hi friends

In the process of writ­ing and il­lus­trat­ing five children’s books about phys­i­cal, emo­tion­al, and plan­e­tary well be­ing – which came into be­ing root­ed in more than a decade of anti-racism ed­u­ca­tion and ac­tivism – I dug deep­er into un­der­stand­ing the in­ter­sect­ing sys­tems of in­jus­tice and op­pres­sion that mea­sur­ably and im­mea­sur­ably pre­vent a dis­pro­por­tion­ate num­ber of black and brown peo­ple from hav­ing phys­i­cal, emo­tion­al, and plan­e­tary well be­ing.

Sys­temic racism winds it­self through every di­men­sion of our so­ci­ety, fil­ter­ing into USDA pol­i­cy, school lunch pro­grams, into the in­ter­sec­tions of agri­cul­ture, ap­par­el, and la­bor, in the racial di­vide of chron­ic dis­ease, pol­lu­tant ex­po­sure, food ac­cess, hair care, the facts go on. The con­se­quences can take se­vere phys­i­cal, psy­cho­log­i­cal, and en­vi­ron­men­tal tolls.

That’s the irony – the ill­ness of racism comes at a cost to every­one. But the price is paid by peo­ple of col­or.

So if you’ve ever heard me speak at an event, I’m not talk­ing about my paint­ing process. I lay out ev­i­dence – be­side the fact that his­to­ry screams so – that these sys­tems of in­jus­tice and op­pres­sion are in­ten­tion­al, col­lu­sive, and or­ga­nized. They prime our al­le­giance by bur­row­ing them­selves into our bod­ies so that even while we mea­sure our­selves by the good that we do, we may nev­er dis­man­tle what is cloaked int nor­mal­cy – for many of us, an un­in­tend­ed loy­al­ty to hid­den and vi­o­lent sys­tems that de­pend on our ig­no­rance and fund­ing.

Though dressed in bun­nies and baby chick­ens, my books are overt­ly and covert­ly de­signed to get the next gen­er­a­tion to over­haul the in­sid­i­ous sys­tems that our de­fault choic­es cause us to par­tic­i­pate in, in­clud­ing in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized racism. The books wouldn’t ex­ist with­out the dri­ving force of anti-racism that led me to turn a dis­cern­ing eye on my po­si­tion and ef­fect on the pub­lic realm.

I’ve been ve­g­an for 17 years to pull my mon­ey and con­sent out of sys­tems I op­pose, per­ma­nent­ly.

Through art, I teach that change has to start with our­selves and the fam­i­lies, com­mu­ni­ties, work­places, and schools into which we can bring more rad­i­cal­ized per­spec­tives and prac­tices.

But blunt­ly, that isn’t shit com­pared to the work that lies ahead. De­fund­ing that which we op­pose, work­ing with lo­cal gov­ern­ment, and fil­ter­ing more mon­ey into com­mu­ni­ties of col­or is es­sen­tial be­cause it’s what we peo­ple can do im­me­di­ate­ly to bal­ance some pow­er.

But Wall Street, banks, pri­vate eq­ui­ty man­agers, real es­tate com­pa­nies, de­part­ments of ed­u­ca­tion … where are their repa­ra­tion mis­sions, af­fir­ma­tive ac­tions, and state­ments of sol­i­dar­i­ty?

My state­ment ain’t shit. Your state­ment ain’t shit. The state­ment from the mas­sage joint I go to ain’t shit.

Rad­i­cal­iz­ing the pow­er we each wage will shift the pedes­tri­an lev­el, but sys­temic racial eq­ui­ty re­quires our in­fil­tra­tion at the top rung, and ranks above the top that we can’t even nec­es­sar­i­ly see.

I have no ex­per­tise on how to pro­duc­tive­ly at­tack from the top down at such a scale, only the bot­tom up. But as a next step, I will damn well be try­ing to learn from peo­ple who do.

George Floyd’s mur­der pierced a veil un­like any­thing be­fore and we are 18 days into a mass and un­prece­dent­ed ac­ti­va­tion.

Noth­ing on Earth has ever fu­eled peo­ple to­ward mo­bi­liza­tion this big, this fast.

I hope to see en­gage­ment con­tin­ue as we un­der­stand in­ter­sect­ing sys­tems and the glob­al tra­jec­to­ry we’re on. I am par­tic­i­pat­ing men­tal­ly, emo­tion­al­ly, phys­i­cal­ly, and fi­nan­cial­ly, and will con­tin­ue to fuse my art work and so­cial me­dia pres­ence with a di­ver­si­ty per­spec­tive and links drawn be­tween our per­son­al choic­es and the pub­lic realm.

Please stand to­geth­er with ac­tion­able sup­port, ac­tive re­search, ac­tive lis­ten­ing, and trust in black lead­er­ship to be self-de­ter­min­ing and set forth de­mands for sus­tain­able changes that lead every­one to­ward phys­i­cal, emo­tion­al, and plan­e­tary well be­ing.

Stay learn­ing, stay crit­i­cal.

With love,

—ruby roth

Flom­mist Ruby Roth is an artist, de­sign­er, cre­ative strate­gist, and the au­thor-il­lus­tra­tor of four lead­ing books for kids. Her work has been fea­tured on To­day, CNN, FOX, NBC, ABC News, and oth­er ma­jor me­dia out­lets. Copy­right © 2020 Ruby Roth.

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