Recovery from White Conditioning

I've got to say I'm still pretty torn about the approach represented here. First, I understand the burden it is for oppressed and marginalized peoples to bear the responsibility of educating oppressors in their oppression. But still, there was initial discomfort reading this book written by a white person. Part of the “healthy suspicion” of white people she discusses surely includes a sensitivity to possible performative virtue signaling taken by white people in these discussions.

But I eventually became more comfortable and ultimately appreciated it. Yes, we need inter-racial dialogue and whites listening to and centering the voices of BIPOC individuals, but ultimately white supremacy is a problem for white people to see and change, so in that sense this was a good example of trying to do this well. Whenever she could she brought in voices of color and was truly being led by their wisdom rather than appropriating it. She also seemed to have developed this material under the guidance of black mentors.

In regards to the actual content of the book, I had some strong feelings that have been difficult for me to parse out. On the positive side, I found intriguing the idea of the recovery model as a framework to understand growth in white people, at least if we employ it in broad strokes. I can appreciate the idea that deconstructing one's privilege, racism, and conditioning in a white supremacist culture ought to be a holistic effort and seen as a process and not as a binary “healed vs sick” sort of reality.

I can also understand what the author is doing in applying the 12-Step model of meetings and work in facilitating and sustaining such anti-racist progress. Many of the dimensions she describes have indeed been key markers in my own journey in this area. The embrace of ignorance as a way of knowing was perhaps the first thing that began raising my consciousness in this—the simple admission that my intuitive sense of reality cannot be my most trusted source of understanding in matters of race. In other words, my “gut” isn't the same thing as “truth” or seeing things “more clearly” than others, but is more a result of my own culture, conditioning, and perspective. Therefore, I need to actually defer to the experience, understanding, and perspective of BIPOC individuals. I think this is perhaps the biggest roadblock to my family members and friends who have difficulty with antiracism.

And while I struggled with what I saw as a profound lack of hopefulness in the materials, I did agree with applying the 12-Step ethos that says this is a process from which we never “graduate”. We as white people will always be learning new dimensions in which this white conditioning comes up. I fully agree that a white person's “competence” in this area is more about non-defensively receiving feedback about possible harms and responding in tangible ways to correct the harm. I do think it is unrealistic to expect that white social workers will never be experienced by any BIPOC as having committed a microaggression.

And that's part of the point of these materials: our conditioning runs deep, and competence is about increasing self-awareness, staying in the growth process, and cultivating openness to one's need for growth and receiving feedback, not expectations of perfection or defensiveness, or critiquing or countering BIPOC experiences.

However, I still had some issues with these materials. I am incredibly familiar with 12-Step programming and philosophy, and am a believer in it. I want to say that up front because a lot of my criticisms have to do with how the materials here adapt and use the 12-Steps, and I don't know how much of my negative feelings are unfairly coming from my bias for the 12-Steps as a theoretical model and process. I do not think 12-Step programs are needed or appropriate for everyone, and I do think they can be broadened to apply to dimensions of human life beyond traditional addictions. But still, the framework employed here strips a lot of what makes the 12-Steps what they. This makes me wish she had just come up with her own model rather than trying to build on the 12-Step one.

At its core, my biggest issue here is related to the Higher Power piece, but not because she has removed the concept from the steps as she's re-formulated them. I don't think people have to be religious or believe in the supernatural to work and benefit from the steps. And she's not entirely opposed to it herself. The book speaks to this and fully endorses people engaging a spiritual aspect if it's helpful to them.

But I think she misses the point of a Higher Power in the program and removes a whole dimension that could actually be helpful in the process she's laying out. A Higher Power (as one defines it) is necessary because the program assumes that healing cannot be found just within oneself.

We are the problem. We got ourselves in this situation. We need something outside ourselves that is stronger than us to help bring us back to sanity. In this case, white conditioning has deeply formed our whole society, economy, and culture. We need to form whole counter cultures and greater systems (“Higher Powers”) within which we can be formed and shaped in a different way. Just self-reflection among individuals or small groups of white people is not enough. As it's articulated in this book, it's still very individualistic and intellectual.

To be fair, the writer talks about making authentic relationships with People of Color and finding new influences to counteract our white supremacist conditioning. But these remain at micro levels. In one example, she commends changing your Facebook feed to have more black viewpoints pop up.

It is hard for me to imagine long-term change coming from groups of white people talking about their own racism in isolation from BIPOC people and finding the healing in their own self-reflection. I still think growth in this process needs to be collaborative, synergistic, and embodied between white and black people. No, there should not be an expectation placed on any Person of Color to engage in such a process, but I don't think there can be any expectation of growth in white people without real, difficult, life-giving interactions, discussions, and stories.

Getting beyond the 12-Steps explicitly, I also have issues with how she employs a more general Recovery Model here. The recovery model is ultimately client-centered and client-driven. In this regard, who is the “client” in this Recovery from White Conditioning? If it's the white person, then they are not actually the one who ought to be centered or driving the process. So if that's not there, is the “recovery” framework even helpful at that point?

Lastly, the 12-Steps have a strain of hope and healing within them—the goal and idea of “sobriety”. These 12-Steps for White Conditioning have nothing of the sort. It feels to me there is a deep cynicism underneath it all where there isn't all that much progress beyond going from a lack of racial consciousness to the presence of such consciousness and openness. After that, it's more about just staying there.

In contrast, 12-Step programs aren't ultimately about the substance or issue around which the program is built—it's about becoming a freer, fuller, more generous and loving human in general in all parts of your life. Even after one gets sober, they keep coming back because the sobriety gives more room for people to discover more levels of self-development needed in areas beyond the “thing” itself they are now sober from. These White Conditioning steps don't have that. There's little to no talk of how doing this process will make you a better human overall, not just less racist. That's the real hopefulness and benefit within the traditional 12-Steps and so without them, this program feels too limited in its scope and promise and so the “goal” is still defined in negative terms rather than positive.

Years ago, while in seminary, I did a lot of work and reading around Black Liberation Theology and Feminist Theology, and both of them had the conviction that doing this work and attending to those perspectives is actually the way to bring benefits and redemption to all societies and people, not just women or black people. Paulo Freire says much the same thing (inspired by some of the same sources).

Oppression is not just about harm done to the oppressed but how it holds back the oppressor and the systems that support them. These white conditioning 12-Steps don't have any of that. There is no sense that antiracist work is about a general liberation and healing in all areas of life and the world—even for those who engage in these steps as she lays them out. It is only about white people gathering weekly to talk about ways they think they were racist in the past week and how they might do better. This, by itself, is not “bad”, per se, just incredibly inadequate on its own, I feel.

More to the point, it's such a departure from the philosophical underpinnings of the 12-Steps, it really bothers me that this programming is so explicitly supposedly building on that foundation—especially when many of the aspects she has taken out would actually be helpful in this process of re-conditioning us away from white supremacy and finding new ways of being human in the world.