Posted on June 23, 2011

One Liberal’s Conversion Story

Laura Wood, The Thinking Housewife, June 21, 2011

{snip}

Josaphine writes:

I am white, 42, and married to a black man. My husband is a fine art painter by trade, and a corporate accounts manager by day. We are celebrating our 16th wedding anniversary this year. We met in college in 1988 and married in 1995. After I earned a master’s degree, we married and had three children and moved to a midwestern city. My oldest daughter is 14, and I have been a homemaker and homeschooling parent since her birth.

My husband and I are former lunatic liberals. We promoted multiculturalism, the arts and diversity, and we have been involved in our neighborhood association, “urban renewal,” and the urban homesteading movement in our city. We always thought our interracial relationship was progressive. After marriage we associated with a local group of liberals who dug up their yards to plant food, composted, built rain barrels, breastfed their babies, practiced attachment parenting, planned community gardens, used clotheslines, etc. We did these things too, and in our liberalism, we felt very progressive. We were very popular with our white liberal friends because we were the token interracial couple.

{snip}

Things have not worked out as planned.

Living in a mostly black neighborhood has cast a very harsh light on black culture for me. All of my liberal illusions have been shattered. I have realized how much hatred and anger blacks have for white people. I have lost so much hope and innocence just by living here for nine years. I often feel that I have been beaten over the head with a big stick. I have read so much about HBD (Human Biodiversity), race, black culture, white culture, white nationalism, and other topics that I had never even known about. I have struggled to have a voice, and to use it without choking up.

We have never experienced white racism as a couple, only intolerance from blacks. {snip}

Several incidents have contributed to my racial awakening.

I once received a call from an older black woman who had at some point been an associate of my husband’s in the arts. They were working on an artist grant program together. She was trying to locate my husband so that she could return a portfolio of his work that she had borrowed a few years back. I told her that she could dispose of the items, that he did not need them. She became offended by this, and mentioned that she could tell that I was white by my “accent,” and that she did not trust me to make that decision FOR my husband (I often work as his office assistant in the sale of his paintings). She demanded to speak with him personally. This black woman continued to tell me that she was a black poetess, and very knowledgable of the “black experience,” and that she did not approve of interracial relationships. She said that her son had married a white woman and that there were children “produced” in the marriage and she could never bond with them. They were not authentically black to her. She asked me if I was going to teach my children about their black heritage. I realized at that moment that I was absolutely not going to teach my children to identify with a sub-culture that was filled with criminality, lies, illegitimacy, and a legacy of slavery and victimology. American black culture today is nothing to be proud of and we should all denounce it and demand assimilation.

{snip} We have been led, I believe by God, into a new way of thinking. Since last year, we have turned 180 degrees politically, and have adopted very conservative values. We have lost all of our liberal friends in the process, but have strengthened our family in many ways. We have become religious and very concerned with the future of our country.

I have felt very strongly that I am to be an advocate for marriage, family, and traditional values. I have never taken the time to acknowledge my white heritage. I would love to know more about my own white family and their traditions. I feel at age 42 that I am so far behind, and that I am creating a new heritage as I go along.

{snip}

I love my husband and my beautiful children dearly. They are smart, obedient, caring and compassionate. I do not regret the choices that I have made. I have realized that we have been brought together for a very important reason. I just don’t know what it is yet, but I am learning. My life has been turned upside down with the truth, and I am trying to read and learn all I can. I used to blame my liberal white friends for living in the expensive suburbs and worrying about “safe schools”, but now I have great compassion for them. I too long for a safe and friendly place to raise my children.

I know this is quite long, but I have many thoughts on this issue and don’t get a chance to talk about it often. I enjoy your blog greatly because I feel that my place is at home with my children. I openly reject feminism and homosexuality. I do not identify as a liberal any longer. I believe that white people are silenced in the open discussion of race and I don’t like it one bit. I teach my children the truth about race, and look to God for guidance in all things. I do not openly support mixed-race relationships, but now that I am in one, I have to do the best I can to just be honest and truthful about it.