On February 28, 2025, William Watson celebrated the audiobook launch of Twelve Steps for White America for a United States of America. In the book, Watson argues that we can use the 12 steps of “known recovery principles to unshackle the past, promote U.S. security and global competitiveness, and eliminate race as a predictor of democracy’s outcomes.”
Curious about the title – which speaks to the 12-step program that Alcoholics Anonymous uses – and intrigued by the content, I read the book and reached out to Watson to learn more about him and his motivations for writing the book.
Watson expressed strong emotions about the period during which he wrote the book. He had just announced his retirement from San José –Evergreen Community College District and was reflecting on what might come next. As he shared, “In that broken openness, when a global collective experienced the horror of Mr. George Floyd’s murder, I asked what is uniquely mine to give – a 1960s Mississippi dirt road poverty redneck born to civil rights parents, who now presents as a former psychotherapist, alcoholic, West Coast queer “liberal elite” with a CRT [Critical Race Theory]
informed doctorate.”
Having been in recovery for “38 years practicing (as the 12th step says),” Watson explained that his reasons for writing the book stemmed from a deep personal commitment to healing. “Since my sobriety depends upon a right relationship with other human beings, and the lack thereof rots the roots of the American experiment,” he continued, “I actualized James Baldwin’s inspiration for “new standards” to present a hopeful treatment plan for democracy that transfers the basic problem-solving principles of recovery onto our nation’s racialized dysfunction.”
As Twelve Steps for White America is aimed at white people, I asked Watson why it is so important for white people to speak up on issues of racial inequity. His response was clear and uncompromising, “It’s not the responsibility of Black Americans to dismantle advantage that has been rigged against them since before the fabrication of “white” was concretized in 1691 Virginia law.” He also stated, “Any prophet of old could tell a people whose history of violent enslavement lingers unremedied, they should tremble before a just God.”
Watson believes that “White repentance, atonement, and redemption is not some ‘welfare gift to Black people’ who need white help.” He emphasizes in the book that white people “must work out our salvation with fear and trembling.” He added, “At the most existential radical core, Black people don’t need white anything. White people need Black people so that individual repentance, atonement, and redemption can finally lead us en masse out of the wilderness toward truth, reconciliation, and renewal – a promised land where, in the United States of America, race no longer predicts outcomes.”
Twelve Steps for White America is not a book for the defensive as Watson is forthright and doesn’t mince words in what feels like a one-on-one conversation with the reader. Some readers will likely feel angry after reading the book and at Watson. However, this book will stick with readers, challenging them to reflect on their lives, privileges, and actions.
Curious about how Watson handles resistance to his ideas, I asked him what he says to people who push back against his arguments, especially regarding the acknowledgment and admission of racism. His response was candid and not what I expected. He stated, “What I say to them is no different than what I would say to anyone whose alcoholism is killing them. As long as it’s working for you, there is nothing I can do for you. When you cannot take it anymore, I have a treatment plan that promises you justice, then liberty, then peace, then a prosperity of spirit and more. That’s the sustainable order of democracy.”
In Twelve Steps for White America, Watson introduces the Rigged Advantage Theory, which posits that “for generations, a few elites have been exploiting a mass of others in a whiteness inclusion collusion delusion.” He elaborated when I spoke with him, stating, “Plutocrats need to coopt these “other whites” as a voting block, enabling a plutocracy to masquerade as a democracy while reproducing power and wealth for themselves. The mechanism of displacement functions to mask the subjective experience of exploitation. What is done to these “other whites” (who have nothing in common with elites but this made-up whiteness)? They then displace ‘others.’”
Watson explains that this is why anti-racism efforts have “so far failed to fend against rising autocracy.” In Twelve Steps for White America, he argues that Rigged Advantage depends on elites using white supremacy and anti-Blackness to “jump non-elite whites into the whiteness gang. The exploited then displace that white supremacy and anti-Blackness onto ‘others.’” He believes that “anti-racism will never achieve its end until the exploitation of these millions of white Americans gets disrupted. It is this 400-year generational transfer of dysfunction that needs a treatment plan.”
Despite the heavy nature of the book, Watson expressed hope for the future of race relations in the U.S. To my surprise, he said, “I’m wildly, joyfully, incredibly hopeful,” citing Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech: “The moral arc of the universe bends toward justice.” He added, “You cannot tell a nearly dead at 25 alcoholic who is now sober for 38 years living an abundant life that change is not possible. Repeatedly, I’ve seen hopelessness rise out of despair. It dazzles us as miraculous, but the striving of existence seeks to thrive.”
Another source of Watson’s optimism is his parents and the life they modeled for him. He shared, “I was taught to love this country so much that it’s worth great risk. My parents risked their lives and mine, surviving death threats from the same Klan that killed James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner (in my lifetime) 17 miles away from our home.”
Watson grew up in Mississippi, and his memories combine beauty and fear. He described growing up as:
It was Faulkner, Erskine Caldwell, Tennessee Williams, Eudora Welty, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison and Harper Lee. It was trembling that the Klan was going to bomb our house. It was fishing at the pond in August and celebrating with a fish fry and homemade ice cream on Mama Burnham’s back porch in rocking chairs. It was Miss Hegga (Helga) teaching me to take cabbages over to Mrs. Eula Mae Patrick’s house when, in retrospect, both Miss Hegga and Mrs. Eula Mae knew Mrs. Eula Mae and her family didn’t need any cabbages. It was my little legs in shorts, dusty from the red-clay dirt road, running home to tell Mama and Daddy, crying that the little redneck boys said, “We’s gone git killed by the KKK.” It was “Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow” and “Count Your Many Blessings Name Them One By One.” It was Mozart, Bach, Beethoven with Hank Williams, the Mighty Clouds of Joy, and the Happy Goodmans. It was gloriously horrible in a wretched triumph of redemption that sings still, ‘A Change Gone Come.’
We ended the interview with Watson stating, “Yes, my book gets to the hideous core of historical depravity, and I’ve never been more hopeful about what love can do among the American people. Individual repentance, atonement, and redemption always leads to truth, reconciliation, and renewal.” He added, harkening back to a song of the Civil Rights Movement, I believe we are closer than we have ever been, and I ‘ain’t gonna let nobody turn me round.’”