A Terrible Struggle: Darkest Before The Dawn

By William Watson, Ed.D., author of Twelve Steps for White America: for a United States of America.

Fake it til ya make it teaches recovering alcoholics like me to just do the right next thing regardless of how we feel about it. As a nobody from nowhere, I’ve been hiding, dodging and faking it my whole life. I typically feel like an imposter. This “imposter syndrome” got triggered wide-eyed in 2016 when a wonderful colleague who had served on my dissertation committee surprised me with an out-of-my-league nomination. I thought it was spam, or perhaps a non-starter compliment (you da best). The nomination presented an invitation to apply for a national fellowship experience with other “select” educational leaders aspiring to a college presidency. I’m not masochist enough for that rope-a-dope; still, I was intrigued to go for it.

My career philosophy “always make them tell you no - don’t do it to yourself” led this time to some impressive elbow rubbing. The multiple rounds of fellowship competition meant that, surely, I would get knocked out at some point, so I resigned myself to meeting some great people. Plus, competing meant a trip to D.C., which gave me a chance to visit two of my favorite paintings: a Renoir at the Phillips Collection off DuPont Circle that seduces me to behold the transcendent beauty of life in each moment,(1) and a Kandinsky at the East Wing of the National Gallery of Art that wrestles me regarding, as Kandinsky would say, "a terrible struggle ... going on in the spiritual atmosphere.” (2)That spiritual atmosphere is my “Earth School,” my soul’s karmic investment system.

Expecting to be kicked out at some point, in nearly every “professional” room I’ve ever worked, I enter privileged as an accomplished, highly educated white man. I am typically welcomed to a seat at the table. I assume I’ll be called on tospeak my expertise and representwhatever organization ison my business card. My southern-poverty-redneck,alcoholic, psychotherapist, San-Francisco-queer-liberal-elite, CRT-higher-ed-Dr.-Administrator, andsocial-justice-equity, pro-democracy amalgam(schtickto some) piques interest for a hot minute. Inevitably, when I open my mouth and all my intersectionalities blurt out scathing truths as easy as a sweet tea summer in rocking chairs on Mama Burnham’s veranda, it becomes a bit much. “Wait! What!” “This redneck violates white club!”

Violations of white club may get me excluded or marginalized either overtly or, covertly later when it can be gaslit, easily attributed to something else. Divinely, that did not happen this time. I was blessed to accept an offer of an incredible Presidential Fellowship, a 2016-2017 year-long engagement with some of the most extraordinary people I’ve ever met.

If your repeatedly traumatized political brain can still recall, 2016 was the last year of an American zeitgeist when a Trump presidency was still considered preposterous. So inevitable was the election of arguably the most qualified person to ever run for the office until Biden, many openly dabbled in contagion such as, “I just don’t like her.” I vividly recall sitting at a lunch table with Fellows (next to Maryland’s Wye River - Frederick Douglas environs) when I heard “I just don’t like her” for the first time. Like you, I had been hearing many misogynistic mutterings pretending outrage over an email server (a teethier scandal, better for bamboozling than the pretense of uproar when Obama wore that tan suit), but this was different. Etched in my memory of what went wrong, “I just don’t like her” was perfectly acceptable opinion, tendered among elites beyond reproach; but, as such, this was contagion more insidious and viral.

I woefully regret I kept my “respectful” mouth shut at the time. Inside I was “NO NO NO - don’t toy with white supremacy” but, unfortunately, like too many others, I figured we had gas left in the tank. Now, these scorched-earth years later, we can hardly account for the devastation because the“great unpleasantness” (3) persists. A gerrymandered SCOTUS majority dooms women to increased risk of demoralization and death, makes way for a president-king dictatorship, and defangs regulation all while parading egregious corruption. It sickens me. Literally sick - like a flu and a pinched nerved and a despondency all rolled into one. But I’m clear. We let this happen. AND (two things can be true at once) this is the disruption that’s necessary if a multi-racial democratic republic can ever trump 400 years of rigged advantage.

While the 2016 - 2024 storm rages on, we struggle to make sense of what is happening to us. Desperate, like emotionally contorted children trapped in an abusive alcoholic family, “it” looms over our existence. We can’t breathe. We cringe. We’re tense. We wait for the next “unprecedented” to drop. We struggle to have a life. We’re trapped, bamboozled by a mentally disturbed, cognitively compromised megalomaniac.

But know this: he is only consequential because his bionic disorder powers from the ultimate faultline that has always threatened the future of a United States, rigged advantage. Operated as a whiteness inclusion-collusion delusion since its colonial construction relying on white supremacy and anti-Blackness, rigged advantage functions as ego-syntonic with whiteness itself. Without treatment (without action sufficient to establish sustainable remission), it can survive post-Trump.

Like an alcoholic who is still drinking, our decline is inevitable until we “get sober.” Situating the faultline within Trump himself is like blaming an alcoholic for alcoholism. Of course, as we (should) now know about the South after the Civil War, insurrection and other criminality demands “no-one-is-above-the-law” consequences. But that did not happen.

Reproducing these legacies, SCOTUS now simply coheres with the same coddling we’ve enabled since Reconstruction to absolve unrepentant traitorous insurrectionists for the sake of “unity.” Coddling perpetrators, whether they be the Confederate States of America or individual criminals, denies them the justly administered consequences that are vital for learning and extinguishing threatening behavior. Germany has applied this lesson more effectively than the USA. We leave the rigged advantage campfire embers smoldering as we repeatedly “move on” leaving the forest at risk.

History and medicine show us that until the underlying disorder is treated, no remission can hold. After Civil War came failed Reconstruction, came failed Separate But Equal Jim Crow, came failed Civil Rights, came failed Post-Racial Obama. There is always backlash because backlash is remission’s untreated relapse. Actual democracy, vs. the masquerade of democracy where rigged advantage reproduces plutocracy, would mean that race no longer predicts outcomes.

An actual democratic republic is anathema to a plutocracy of rigged advantage. That existential annihilation would mean that the two drivers sustaining rigged advantage, white supremacy and anti-Blackness, were contained, no longer able to supplant the will of the people. Instead, we are bamboozled. We repeatedly let it happen. We do not quit “drinking:” i.e. we do not quit white supremacy and anti-Blackness.

We do not uproot the legacies of slavery. These extant legacies leave us vulnerable to the rise of authoritarianism then autocracy as a last resort to sustain rigged advantage. Why is it a last resort? Because, if the masquerade of democracy still worked, and the demographic inevitability of a multi-racial democracy was not imminent, the status quo could sustain rigged advantage. Returning to that masquerade and its control is precisely what (to plutocracy) would “make American great again.”

It may be hard to stomach, but teetering toward authoritarianism then autocracy is evidence that we are closer than perhaps we have ever been to a USA where race no longer predicts outcomes- at least as a possibility. Alcoholics know this as “bottoming out.” The delusion and denial that sustains addiction (and plutocracy) can no longer compete with the devastating avalanche of evidence to the contrary. Embrace this hope: for most of us in recovery, a crucible of near annihilation was needed for the reckoning to save us. This “bottoming out” is later contextualized as a blessing in disguise. It catalyzes a sober life.The United States of America is in that same crucible right now. We are crushed under an avalanche of evidence that rigged advantage, a whiteness collusion relying on white supremacy and anti-Blackness, will eat democracy alive “in broad daylight” and blame “woke” (the audacity of dissent) for ruining the USA. So far, that avalanche is not enough for us to stop, turn, and recalibrate, making the repairs needed. Like Germany, we must do everything possible to extinguish what has metastasized. The first step is all about that stop and turn, “We Admit.” Ancients say “Repent.” It can catalyze a USA where race not longer predicts outcomes if we so choose. How would that work?

We admit the problem, account for the harm, and remedy wrongs that continue to unjustly benefit us in the present, not because American Descendants of Slavery can’t make it without some handout from the largess of whites, but critically because White America has failed to manage the risk of a house divided, leaving extant legacies of slavery unvanquished. We once struggled to fathom how The Third Reich could possibly come to power. How did they just let it happen? Traumatized amid the pretense of business as usual, we cannot claim ignorance. Between 2016 and 2024 we have hurtled past preposterous to legitimate uncertainty that we will have even this USA by the end of 2024, much less any hope for a USA where race no longer predicts outcomes. ?

Eight years of “what is happening” indulged from the same “I just don’t like her” malaise exemplify the exploitativeness that plutocracy requires to reproduce its advantage without effective dissent. It means we are not free. We are co-opted. We are the Master’s tools that build and sustain the Master’s house.(4) No cold war enemy needs to nuke us; no “Death to America” needs to terrorize us; no axis of evil needs to out-might us; we just let it happen, bamboozled, triggered, professional, and polite in 2016, and still, bamboozled, triggered, professional, and polite in 2024.

Too many 2016 people in “polite” and “professional” society had not grappled with how pervasively white supremacy and anti-Blackness remained “untreated” among “us” (the white moderates - as MLK would forewarn in Letter from Birmingham Jail). More than the horse-riding hooded nameless in the backwoods night, the covert moderates “unintentionally” colluding with our global enemies, and embracing a never-uprooted white Nationalism that operates white supremacy and anti-Blackness enthroned an unqualified, mentally unfit, historically ignorant whiteness clown whose only “genius’ is navigating the triggers of bamboozled and exploited whites.

Whether we “just don’t like her” or whether we tiptoe around white supremacy and anti-Blackness as something to smugly disdain in others, it is way past time for “us” to own the threat we ourselves (not “those” people) represent. Deluded that we still have gas left in the tank, we indulge in entitlements we cannot afford. Too many of “us” condescend, “Who are those deplorables?” Who are these hillbillies for whom an elegy can get you an 18-month seat in the Senate and a VP nomination if Peter Theil is your Silicon Valley teat? We snarl at their inferiority, oblivious to our negligence that needs to ask an ignorant “deplorable” question.

How is it that our ‘education” leaves us so ill-equipped to understand what is happening? These are the “whites” who were historically constructed and codified in Colonial Virginia by 1691. These whites are an extant construction of a whiteness-inclusion-collusion-delusion co-opted to reproduce power for elites, even while the co-opted vote against their own interests, so supreme is white. Not understanding this fault line in American “democracy” leaves us vulnerable now.

Too few among us know that what is happening to us now was left smoldering since the South didn’t actually lose the Civil War.(5) Too many white Americans have ignored the canary-in-the-coal-mine entreaties of Black Americans, who have been trying to call us to justice across multiple generations. To our peril, we have colluded to let the present debacle happen to Black people this whole time and now we wail that it is “taking down the whole country.”

Understand this “white” readers: This is an “us” not “them” situation. When we distance ourselves as not like them, we displace what needs to change. As recovering alcoholics have taught me for 37 years, what needs to change is me. Exasperation over how awful the MTGs of the world may be, as though she and we are not formed from the same mold of whiteness, does more to reproduce rigged advantage for elites than her clown show ever could.?

A framed Declaration, signed by all of the Presidential Fellows from my cohort, is what I see when I glance two feet to the right of my keyboard where I write all my anti-racism content, including my treatment plan for America democracy. One of those declarations, which feels as fresh and important to me now as in 2016 begins like this:

Recognizing our shared responsibility to support each other . . .?

I am immensely grateful to them for their contributing role in the etiology of my book, Twelve Steps for White America: for a United States of America. One of those incredible leaders visited with me at a 2019 conference. Pertinent to the story is what she, as a Black woman, goes through as a leader navigating white spaces. She stopped me when I made a joke, “White people need to work their program.” Her “Wait a minute” capture of the moment led me to think about such a program. ?

I had practiced recovery principles for three decades with some proficiency, so I started asking, “What are the underlying problem-solving principles applicable to other issues as well?” Even during the fellowship experience itself, I had never had such a rich reflection of peers summed and paraphrased here:

“The work you have done (in both recovery and higher education) brings a particular level of equity competencies into the conversation; and that is made all the more intriguing and potent in who you are - a southern accent white man from a legacy of Mississippi civil rights workers.” ?

The feedback of another cherished Fellow later helped me to clarify for whom the book would be written. That clarity became pivotal to determine how yet another book could possibly matter. It helped me determine that such a book would have to be so specifically crafted out of my lived experience that no one else could write it. Out of that authenticity, I would tell the truth as best I could, even if the very people who need it the most would likely be put off.

The learning curve for a first time (book) author can be overwhelming. I’ve only added immense pressure to frame that book’s content as a treatment plan for democracy, (inspired by James Baldwin) which could serve in the 21st century to accomplish for a USA what AA accomplished for alcoholism in the 20th century. There are 12 steps in recovery that have guided millions who have gone before us. Those time-tested problem solving principles familiar to 12 step practitioners are what I am presenting to a nation’s hope for a USA where race no longer predicts outcomes.

If that is the most delusional grandiosity you have ever heard, allow your judgement to prompt you to account for an explanation and a plan that makes more sense and catalyzes more change.

Account for the following specifically:

Have you defined the problem simply enough for a fifth grader to understand it?

Have you developed an intervention based on solid time-tested problem solving principles?

Is your plan scalable and free to millions?

Is it designed to disrupt 400 years of exploiting? Blackness to finally actualize a democracy where race no longer predicts outcomes?

If so, how can I support you? If not, I invite your attention and action. Some of you are in positions where you cannot risk any association with a treatment plan for democracy titled,“Twelve Steps for White America: for a United States of America.” Privileged to be in a different position, I’m no longer beholden to anyone since I left higher education in 2020 (deciding just before the pandemic and several years before retirement). But I can only imagine what some of my Presidential Fellows have endured since then. Not only many of my higher education colleagues, but many others reading this can hardly afford any association with such a title even though the story itself is about truth reconciliation and renewal.

What’s not to like about redemption! Still, one reader actually told me that he hid the book cover while reading it in an airport because he didn’t want to be “misperceived as a MAGA nut” alluding to the American flag and “White America” on the cover. Despite these challenges, the book and workbook have been published and awarded two gold medals and two silver medals. I’ve contracted for a Fall 2024 audiobook, attracted a great book marketing firm and a speaker’s bureau and garnered some great reviews. You cannot tell a near death alcoholic who has been sober for 37 years what’s impossible.

Having left my higher education career early, I’m all in. The ground I stand must beckon to reckon. It must call us to our highest aspirations even when we are exhausted, traumatized, scared, depressed, fearful, threatened, and triggered. Like many of you in the “terrible struggle,” I am exhausted, traumatized, scared, depressed, fearful, threatened, and triggered. In this condition, we are weeks away from too late. In that “hope and squirm” sturm und drang (6) dilemma, I call upon the ancestors.

My mother and father were civil rights workers in Mississippi who raised me while the KKK threatened our lives. I wonder now, every day - what their watch from heaven must be thinking:

“How is this happening on your watch? You have education, comfort, privilege, and platform that we could not have imagined for you even in our inflated pride for how your achievements in the world could be fueled with the generational blessing of our karma.”

Knowing what my parents accomplished with so little, their nobility has been a guiding light for me for decades now. With their considerable sacrifice as my exemplar, I have always known that I am not entitled to outcomes - I’m only required to do the work, whatever “widow’s mite” that may be.

There is no other way?through a terrible struggle in the Earth School than to, like the Presidential Fellows’ Declaration I see everyday says,

?“recognize our shared responsibility to support each other and address this moral imperative through an urgent & radical commitment.” ?

I apply that now to justice then liberty then peace then prosperity - the sustainable order of democracy. I am so grateful for unlikely encounters with incredible people along the way whose generosity have informed my capacity. We must be strong and supportive of each other now.

We can no longer endure the masquerade of democracy that hardly masks rigged advantage relying on white supremacy and anti-Blackness.

Our best days could lie ahead of us if we do the work. Only then can we live honestly as a sober-society capable of living recovered in a democratic republic - a USA where race no longer predicts outcomes. ?I pray we do the work.

Our future could look back and realize that 2016-2024 was a time darkest before the dawn of a new era, the best we have ever known in a United States of America.

NOTES

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[1] https://www.phillipscollection.org/collection/luncheon-boating-party

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[2]https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.56670.html

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[3] “Great Unpleasantness” is a southern euphemism for the Civil War

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[4] See Audre Lorde

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[5] See Heather Cox Richardson, How The South Won the Civil War.

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[6] German: Storm and Stress. See Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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