In “Play the Game, Change the Game, Leave the Game: Pathways to Black Empowerment, Prosperity, and Joy,” Robert Livingston provides a manual designed to help Black people navigate, confront, or leave settings and institutions that perpetuate white supremacy. Livingston, a race scholar on the faculty of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, clearly intended his book to serve as a field guide to assist Black people in assessing whether they want to work in mainstream, predominately white systems; determine if they want to step forward and challenge the status quo; or decide if they want to exit predominately white environments and seek out or create spaces where Black people can thrive. But while serving this purpose, Livingston’s book also provides some original and thought-provoking insights for white people.
Livingston begins his book with a section he calls, “Setting the Stage.” In these chapters, the author makes the case for the ways he believes white people are addicted to white supremacy.
Chapter One grabbed me immediately — just the title of the chapter had me intrigued: “White Supremacy and Other Drugs.” Having worked as an anti-racism educator since the mid-1980s and having led hundreds and hundreds of dismantling racism workshops over the years, I was surprised to encounter a concept that I had not seen mentioned before in all my reading and study, which included a thorough literature review when I pursued a doctorate in racial and ethnic studies.
White people are addicted to white supremacy? I was immediately gripped by the concept and read and re-read that chapter to try to understand and metabolize this new idea.
Livingston writes that white people are addicted to white supremacy because it provides comfort, privilege, solidarity, and status — and those can be addictive. Without realizing it, white people become dependent on and addicted to those four benefits of white skin and the unearned advantages whiteness affords.
Thinking about my own life as a white person, I reflected on my addiction to comfort, privilege, solidarity, and status even as I work constantly on my commitment to anti-racism and strive to be a strong ally to people of color.
Livingston states that there are three core characteristics of addiction: need, harm, and repetition. By identifying these characteristics of addiction, Livingston has inspired me to think about how in this country both historically and right up to today, white people need to cling to white supremacy; how much harm white people have inflicted on Black people for centuries; and how the repetition of this harm fuels never-ending cycles of violence, deprivation, oppression, inequity, and abuse.
Livingston also discusses what he calls “the nature of white supremacy addiction.” He outlines four defense mechanisms that hinder an objective assessment of the consequences of one’s actions: avoidance, denial, minimization, and rationalization.
Livingston writes, “I believe that it is nearly impossible to live one’s entire life in the United States as a White person and not be aware of the existence of anti-Black racism or White privilege. Indeed, research demonstrates that White people are so aware of the societal advantages of Whiteness that they would have to be paid tens of millions of dollars to live their lives as a Black person.”
He goes on to say, “What they may not fully appreciate is their own complicity in perpetuating racial inequality, because, like many addicts, they utilize the same defense mechanisms — avoidance, denial, minimization, and rationalization.” These, Livingston writes, sustain and justify white supremacy addiction.
Reading about white’s people addiction to white supremacy motivated me to think about the nature of addiction and the steps to recovery. I found myself in Forbes Library in Northampton checking out an impressive stack of books about Alcoholics Anonymous and the Twelve Steps. If anybody knows anything about recovery from addiction, I thought to myself, it is AA.
I read about freeing oneself from a dependence on alcohol and found the parallels to recovering from white supremacy addiction to be powerful and instructive. Not all of the Twelve Steps may have clear application to the recovery process for white supremacy addiction, but several of the steps offer guidance.
I also found myself thinking about how recovery from addiction is not an easy or a linear process. Aware and committed white anti-racists fall off the wagon and relapse often. We become distracted, we stop engaging, we look the other way, our timidity wins, and we step away from the struggle. Thinking deeply about addiction, recovery, and relapse inspired me to read more about recovering from relapses, recommitting, regaining focus, and engaging again.
White supremacy addiction. What a concept. Livingston describes why for him “… arriving at the conclusion that racism operates like an addiction was liberating, even empowering.” He believes it helps explain why “… White supremacy is a recurring feature in American society despite multiple efforts to eradicate it.”
For me, the concept of white supremacy addiction helps explain why so many white people mean well and do badly — and here I am including myself. White people must recognize that our struggle to dismantle racism must be daily, visible, and ongoing. If we grow sloppy, apathetic, disengaged, or numb it means we have relapsed and we need to wake up again and take the reins of anti-racism activism back in our hands.
In my mind, Livingston’s chapter, “White Supremacy and Other Drugs” is a must-read for every white person in this country. It is eye-opening, behavior-changing, and tremendously powerful.
Thank you Robert Livingston, from one white person in recovery.
The Rev. Andrea Ayvazian, Ministerial Team, Alden Baptist Church, Springfield, is also founder and director of the Sojourner Truth School for Social Change Leadership.