An Excerpt from Play the Game. Change the Game. Leave the Game.: Pathways to Black Empowerment, Prosperity, and Joy
An excerpt from Play the Game. Change the Game. Leave the Game. by Robert Livingston, published by Crown Currency and longlisted for the 2025 Porchlight Business Book Awards in the Personal Development & Human Behavior category.
It’s time to face an inconvenient truth: our current approach to fighting racism is just not working. For a brief moment following the murder of George Floyd, it seemed as though the country had finally acknowledged the destructive legacy of slavery and White supremacy, and had committed to putting things right. Now, a horde of prominent voices—many of whom professed to be antiracist allies—are pulling back, cutting support, and defunding programs that sought to level the playing field.
Harvard psychologist Robert Livingston contends that racism operates like an addiction for so many White people: hard to admit, and even harder to quit. Given their unwillingness to kick the habit, where does this leave Black people? In this provocative book, Livingston has flipped the script, asking: How can Black people attain prosperity and peace of mind despite the enduring presence of racism? Livingston reveals three paths:
- Play the game, or find ways to work within mainstream, predominantly White systems without sacrificing your identity or dignity. Think of Kenneth Chenault, a “tempered radical” who rose through the ranks to become the first Black CEO of American Express.
- Change the game, or challenge the status quo in an effort to upend White supremacy—like Colin Kaepernick, whose idealism cost him his football career but made him an icon.
- Leave the game, or turn away from White environments to carve out spaces where Black people can flourish—from HBCUs to entrepreneurship to the creation of ethnic enclaves, like the all-Black, middle-class neighborhood where Livingston himself grew up.
Drawing on social science, his own experiences, and interviews with trailblazing Black leaders and luminaries, Livingston reveals the contours of these oft overlapping paths for effectively navigating, mitigating, and circumventing White supremacy. Play the Game. Change the Game. Leave the Game. is a bold, groundbreaking proposition that empowers readers to make the leap from being played to creating their own game plan.
Play the Game. Change the Game. Leave the Game. has been longlisted in the Personal Development & Human Behavior category of Porchlight Book Company's 2025 Business Books Awards. The excerpt below is adapted from the book's Introduction, "From Antiracism to Black Empowerment."
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The throng of upbeat, smartly dressed men and women had descended on the stately ballroom of the Omni Hotel in Boston for the 2023 Men of Color Leadership Conference. I had been invited to deliver a keynote address to the crowd of over a thousand ambitious individuals, composed of business executives, attorneys, engineers, educators, consultants, and other professionals. I knew they were hungry for inspiration and advice on how they could bolster their chances of success as they climbed the American career ladder. I had originally planned to reiterate what had become my standard DEI presentation on strategies for promoting antiracism in the workplace. But that day I wasn’t feeling up to it. Something had changed.
For most of the previous three years, I had possessed boundless energy and optimism for the DEI mission of increasing social justice through education and conversation—which constituted the foundation of my first book, The Conversation: How Seeking and Speaking the Truth About Racism Can Radically Transform Individuals and Organizations. In it, I presented a framework outlining what leaders and ordinary individuals could do to promote racial equity in the workplace and society. In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, there had been a surge of interest in antiracism. I had spent most of the three years that followed Floyd’s death engaging in conversations with thousands of corporate executives and employees, police chiefs and officers, mayors and city managers, administrators of federal agencies and state judiciaries, and nonprofit directors from across the United States.
But by 2023, I had grown frustrated. Leaders in almost every sector had given plenty of lip service to racial equity, but very little seemed to change with respect to outcomes, or even mindsets. It was mostly hand-wringing and performative pledges, I had concluded, rather than real learning and commitment to change. I had become deeply disillusioned by the time the Men of Color Leadership Conference rolled around, and was beginning to believe that all the collective effort to advance antiracism in organizations had been a grand waste of time.
This put me in a difficult spot as a speaker. The conference organizers knew what was in my book, and that’s what they had signed up for—a hopeful conversation about the promise of antiracism education. I had been invited to the conference to inspire people, not to demoralize them. However, I had become so disenchanted by broken DEI promises that I did not feel I could continue to make the case that an investment in antiracism that depended on the actions of White people would bear fruit.
I agonized for days over what to say in my presentation. Should I just stick to the “Yes, we can” mantra and tell the conference attendees to keep their heads down and keep on keeping on? It seemed disingenuous and inauthentic, given that DEI efforts had not only stalled but were quickly moving in reverse. The speed and scope of the backlash were astounding—and the reprisals continued long after the conference:
- At least sixty-five anti-DEI bills have been introduced by state legislators since 2023, as reported by The Washington Post.1
- Multiple large companies such as Meta, Tesla, Lyft, and Wayfair have slashed the size of their DEI teams by 50 percent, with Tesla’s billionaire founder and CEO infamously taking to social media in December 2023 to proclaim that “DEI must DIE.”
- The iconic tractor company John Deere went from calling DEI one of its “highest priorities” in 2022 to stating in 2024 that it would audit materials “to ensure the absence of socially motivated messages.”2
- Ditto for Brown-Forman—the maker of Jack Daniel’s, Woodford Reserve, and other well-known spirits, wines, and liqueurs—which rolled back its DEI commitments in August 2024 in response to mounting external pressure.
- In June 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled race-conscious college admissions at Harvard and UNC–Chapel Hill unconstitutional, overturning forty-five years of legal precedent. The Chronicle of Higher Education later published a tracker of all legislative efforts to thwart DEI at colleges and universities. The list is long.3
- The Shenandoah County, Virginia, school board voted to rename schools after Confederate leaders Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee after these names were changed in 2020 to Mountain View High School and Honey Run Elementary School. This change reportedly cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in a district that desperately needed funds for computers, books, and other education essentials.
- The school board in the liberal bastion of Concord, Massachusetts, rejected a proposal to name a new middle school after Black abolitionist Ellen Garrison, despite many buildings in the town being named after White historical figures. Currently, none are named after Black historical figures.
- The states of Florida and Texas passed legislation to remove core components of Black history from their public education curriculum. Much of what remained was rewritten or misrepresented.
- Data from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) indicates that hate crimes have skyrocketed in recent years.
- In January 2024, the first Black president of Harvard University was forced to resign from her position—after only six months and two days on the job—by individuals who appeared to be more focused on a political agenda than her tremendous leadership potential.
Progress had become regress, despite our efforts to the contrary. I contemplated the notion that almost everyone, including me, had assumed that racism could be remedied with factual information, moral appeals, or self-interest incentives. In other words, if we taught White people about Black history or unconscious bias, that would raise awareness and reduce racism. Or if we called out all the harm that racism inflicts, and appealed to White people’s morality and humanity, that would increase empathy and decrease discrimination. Or if we helped White people realize that racism actually hurts White people too, then we could appeal to their self-interest. And surely, I had believed, White people would renounce racism if they understood the personal benefits of doing so.
While there is good logic underlying all these assumptions—and empirical evidence showing that appealing to any one of them may move the needle to some degree—they do not address what I have come to believe is the true source of the problem. The real issue is not a lack of information, morality, or self-interest. I believe that White people already know in some deep part of themselves that both anti-Black racism and White privilege exist. Most White people also value compassion and kindness and, in their hearts, want to do the right thing. They may even realize, on some level, that ending racism would benefit everyone, including White people themselves.
The problem is that racism does not just reside in the mind; it is in the body as well. I began to realize that racism operates, in many respects, like an addiction—an addiction to White supremacy.
[…]
From Antiracism to Black Empowerment
In the wake of my revelation, I decided to switch things up. Instead of focusing on White-centered antiracism, I would focus on Black-centered empowerment. This decision was not without risk. There were dozens of White executives from corporate sponsors in the audience, many of them from white-shoe investment banking and insurance firms such as Morgan Stanley, Fidelity, Liberty Mutual, and John Hancock. Would they withhold funding for future conferences if my talk was too “radical”? I had pondered the dilemma. The last thing I wanted to do was jeopardize the relationship between the conference organizers and their sponsors. But I also figured that the organizers had chosen me for a reason, knowing that my approach is “truth to power.”
The central theme of my presentation was that we can’t wait for White people to change. That day may never come. We have to empower ourselves. A slide in my presentation deck laid out the three paths to that empowerment:
- Play the Game
- Change the Game
- Leave the Game
What I was telling this sea of a thousand faces in the Omni ballroom was something few people in the DEI world had been saying—racism has always been, and will likely continue to be, a formidable force in the workplace. Therefore, it is imperative that we acknowledge this inconvenient truth and respond accordingly. I then began to elaborate on the numerous ways in which individuals could play the game, or work within these systems of White supremacy; change the game, or challenge the status quo in an effort to upend White supremacy; and leave the game, or carve out alternative spaces for flourishing outside of the central orbit of White supremacy. I emphasized that these paths are not mutually exclusive. Most Black people will do all three things in the course of their career, to one extent or another, depending on their personal goals and circumstances.
As I delivered my talk—the first time I had publicly made some of these arguments—the crowd was dead silent. I had no idea what they were thinking, or whether the message was resonating. At the conclusion of the presentation, I thanked the audience, then held my breath.
After an instant, I was stunned by the whooping and thunderous applause I received. Judging from the energy in the room, I had struck a chord deep inside folks. As I tried to leave the ballroom, people surrounded me, clamoring to ask questions and discuss the ideas further. I had places to be, but the attendees made it clear that they didn’t want me to go anywhere. I stuck around speaking with people for nearly an hour.
Later, after finally making my way home, I spent the evening mulling over what had happened. It was evident that many in the Black community were as weary as I was from the constant lobbying for concern and antiracist action from White people. It was also clear that despite the fatigue, hope endured. Everyone in that room seemed to believe that things can change. We just weren’t sure we could depend on White people to change them.
Indeed, Black people have always led the charge for our own freedom and dignity. Although many people tend to think of abolitionists as noble White men and women, the movement was created and led by Black people (Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, etc.). Ditto with the Civil Rights Movement. Ditto with Black Lives Matter. In all these movements, there was critical support from staunch White allies once the movement gained momentum. However, these true White allies have always represented a minuscule proportion of the overall White population. Why should now be any different?
I wrote this book for the multitudes of Black people who feel the same way as those who filled that Omni ballroom—people motivated to put themselves, their families, and their communities on a path to prosperity. The two intertwined themes of this book revolve around accepting the unfortunate reality of the persistence of White racism while also embracing the optimistic reality that there is much that Black people can do to effectively navigate, mitigate, or extricate themselves from the quagmire. This book is about Black self-determination, as individuals and as a collective. One thing I want to make crystal clear from the outset is that although I am focusing on actions that Black people can take, both individually and collectively, Black people are in no way responsible for the racism they endure. Ideally, it is the system that should change.
Racism was created by White people and should be dismantled by them. If you’re curious about ways to promote antiracism among White people, then read The Conversation for concrete, scientifically validated tips on how to move the needle. However, I also believe that there are other ways to create greater racial equity—ways that do not depend on the goodwill of White people at all. If “the game” is a workplace and society infused with White supremacy, then this book is about how to play the game, change the game, and/or leave the game. It’s about how we, as Black people, can own our power and choose our own pathways
Excerpted from Play the Game. Change the Game. Leave the Game.: Pathways to Black Empowerment, Prosperity, and Joy by Robert Livingston, in agreement with Crown Currency, an imprint of The Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2025 by Robert Livingston. All rights reserved.
About the Author
Robert Livingston is a race scholar who serves on the faculty of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He is the author of The Conversation, selected as a Financial Times Best Book of 2021 and nominated for a 2022 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Achievement. His research has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, and Harvard Business Review. For over two decades, he has been a diversity consultant to more than a hundred Fortune 500 companies, public-sector agencies, and non-profit organizations.
