Racism: When you're too deranged to be able to do productive work

University of Minnesota offers 12-step AA-based webinar to help people ‘recover’ from being white

First step: Admit you have a problem

The University of Minnesota's School of Social Work is offering a special webinar series in which white participants are instructed to undergo a 12-step plan — based on Alcoholics Anonymous — in order to "recover and reclaim our full humanity."

The 12-step plan is outlined in Part 1 of the series, titled, "Recovery from White Conditioning: Building Anti-Racist Practice and Community," and is taught by therapist Cristina Combs, a university alumnus.

According to the project's website, Combs, a white woman, developed the plan "after years of struggling to navigate the role and presence of whiteness in her personal, academic, and professional journeys."

"In this model, we are, in fact, centering whiteness, but we are centering it differently: to expose it, study its patterns, and to transform its violent legacy," Combs said at the outset of the lecture, according to the College Fix.

She noted that she is "on traditional Dakota land," in reference to the Native American tribe that settled in Minnesota, and also acknowledged "George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and all of the other lives stolen from families and communities and our world due to police brutality and state-sanctioned violence.

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