Racial justice educator and author Rachel Ricketts on why society needs to reckon with the stress and trauma it inflicts on Black women and femmes.
In 2020, I found myself overcome by grief and despair that felt new not in its existence, but in its potency. The heartache borne from thirty-six years of racial, ancestral and familial trauma, on top of the global health pandemic, Black genocide, ongoing anti-Black police brutality, and expectations that simply because I am a racial justice educator, I have no right to protect myself from ongoing racial violence, became too much for my system to bear. Too overwhelming. Too…everything. Had it not been for my connection to Spirit and the support of other Black women and femmes, I’m not sure I would have survived.
I had the privilege of getting a hold on my situational depression before it caused me or others grave harm, but I wonder how many other Black women and femmes have died, and continue to die, as a result of the tremendous trauma that misogynoir inflicts on us and our families. If I got to this point—someone with financial security, healthcare, a partner, decades of therapy and spiritual healing, a law degree and training in racial justice—what is happening to my fellow Black women and femmes with less privilege? Women like Erica Garner, who died of a heart attack at 27 after fighting for justice for her father, Eric Garner, who was murdered on video by NYPD officers. Or Kalief Browder’s mom, Venida Browder, who also died of a heart attack after Kalief’s death by suicide, following three violent years of abuse at Riker’s prison for a crime he didn’t commit. And activists aren’t alone. I know of several Black women and femmes who were hospitalized from stress-related issues last year or are struggling with physical and mental health ailments from chronic stress.
The oppressive systems we live and work under have created a burnout epidemic, and this is all the worse for Black women and femmes who have a long legacy of exhaustion at the hands of white supremacist heteropatriarchy. As Tiana Clark shared in her 2019 article “This Is What Black Burnout Feels Like,” “No matter the movement or era, being burned out has been the steady state of [B]lack people in [America] for hundreds of years.” So, imagine the impact when, on top of the daily strife of enduring systems of misogynoir, you are also forced to weather an unprecedented and entirely mishandled health pandemic that is statistically more likely to murder you and your loved ones—that is, if a racist cop doesn’t kill you first. Not to mention that when our Black friends and family fall ill or get shot, Black women and femmes, as the pillars of our community, are the ones required to care for them and seek justice from white supremacist medical and judicial institutions.
We are exhausted, not only from navigating these current events, but the constant, daily anti-Blackness and misogyny inflicted on us by all non-Black folx and all men and masculine folx. From the expectation that we will and should work ourselves to the bone, if not the grave, in order to save the country, and the world, from itself. Without credit or support. If we dare stand up for ourselves, we’re demonized as angry, entitled, or simply killed. Not just in 2020 or 2021, but for decades.