"Addiction Doesn't Discriminate": Colorblind Racism in American Rehab.

This study examines how two dominant models of addiction treatment in the Twin Cities, Minnesota—a court-mandated "carceral rehab" and a voluntary "medical-restorative rehab" (MRR)—are racialized in practice. The carceral model, exemplified by Arcadia House, primarily serves poor men of color through coercive, punitive methods rooted in criminal justice frameworks, viewing addiction as a manifestation of a "criminal personality." In contrast, Healing Bridges, an MRR program treating mostly white, middle-class men, employs a medicalized brain disease paradigm emphasizing voluntary self-management and empowerment. Despite the colorblind rhetoric that "addiction doesn't discriminate," systemic racial disparities shape access, treatment experiences, and outcomes, with clients of color disproportionately criminalized and subjected to stigmatizing control, while white patients receive more supportive, autonomous care. The study highlights how addiction treatment institutions function as racialized organizations that reproduce broader social inequalities through differential governance and self-construction of racialized identities.