OneWhite Supremacy and Other DrugsI was delighted a few years ago when “Kaitlyn” and other senior executives at her company invited me to an idyllic lakeside resort a few hours from the Appalachian Mountains to lead a two-day DEI workshop for their employees. Kaitlyn was an ardent supporter of DEI who had moved heaven and earth to get me to speak to her colleagues. No cellphones were allowed. The executives wanted to stay laser focused on their mission to increase racial equity in their organization.
During one of my presentations, I noticed that Kaitlyn seemed especially intrigued by research that examined the effect of “Whitening” résumés. The study showed that a large percentage of Black professionals with ethnically identifiable names—such as Lakeisha Ann Washington—would strategically list their name as L. Ann Washington, for example, rather than Lakeisha A. Washington when it came time to apply for a job. The results revealed that masking their race by using their middle name rather than their first name drastically increased the likelihood of getting a job interview. Prospective employers were more than twice as likely to interview L. Ann Washington as they were Lakeisha A. Washington. This was true regardless of whether the company had expressed a strong commitment to DEI or not.
I attended a dinner that evening with several of the organizers of the event, Kaitlyn among them. She continued to ruminate on the résumé study. I thought her fixation might have been related to the fact that something as simple as a name could have a huge impact on someone’s employment opportunities. Or perhaps she was surprised by the finding that companies that purported to highly value DEI were just as likely to discriminate against Black applicants as companies that expressed indifference toward DEI. However, this study resonated with Kaitlyn for personal reasons. She began telling me a story.
“When I was in college, I wanted to join a sorority,” she said. “But they turned me down.”
I nodded, listening.
“Later, I ran into one of the girls in the sorority, who was shocked to find out who I was.” She paused, and then added: “She thought that I was Black!”
Seeing the confusion on my face, she began to clarify. It turned out that “Kaitlyn” was her middle name. Her full name was “Diamond Kaitlyn Wilson” (not her real name), and her family and friends had called her “Diamond” her entire life.
When the all-White sorority saw that a woman named “Diamond Wilson” wanted to join the club, they rejected her on the assumption that she was Black. However, when one of the sorority sisters later met Diamond in person and saw that she was White, she was more than willing to let her in.
“She’s now one of my best friends!” Kaitlyn proudly proclaimed, referring to the sorority sister who had initially rejected her when she thought she was Black.
Following that experience, Kaitlyn elected to go by her middle name rather than her first name. Decades later, she still does. I had no idea that her first name was Diamond. Her official e-mail correspondence lists the sender as Kaitlyn Wilson, with not so much as a “D.” preceding her first name.
I was floored by several aspects of her story. What stunned me most was how willingly this tireless crusader for racial justice embraced the sorority sister who openly practiced racial discrimination. When I pointed this out to her, she got it. At the same time, she didn’t get it at all. She admitted that it was an “imperfect” situation but seemed to understand why the sorority wouldn’t have wanted her if she were Black. She insisted that despite their flaws, the sorority members were “good people.” In the end, Kaitlyn reiterated to me her deep commitment to racial equity—and I think she genuinely believed it.
My interaction with Kaitlyn was just one of the thousands that I had with White people during my book tour for The Conversation from 2021 through 2023—the year that I gave my “Play, Change, Leave” presentation to the Men of Color Leadership Conference at the Omni Hotel in Boston. During those two and a half years, my innumerable encounters and conversations gave me insight into the fact that the problem wasn’t really a lack of information. It was something much, much deeper than that.
As a psychologist, I became increasingly aware that the root cause of White supremacy was more motivational than cognitive. In other words, the issue seemed to be grounded in needs, drives, and compulsions rather than beliefs, assumptions, and misinformation. It slowly dawned on me that what I was seeing was much more akin to an “addiction” than a situation of apathy or ignorance. What I noticed across a multitude of interactions was an endorsement of, acquiescence to, or appreciation of the ways in which White supremacy provided comfort, privilege, solidarity, and status—similar to what I witnessed during my interaction with Kaitlyn. I even observed this strong undercurrent of White supremacy amid ostensible efforts to promote antiracism, not unlike the scenario with Kaitlyn.
This paradoxical juxtaposition of DEI allyship and White supremacy was vividly described by Robin DiAngelo—a progressive White woman—in her book Nice Racism: How Progressive White People Perpetuate Racial Harm. In one passage, she calls out the “strings” attached to diversity, and how, at the end of the day, what White people are really concerned about is status. She claims that “White progressives who can afford to send their children to private schools do enjoy the small amount of racial diversity these schools typically have . . . but that diversity must be from the right groups and in the right numbers. A little ‘diversity’ is hip today, but ‘too much’ and we lose status.” Clearly, Kaitlyn’s priority was obtaining and maintaining status by becoming a member of an elite club—one that “understandably” would not have wanted her if she were Black (i.e., “low-status”). There is a big difference between racial charity and racial parity, and Kaitlyn was a much bigger champion of the former than the latter.
I will return to Kaitlyn’s story later in the chapter. For now, I want to shift gears and elaborate on what I view as the parallels between the psychological processes underlying most forms of addiction and those underlying White Americans’ dogged commitment to endorsing and/or defending White supremacy. One of the biggest commonalities is the need to engage in a counterproductive pattern of behavior despite having access to information indicating that it would be better to abstain—and knowing this, perhaps the addict has tried to stop, but failed.
Copyright © 2025 by Robert Livingston. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
