someone into abandoning their justified anger, loving boundaries, or much-needed self-care.

  White centering—

  The common, status quo tendency to center whiteness and white people’s feelings, comfort, well-being, and safety above those of BI&PoC, particularly in discussions about race and racism. An act of white supremacy.

  White entitlement—

  The belief that BI&PoC, especially Black women and femmes, need to educate white folx about race, speak to white folx kindly and compassionately about race, and otherwise behave in a way that allows white people to remain coddled and comfortable about their power and privilege.

  White exceptionalism—

  The false idea or belief held by a white person that they are a “good” white person and somehow exceptional and thus excluded from benefiting from and perpetuating systems of white supremacy and causing BI&PoC harm. Exceptionalism also means white folx believe they have acquired dominance as a racial group because they “worked harder,” as opposed to having exploited Black and Indigenous communities for economic advancement. A form of violence.

  White fragility—

  Coined by Robin DiAngelo, it is a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves, like silence, anger, guilt, or leaving the stress-inducing situation, that reinstate white racial equilibrium. This is a form of emotional violence and this term severely undermines the abusive harm these behaviors inflict, which is why I have renamed it “white wildness” (see definition on page 338).

  White gaze—

  A term created by Toni Morrison to describe the pervasive cultural assumption that the reader of a work is white and the resulting impact it creates for all, especially Black folx. The white gaze exists beyond reading and writing and includes the inherently white supremacist perspective of all white people and the ways in which they view BI&PoC, which causes BI&PoC harm.

  White innocence—

  The false belief held by a white person that they are not implicated in or perpetuating white supremacy and are therefore “innocent” in the global systems of racial oppression of BI&PoC. A form of violence.

  Whiteness—

  The state of both being white and perpetuating white supremacy. Whiteness is a constantly shifting boundary separating those who are entitled to have certain race-based privileges from those whose exploitation and vulnerability to violence are justified by their not being deemed white.

  White-passing—

  Light-skinned BI&PoC who are perceived as “white” in some or many contexts and therefore possess white privilege in those circumstances. Being white-passing can be fluid (can depend on your racial expression, who you are around, etc.), or it may be fixed, particularly when white-passing BI&PoC reject, avoid, or deny their BI&PoC ancestry. Being white-passing need not in any way invalidate your racial or cultural identity, but it does mean you possess power and privilege that darker-skinned BI&PoC do not.

  White privilege—

  Refers to the unquestioned and unearned set of advantages, entitlements, benefits, and choices bestowed on people solely because they are white (as beneficiaries of historical conquests) or white-passing. Generally white people are unaware they hold this privilege.

  White silence—

  When white or white-passing folx witness racism but refuse to say or do anything about it. A form of violence.

  White supremacist culture—

  An ethos of values and characteristics that helps to perpetuate a paradigm of race-based and other oppression. Characteristics include: individualism, perfectionism, binary thinking, power hoarding, right to comfort, exploitation, extraction, and more.

  White supremacist heteropatriarchy—

  A society or culture dominated by the superiority and dominance of white people and cisgender heterosexual men that results in the oppression of all others, particularly queer and trans Black and Indigenous women and femmes.

  White supremacy—

  The common, status quo, globally held, and often unconscious belief that white people, and thus white ideas, beliefs, actions, and ideologies, are in some way superior to all other races (especially Black and Indigenous folx). White supremacy is behind many, if not all, forms of oppression, including capitalism, fatphobia, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, and others that originated with delineating “whiteness” from “Blackness” or “Native-ness.”

  White violence—

  All forms of emotional, mental, spiritual, and physical violence perpetuated by white folx, intentionally or otherwise, toward BI&PoC, including white entitlement, white solidarity, white silence, white wildness, etc.

  White-washing—

  When white folx, as a group and as individuals, appropriate the practices, traditions, and teachings of communities of color and transform them into something more palatable or comfortable for them. BI&PoC can also white-wash their own or other BI&PoC traditions to make them more commercial or palatable to white people.

  White wildness—

  The fragile and ferocious defensive response white folx commonly have in regard to race or racism.

  Womanism—

  Created by Alice Walker, it is a social theory based on and centering the history and experiences of women+ of color, particularly Black women+. It acknowledges that Blackness is not a component of the feminism of Black women+, but instead the Blackness of a Black woman+ is the lens through which we understand our femininity.

  Woman+/Women+ of Color (WoC)—

  A highly diverse and grossly over-categorized grouping of women+ (usually referring to cis women) from a variety of socially constructed races including Black, Indigenous, South Asian, and East Asian. Folx from marginalized ethnicities, including Latinx and Jewish, are sometimes included (which I disagree with), and it is often used to intentionally erase Black women+ (for example, referring to the “experiences of WoC,” which erases misogynoir). Whenever possible, avoid this term and specifically identify the race or ethnicity you are referring to.

  Women+—

  Refers to women (cisgender or transgender), as well as anyone else who may hold less assigned gender power. The “+” is derived from Bear Hebert to include all those who self-identify as being oppressed by misogyny similar to those who identify as women, including femme, femme-passing, gender non-conforming, nonbinary, agender, genderqueer, intersex folx, and all those who live outside of identities that terms or language can describe now or in the future. This is set out as such because our gender identity may not align with how we experience power, privilege, or oppression and that power can also change based on how others do or do not perceive us (see “gender identity” for more).

  Womxn—

  An alternative spelling to “women” or “woman” that some (often cis women) believe is more inclusive and represents cis and trans women as well as other identities historically excluded from conversations and movements about women such as BI&WoC and LGBTTQIA+ women. Some also include those oppressed as women, such as femmes or femme-passing people, in this definition. Many trans activists argue this spelling is transphobic, as trans women are just women, and those who do not identify as women, such as femmes or nonbinary folx, should be separately named.

  NOTES

  Introduction

  1 Mickey ScottBey Jones, An Invitation to Brave Space, accessed August 20, 2020, https://onbeing.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/An-Invitation-to-Brave-Space.pdf.

  one—Me, Myself & I

  1 Rebecca Epstein, Jamilia J. Blake, and Thalia González, Girlhood Interrupted: The Erasure of Black Girls’ Childhood, Georgetown Law Cent
er on Poverty and Inequality, 2017, https://www.law.georgetown.edu/poverty-inequality-center/wp-content/uploads/sites/14/2017/08/girlhood-interrupted.pdf, p. 1.

  2 Ibid.

  3 Mohan B. Kumar and Michael Tjepkema, Suicide among First Nations People, Métis and Inuit (2011–2016): Findings from the 2011 Canadian Census Health and Environment Cohort (CanCHEC), Statistics Canada, June 28, 2019, https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/99-011-x/99-011-x2019001-eng.htm.

  4 James Baldwin et al., “The Negro in American Culture,” CrossCurrents 11, no. 3 (Summer 1961): 205. Available at https://www.jstor.org/stable/24456864?seq=1.

  5 Jennifer Mullan (decolonizingtherapy), “We Are Fucking Exhausted,” Instagram, April 23, 2019, https://www.instagram.com/p/BwnqwefA0WC/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link.

  6 News clip originally aired on Fox29.com (date unknown). Available at 4 Ben Media, “Black Protester in Charlotte Tells Reporter That White Lives Don’t Matter,” YouTube, September 25, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFxypvk0u88.

  7 Ibid.

  8 Dan Merica, “Trump Says Both Sides to Blame amid Charlottesville Backlash,” CNN, August 16, 2017, https://www.cnn.com/2017/08/15/politics/trump-charlottesville-delay/index.html.

  9 Arlie Russell Hochschild, The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), p. 7.

  10 Shereen Masoud, “When Non-Black PoC Hide behind Blatant White Supremacy to Ignore Their Own Complicity,” Afropunk, November 17, 2017, https://afropunk.com/2017/11/non-black-poc-hide-behind-blatant-white-supremacy-ignore-complicity/.

  two—Where We Get Stuck

  1 Katty Kay and Claire Shipman, “The Confidence Gap,” Atlantic, May 2014, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/05/the-confidence-gap/359815/.

  2 Ibid.

  3 Judith E. Glaser, “Your Brain Is Hooked on Being Right,” Harvard Business Review, February 28, 2013, https://hbr.org/2013/02/break-your-addiction-to-being.

  4 Jalal al-Din Rumi, “A Great Wagon,” in The Essential Rumi Selections, trans. Coleman Barks (Edison, NJ: Castle Books, 1995), p. 36.

  5 Susan Kelley, “Morisson Speaks on Evil, Language and the ‘White Gaze,’ ” Cornell Chronicle, March 11, 2013, https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2013/03/morrison-speaks-evil-language-and-white-gaze.

  6 Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (New York: Vintage, 1992), p. 45.

  7 Audre Lorde, “Poetry Is Not a Luxury,” in Sister Outsider (Berkeley, CA: Crossing Press, 2007), p. 39.

  three—White Supremacy Starts Within

  1 “Study: White and Black Children Biased toward Lighter Skin,” CNN, May 14, 2010, https://www.cnn.com/2010/US/05/13/doll.study/index.html.

  2 “Personality Set for Life by 1st Grade, Study Suggests,” Live Science, August 6, 2010, https://www.livescience.com/8432-personality-set-life-1st-grade-study-suggests.html.

  3 Manda Mahoney, “The Subconscious Mind of the Consumer (and How to Reach It),” Working Knowledge, January 13, 2003, https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/the-subconscious-mind-of-the-consumer-and-how-to-reach-it.

  4 Mary Elizabeth Dean, “Inner Child: What Is It, What Happened to It, and How Can I Fix It?,” BetterHelp, April 10, 2020, https://www.betterhelp.com/advice/therapy/inner-child-what-is-it-what-happened-to-it-and-how-can-i-fix-it/.

  5 “C.G. Jung: ‘One Does Not Become…,’ ” Jung Currents, http://jungcurrents.com/jung-shadow-darkness-conscious. (From Carl Jung, “The Philosophical Tree,” in Alchemical Studies 13, Collected Works of C. G. Jung [London: Routledge, 1967].)

  6 Vanissar Tarakali, “Surviving Oppression; Healing Oppression,” Tara-kali Education (blog), https://vanissarsomatics.com/surviving-oppression-healing-oppression/.

  7 Ibid.

  8 Claudia Rankine, “The Condition of Black Life Is One of Mourning,” New York Times, June 22, 2015, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/22/magazine/the-condition-of-black-life-is-one-of-mourning.html.

  9 Lorde, Sister Outsider, p. 62.

  10 Mab Segrest, Born to Belonging: Writings on Spirit and Justice (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002), p. 247.

  11 Adapted from Tarakali, “Surviving Oppression.”

  four—White Supremacy Runs the World

  1 “Genetics vs. Genomics Fact Sheet,” National Human Genome Research Institute, last updated September 7, 2018, https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/fact-sheets/Genetics-vs-Genomics.

  2 Bridget Alex, “With Ancient Human DNA, Africa’s Deep History Is Coming to Light,” Discover, February 8, 2019, https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/with-ancient-human-dna-africas-deep-history-is-coming-to-light.

  3 Janaya Future Khan, “Janaya Future Khan’s Guide to Understanding White Privilege,” Vogue, June 3, 2020, https://www.vogue.co.uk/arts-and-lifestyle/article/janaya-future-khan-privilege.

  4 Ana Gonzalez-Barrera, “Hispanics with Darker Skin Are More Likely to Experience Discrimination Than Those with Lighter Skin,” Pew Research Center, July 2, 2019, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/07/02/hispanics-with-darker-skin-are-more-likely-to-experience-discrimination-than-those-with-lighter-skin/.

  5 Equality Institute (theequalityinstitute), “The Pyramid of White Supremacy,” Instagram, March 20, 2019, https://www.instagram.com/theequalityinstitute/p/BvQiQ5UFH3F/.

  6 Ibid.

  7 Preeti Varathan, “For One Year, All the South Asians in the US Were Considered ‘White,’ ” Quartz India, September 2, 2017, https://qz.com/india/1066287/for-one-year-all-the-south-asians-in-the-us-were-considered-white/.

  8 Sarah Parvini and Ellis Simani, “Are Arabs and Iranians White? Census Says Yes, but Many Disagree,” Los Angeles Times, March 28, 2019, https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-me-census-middle-east-north-africa-race/.

  9 Adapted from Nicki Lisa Cole, “The Definition of Whiteness in American Society,” ThoughtCo., November 8, 2019, https://www.thoughtco.com/whiteness-definition-3026743.

  10 Paula Rogo, “Amanda Seales Hilariously Explains the Difference between White People and People Who Happen to Be White,” Essence, January 26, 2019, https://www.essence.com/celebrity/amanda-seales-white-people-yes-girl-podcast-hbo-comedy-special/.

  11 Bernard Marr, “How Much Data Do We Create Every Day? The Mind-Blowing Stats Everyone Should Read,” Forbes, May 21, 2018, https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2018/05/21/how-much-data-do-we-create-every-day-the-mind-blowing-stats-everyone-should-read/#78427b7460ba.

  12 James Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name (New York: Dial Press, 1961), p. 224.

  13 Adapted from “White Supremacy Culture,” Dismantling Racism Works, https://www.dismantlingracism.org/white-supremacy-culture.html (accessed July 15, 2020).

  14 “2018 Hate Crime Statistics: Victims,” Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Justice, https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2018/topic-pages/victims.

  15 Cleuci de Oliveira, “Brazil’s New Problem with Blackness,” Foreign Policy, April 5, 2017, https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/04/05/brazils-new-problem-with-blackness-affirmative-action/.

  16 John Gramlich, “Black Imprisonment Rate in the U.S. Has Fallen by a Third since 2006,” Pew Research Center, May 6, 2020, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/05/06/black-imprisonment-rate-in-the-u-s-has-fallen-by-a-third-since-2006/.

  17 Audra Williams, “Race and Food Insecurity in Canada,” Centre for Social Innovation, November 27, 2019, https://socialinnovation.org/race-and-food-insecurity-in-canada/.

  18 “Black Caribbean Pupils Three Times More Likely to Be Excluded,” Full Fact, October 5, 2016, https://fullfact.org/education/black-caribbean-pupils-three-times-more-likely-be-excluded/.

  19 Jasmine Cameron-Chileshe, “Black Mothers Are Five Times More Likely to Die in Childbirth—So What’s Being Done?” Telegraph, September 22, 2019, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/body/black-mothers-five-times-likely-die-childbirth-done/.

  20 Roni Caryn Rabin, “Huge Racial Disparities Found in Deaths Linked to Pregnancy,” New York Times, May 7, 2019, htt
ps://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/07/health/pregnancy-deaths-.html.

  21 “Conversations with White People: Dialogues about Race,” panel discusssion led by IC Bailey, A Different Booklist, Toronto, December 5, 2019.

  22 Alaina E. Roberts, “How Native Americans Adopted Slavery from White Settlers,” Al Jazeera, December 26, 2018, https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/native-americans-adopted-slavery-white-settlers-181225180750948.html.

  23 David M. Halbfinger and Isabel Kershner, “After a Police Shooting, Ethiopian Israelis Seek a ‘Black Lives Matter’ Reckoning,” New York Times, July 13, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/13/world/middleeast/ethiopian-israeli-protests-racism.html.

  24 Faulty race science created the stereotype of “the big Black woman” and associated fatness with being African. “Thinness became a form of American exceptionalism,” Sabrina Strings says (Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia [New York: New York University Press, 2019], p. 11).

  25 Combahee River Collective, “The Combahee River Collective Statement,” https://americanstudies.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/Keyword%20Coalition_Readings.pdf (accessed July 15, 2020).

  26 Kyle Powys Whyte, “White Allies, Let’s Be Honest About Decolonization,” YES!, April 3, 2018, https://www.yesmagazine.org/issue/decolonize/2018/04/03/white-allies-lets-be-honest-about-decolonization/.

  27 Robert M. Poole, “What Became of the Taíno?” Smithsonian Magazine, October 2011, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/what-became-of-the-taino-73824867/.

  28 “Jesuit Reduction,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesuit_reduction (accessed July 15, 2020).

  29 Paul Spoonley, “Ethnic and Religious Intolerance: Intolerance towards Māori,” Te Ara—The Encyclopedia of New Zealand, http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/ethnic-and-religious-intolerance/page-1 (accessed July 16, 2020).