I was introduced to writer, activist,  and thought leader Raquel Willis and her work through my friend Phillip Picardi, with whom she collaborated at Out Magazine. Thereafter, I had the blessing of observing her work online and slowly processing her elucidations on Black transgender liberation as a way of re-educating myself to become a sincere ally of the community. I finally met Raquel, a true body of light, in Cortina, at a celebration for Bulgari Magnifica: The Power Women Hold, to which she contributed an outstanding essay. I was blown away by her in every single way. Her warmth, her grace, her dance moves and her impressive intellect. Listening to her speak during the events’ panel remains one of the most moving experiences I have lived to date. Her style of communicating is highly informative, empathetic and compassionate, and she is evenly critical and demanding in her advocacy. Being in her presence evokes a feeling of safety, as she offers a space where you can show up, learn, stumble in your learning process without judgment, and acquire a foundation for clarity on issues related to the intersectionality of transgender Black liberation. It has been an honor getting to know Raquel and I am overjoyed to share this new episode with you.  Please enjoy and share Raquel’s gems of knowledge with your community. 

This interview has been lightly edited for cohesion. 

*TW: suicide 

Tamu McPherson:

My love, it is so good to see you, thank you for joining me. I have to (start with) a question. 

You grew up in a relatively isolating environment. However, you were self aware enough with the pieces of the puzzle that you were receiving in the sense that the information download. Where do you think you get that power that helped fuel you and your grace into coming to yourself? Do you think it's something that came up through your ancestors? Do you think that it was something that was innately in your soul?

Raquel Willis:

I kind of had this feeling that, ‘Okay, well, if I'm not finding what I need here, exactly… like you were saying, I've gotta figure out how to get to where I need to be, to have the community that I need. I, for some reason, knew I needed community. And I just needed to hold on a little bit longer until I was in a space to get to where that community was.

Tamu McPherson:

Part of your work is being a thought leader and part of your work is to offer theory, and further the information, to create the education that we need to have, as the community and society at large fully learns more about the world and about gender and about everything that we need to do. Because obviously, like I said before, it's like a re-education. And you've brought this innate gift - because this is something that not everyone has, you know, you were still a teenager at 19, you're still very young!

Raquel Willis:

But that, I think that is a part of being on the margins. I mean, unfortunately we're often kind of pushed to mature sooner. To figure out survival sooner, you know, if you're of color - one of the biggest conversations we've had in the last few years, particularly around the police brutality discussion, for young black folks in general, there's a conversation around what safety means. And what violence can mean in the face of law enforcement that your white counterparts [are not experiencing]. 

And I think a similar thing can be said of being queer or trans.  There are often multiple threats that you have to consider. And sometimes those threats come from the people closest to you. You know, sometimes those threats are in the home, in the community, unfortunately. And I don't think that is innate. I don't think that threat of violence or isolation is innate.  I think that is something that is very much fueled by a white colonial capitalist, cis-hetero patriarchal kind of framework that is kind of in place on all of us. 

I think what is actually organic is us breaking bread together, being empathetic, understanding that we all kind of have a different thread in this larger tapestry of experiences.

Tamu McPherson:

Today, the situation is appalling here in the United States, as you know, violent and aggressive, legislation is being passed against transgender youth and their families as [gender]- affirming education is being suppressed While this is taking place, key pieces of the conversation are being left out in terms of homophobia, transphobia. I could say it CIS heteronormativity, right? Can you just talk to us about how you approach this fact that so much is happening, but so much important information is being left out of the conversation?

Raquel Willis:

Yeah. I mean, I think that what we see around this increase in anti-trans legislation of which it's more than doubled since last year. There are more than 240 bills being moved across the country, impacting the LGBTQ community specifically. And that includes everything from those archaic bathroom bills from a couple of years ago that were really, really popular then, to conversations around curriculum, being able to even just acknowledge that people can have different gender experiences or different types of relationships in their lives, other than again, this kind of cis heteronormative script. 

I think what's at the core of that is the patriarchy is in a crisis. All of these systems are in a crisis now in a way that they maybe haven't ever been, and we're holding them accountable. You know, we're holding the people who hold up these systems accountable in new ways, as people more on the margins. And so when I think about all of these politicians, mostly right wing, who are trying to suppress the experiences of LGBTQ+ folks, it's about them and their fear about losing grip on the power that they've always had.

Raquel Willis:

That's always been a given. 30, 40, even 50 years ago, you didn’t have to listen to women. Didn't have to listen to people of color, Black people, indigenous folks, didn't have to listen to LGBTQ+ folks. I mean, and even in the last seven or eight years, prior to that, you really didn't have to listen to trans folks. And so now there are a lot of people who have had power throughout time who want to suppress us and want to suppress just innately the brilliance that we are spilling out into the world. You wouldn't have so many aspects of culture without LGBTQ+ folks. From language to our creativity, dance so much more to, to even just how we celebrate life. In the face of so much resistance to our existence. 

So for me, it's about honoring that ancestral power - queer and trans people have always been here. People can act like we just fell from the sky yesterday, but we've always been here. It's just been that we've been so pushed to the sidelines, to the margins and people didn't have to contend with the fact that we were whole full people with an experience and a voice that needed to be heard.

Tamu McPherson:

And I think since the patriarchy wants to maintain the power in their hands, of course, for them, it is scary to honor the full spectrum of humanity. And I think that it is a direct challenge to this farce that they've created of superiority. And when you said that, it made me think of just how deep the fragility is. 

You are a phenomenal organizer. You really have honed your skill for organizing social movements, over these past years that you've been active. What are some of the takeaways? What have you learned about yourself, about supposed allies, about supposed partners, and just how you can sustain these movements?

Raquel Willis:

Yeah. I think that many of us have these activation moments, whether it's the untimely tragic death of someone who looks or lives or loves like you, for instance, like the murder of George Floyd, right? That was an activation moment on a global scale for a lot of people. And I think we have to really contend with those moments. We don't need to shoo them away. We don't need to act as if they don't affect us, they should affect you because a life has been lost. 

So for instance, some of the big active activation moments for me were the deaths of young trans teens several years ago. In 2014, within months of each other, a young trans girl named Lela Alcorn died by suicide, a young trans boy named Blake Brockington, the first homecoming king of North Carolina, who was openly trans at his school, died by suicide.

And those were activation moments for me, alongside the scores of deaths of Black and brown trans women. And I think at the core of my work is wanting to figure out how we keep ourselves here longer. You know, how do we end all of these forces of violence? And violence isn't just physical, it's psychological, which is one of the issues with a lot of this anti-trans and anti-queer legislation. It's spiritual, it's so many different forms. So that is one thing. 

I also think that we have to lean away from this idea that we can be anyone’s savior. I learned this firsthand from one of my dear friends, Tony Michelle Williams, who leads Solutions Not Punishment collaborative down in Atlanta, Georgia. You know, I think we often come into understanding different issues with wanting to come up with the solution, ‘cause we think, okay, well we've got the solution. Maybe we've got the education. You know, maybe we've got the access. Maybe we've got the platform, but you can't kind of operate as if you're saving people. You can fight alongside people. You can support people in saving themselves. But this idea that you're gonna come in on some saviorism mindset and change the game, it really is, in a different way, depowering and dehumanizing to other folks. 

I think it's about just understanding that there's no binary of privilege and oppression. You know, in queer community, we talk about binaries there. That idea can be applied to so many different things beyond gender: not being a binary, right? And it being a spectrum: privilege and oppression is a spectrum. And, you know, it changes, it can shift depending on the context, depending on the room you're in, depending on the circle of people that you're in at that moment. And you have to be able to traverse that with grace and humility and know that there's probably more out there for you to understand at any given point. So be receptive to understanding it.

Tamu McPherson:

If you could speak directly to the BIPOC community to emphasize that ‘Black Lives Matter’ truly does not exist if trans lives don't matter. Can you just explain that to us? Cuz I feel that we need to understand that concept better in order to be better allies.

Raquel Willis:

When I think about my experiences in the movement for Black lives, I have overwhelmingly been surrounded by LGBTQ people, cis and trans and everything in between. And I think that we are often discounted for just how fiercely we fight for liberation. I have this sign in my apartment that I made during the 2020 summer of unrest. And it says there's no revolution without trans folks. And I truly believe that, you know, we can't move through the world thinking that if we just solve one fight that we've solved at all. You know? 

So say you have this world where Black people are empowered. If one single Black person is not empowered, we are not at liberation we say we're at, right? So we're still experiencing violence for being trans or queer from the state, and then also from our own communities - that's not liberation. If our Black disabled family is not being supported, if we have not figured out accessibility on a grander scale, and new ways of understanding, intelligences and so much more, we're not at that liberatory future that we say we're at. We're still seeing this idea that, oh, well, certain Black people are not the right victim to be rallied around. That's not liberation. So I think we have to contend with that.

Tamu McPherson:

That's like a PR strategy. It would be like a PR strategy. This person is more like, “forward-facing”. So we'll put them as the “poster person” of the fight. 

Raquel Willis:

It almost is, right? Because it's a bias. I think in our community, it's no mistake that the rallying cries have often been for Black CIS men. You know, able-bodies, straight cis men - 

Tamu McPherson:

 - their lives are more valuable than - 

Raquel Willis:

 - than women and LGBTQ folks and so much more. But that's not just an issue within BIPOC spaces or within the Black community. That's an issue across the board. I mean, we see that in the LGBTQ+ community.

Tamu McPherson:

Okay. Break it down.

Raquel Willis:

We know that white supremacy lives and thrives in the LGBTQ community too. That's why so often the narrative around what it means to be trans or to be queer is often this image of a white person. You know, when we think about all of the images throughout time, or at least throughout the last few decades, it very rarely that they have considered that Black and brown queer and trans people have been the most disenfranchised and discarded - facing barriers in housing, healthcare, education, employment, and so much more. We don't talk about that. 

We don't talk about the epidemic of violence of Black and brown trans women with the fervor and the furor that we should, there should have long ago been a massive reallocation of resources to support keeping this key element of our community alive. And the reason that hasn't happened is because we're not white. Let's be very clear about that. People will fund and support and resource even white queer and trans people over Black and brown queer and trans people. And beyond, I mean, think about the feminist movement, throughout time. I mean, you could look at the inception with Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Sojourner Truth, and people like Anna Julia Cooper who were sounding the alarm on the fight for suffrage. 

Even when we were talking about women gaining the right to vote, we did not see them supporting Black and brown women, it did not center on supporting low income women or women living in poverty and beyond. And that strain for me is deeply connected to the Lavender Menace Scare, of the second wave in which they were trying to keep lesbian and queer women out of the fold of being heard within the feminist movement. And of course, now we see the hot button issue right now within feminist circles is the exclusion, the continued exclusion of trans women, but also the dismissal of trans men and masculine folks. And non-binary folks, as if we're not all just invested - or if not typically more invested - in gender liberation than our counterparts.

Tamu McPherson:

You see the systematic dismissal there. It plays historically, and you can see how one group is chosen. It goes back to your point, how, when it's necessary, ‘let's have the face of the fight be this white figure [always]. And then we'll just play it, with the proximity to whiteness. You see it, you feel it when you explain it this way.

Raquel Willis:

All the time. Yeah. All the time. I mean, and that's why I often get frustrated that people want to act like the issues that we're facing today are so new. They're not. I think part of the reason it feels so new to a lot of people is because we have been so conditioned not to see the full prism of experiences.

And our educational system, our political system does not typically [prepare] people to be able to see that, because if we saw that, then we would be in an uproar.  It would be a full James Baldwin moment.

Tamu McPherson:

For Sure. It's not a state of rage. Yeah. It's by design, and if you continue to marginalize people for them to come into the center, it [will take] time. Yeah. And then you have all those hurdles and all those waves that are preventing you from arriving in time. By the time you have full clarity and vision and you're able to unify yourself within your community, the stakes are overwhelming. 

So someone like yourself who, um, is providing so much information, who regularly shows up for the community: how are you protecting your space? How are you protecting the space in which your brain can have clarity and be able to work for the enhancement of trans futures? How do you carve out that space?

Raquel Willis:

Yeah, that's a big question. I think I've been privileged at this point in my work and career to be able to design my life with more freedom and with more power. So that means I can build and then rest. I can make that a prerequisite of doing work with  this organization or this company or on this project, which is so empowering. Um I think it's also about giving myself space to retreat and recharge.  Most of my career - like a lot of other folks, particularly women, folks of color and LGBTQ folks - you're kind of on, like, you have to keep going. And it's a constant grind, and that spills over into thought leadership work. And being someone who uses the internet and social media as a tool for my work you kind of get caught up in the endless discourse, media cycle loop and so on and so forth.

And so at this point I don't adhere to that. I'm not always on, I think people often think that I'm always on, I'm always online. I'm not. I preserve my energy for when I feel like it really can make the most impact. And then I honor that I need to rest and recharge just as much as I need to do work. 

And I need to have moments of joy, you know? I need to be able to have brunch and lunch with friends - and we're probably still talking about really heavy things! But it's joyful. So that is it. And then also just honoring my relationships, like you said, with like my family; my bio family, my chosen family. Reading, researching, finding my ancestral family constantly on that search. Um, that's how I sustain myself.