Editor's note: This review was originally published in San Francisco Book Review
Amid the plethora of intellectual discourse about confronting the ills of racial stratification, Rachel Ricketts’s Do Better: Spiritual Activism for Fighting and Healing from White Supremacy is a welcome change of tone and authenticity. As a racial justice educator, Ricketts cuts through the noise around well-intentioned – often scholarly – approaches to dismantling racism by focusing on the necessary “spiritual soulcare” to combat racial bias and injustice. Drawing from “a lifetime of pain” as a queer, Canadian-born, multiracial Black woman, Ricketts uses the power of personal testimony in explicitly acknowledging that anger grounds her narrative in naming the emotional, mental, and psychic harms caused by Whiteness.
While Ricketts clearly states that she wrote the book for Black and indigenous womxn of color, a reader who does not identify with either identity will find revelatory and liberatory solutions to the insidious problem of everyday racism. Ricketts specifically names everyday bouts of ostracization and marginalization leveled by white womxn on Black and indigenous womxn and offers concrete examples of acting in allyship and disrupting microaggressions.
The author offers journal prompts that get to the heart of internal, introspective dialogue required to arrive at a level of openness required for deep change. Ricketts’s focus on antiracist practices ensures that actions match professed commitments to justice and equity. Awareness is no longer enough; fighting white supremacy requires consistent intent and action. It’s a timely and excellent call-to-action for each of us to do better and to get better.
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