IN PRINT: BOOK REVIEW
Racial Sobriety

RACIAL SOBRIETY: Becoming the Change You Want to See
Rev. Clarence Williams, CPPS
(Detroit, Mich., Institute for Recovery from Racisms, 2007, 185 pp., paper, $23.95)

Reviewed by Hope Villella, director of social action and pastoral planning at the National Pastoral Life Center.

Anyone who has ever participated in a multi-racial group discussion in which the topic of conversation turned to race knows the uneasiness that can ensue as participants try to be sensitive and honest. More often than not, the end product of such engagement is a feeling of antagonism or of having covered a provocative topic with a superficial gloss. Why is it that a subject that is so plainly visible as the color of our skin is so difficult for us to talk plainly about?

In the book Racial Sobriety: Becoming the Change You Want to See, the Rev. Clarence Williams, CPPS, identifies the psychological and social barriers that create such dysfunctional race dynamics and proposes a process by which they can be overcome in order to develop healthy human relationships among people of all races. While the book can be read straight through, its structure makes it best suited to be used as a guide for groups who wish to attempt authentic conversation about their own struggles to overcome racism in our society.

Williams grounds the book on the notion that as with alcoholism or other addictions in which people live and act under the influence of substances, racial dysfunction or “negative thinking, acting and feeling” with regard to racial difference is a force under which humans live and from which they must recover. Racial sobriety is the outcome of this recovery, an ongoing process by which humans live in a way that is SOBER, which Williams uses as an acronym for “Seeing Others as Being Entitled to Respect.”

An eight-stage process for accomplishing racial sobriety is outlined. The first five stages, borrowed from Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s stages of death and dying, highlight the idea that one must go through the process of recognizing the white supremacist paradigms in which we have participated. We pass through these stages as we deny the existence of racial oppression, become angry at its existence, try to bargain our way out of acknowledging it, and overcome the “overwhelmingness” of its reality, before we can finally accept it and enter into the three final stages where we live our racial sobriety. These three stages—re-engagement, forgiveness, and witness—allow us to share our newly acquired racial sobriety with others.

Working through this book is not easy. It challenges our contemporary stance of political correctness that asserts that we should neither label someone a victim nor lump all people of one race into the same category. But those who live and breathe within a white body cannot escape the daily benefits they reap, and this process holds whites to their white privilege. It also demands that non-whites dwell in the pain of the reality that they can never claim those same advantages. The result is an uncomfortable state of being for those of all races, but the book contends that out of a willingness to be present to this discomfort, racial sobriety can be achieved.

The final chapter acknowledges the key questions that arise when a person arrives at racial sobriety: “Where do I go from here?” “Where exactly has all this work gotten me?” Williams admits that society is a work in progress and that cultural resistance is real. Racial sobriety is not a quick fix for someone looking to do the right thing. It is a constant and ongoing commitment to being aware of racial dysfunction, working toward healing it and speaking up when it emerges.

The process orientation that Williams has put together allows the book to propel us forward in an area where we often languish for lack of direction. While its catchy taglines can become more distracting than helpful, and its psychological material is not new, Racial Sobriety is a useful guide for any group struggling with the realities of racism.