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The First Step to Recovery Is Admitting You Are Not Powerless Over Your Privilege

Dismantling white supremacy within 12-step recovery groups

Jessica Hoppe
GEN
Published in
9 min readJul 6, 2020

Photo: Bettmann/Getty Images

On the evening of June 12, an employee called 911 to report a man who was blocking the drive-thru line at a Wendy’s restaurant in southwest Atlanta. It appeared he was passed out in his car, most likely drunk. “Is he Black?” the dispatcher asked. “Yeah,” the employee answered. At approximately 10:30 p.m., Officer Devin Brosnan responded to the call and found 27-year-old Rayshard Brooks asleep in his car. Brosnan awakened Brooks, who peacefully followed the officer’s orders to move his car to a parking space. After a few minutes of routine questioning with full cooperation from Brooks, Brosnan called for backup. Officer Garrett Rolfe arrived within minutes and administered a field sobriety test. Brooks asked if he could walk home, where his family, namely his daughter, whose birthday they had just celebrated, was waiting for him. The officers refused and instead demanded he take a Breathalyzer test. Armed with the results, Rolfe attempted to handcuff Brooks. He resisted; they struggled. When Brooks ran in the opposite direction of the cops, Rolfe fired three shots from a distance of 18 feet 3 inches, killing Brooks.

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GEN
GEN

Published in GEN

A former publication from Medium about politics, power, and culture. Currently inactive and not taking submissions.

Jessica Hoppe
Jessica Hoppe

Written by Jessica Hoppe

New York based-writer and creator of @nuevayorka. Work featured in The New York Times, Paper, Vogue, and elsewhere.

Responses (21)

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So many people from AA are upset in these comments, so clearly you’re doing something right! White supremacy in healing spaces and yes AA is what drove me away from it as a modality for getting and staying sober. I took some elements and left but I…

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White supremacy is baked into the foundation of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Yes! My god, this piece is poignant and long overdue. I tried (and failed) to subvert this dynamic in the rooms as I became aware of it, but ultimately doing so was/is futile: the disease model de-politicizes and individualizes addiction, and…

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I'm a proud AA member for 9 years and 5 months and very grateful for recovery. as a black man Ive seen and experienced some bias type ways in different 12 steps environments. it seems in mostly white meetings(and some mostly black attendee meetings)…

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