A Son of the South’s Journey to Race Realism
John M. Willson, American Renaissance, March 26, 2022
This is part of our continuing series of accounts by readers of how they shed the illusions of liberalism and became race realists.
I grew up in the deep South in Georgia. My parents were self-described hippies in the early 1970s. My father was a self-hating leftist until his death. He often said (happily) that the West would soon be a lot browner. My mother, much like myself, slowly awakened to the reality that non-whites are not inherently superior to Europeans and seldom display any degree of gratitude for the preferences that Western society gives them in scholarships, entitlements, employment, and so many other things. We have both remarked on how, not only are non-whites not thankful, they are overwhelmingly hateful and entitled in their expectations of whites, as though these preferences are owed to them. There is a galling lack of return on the investment the West puts into non-whites. These realizations have led my mother and myself to note that permanent preferences for people that hate you is self loathing at its worst and ultimately suicidal.
One of the big moments for my racial awakening came during the Rodney King riots. My best friend’s father was walking to a train station in Atlanta (completely unaware that riots were happening) and he was chased down, beaten unconscious, and left for dead because he was white. I have no idea how many people this happened to as the Atlanta Police refused to make any comment, and neither my best friend’s father nor his family received any satisfaction or justice in the matter. The family was advised that the case would be investigated, but no one was ever arrested or prosecuted even though a local television station had recorded the entire incident by helicopter. I will never forget going to visit him in the ICU. I did not immediately recognize him because he was so severely disfigured from his beating. He had multiple skull fractures. The only reason I realized it was him was that he was the only white man in the unit. As I stood near his bed, I realized it was him by the shape of his eyes. Despite this, I would not say I immediately became a race realist — although it pointed me in that direction. It can be said with absolute certainty that if the races had been reversed, with an angry white mob chasing down a black man, the entire world would know the victim’s name.
I have had many other unpleasant experiences with non-whites, especially in the military, but I also felt sorry for them — they came from humble beginnings and lacked good educations. I also recall standing in a common area in college when the O.J. Simpson verdict was broadcast. There was a perfect dichotomy between the blacks who leapt in exultation and everyone else, racially European and Asian, who were aghast. Those horrified by the verdict literally stood with their mouths open in a shocked stupor, looking around as though asking, “Is this really happening?”
A few years later, I was sitting in my car in a train station parking lot, also in Atlanta. After waiting some 30 minutes, I saw someone walking to their car and followed them in order to take their parking space when they left. As I was watching this car back out, another car pulled in front of me, getting in between my vehicle and the parking space. This quickly escalated as I was not willing to let this other driver, who had just arrived in the parking lot, take my space for which I had been waiting impatiently for half an hour. I pulled around the other vehicle just far enough that they would have to go through my vehicle in order to park. As the other car left, I turned to look at the other driver, as if to say, “What are you doing?” She was a young black woman, who refused to look at me. After several minutes, I assumed she realized that I was not going to move, and she finally backed up just enough to allow me to park.
As fate would have it, just as I was getting out of my truck, the parking space next to me opened up on my driver’s side. As I closed my door and walked toward a sidewalk, the young black woman raced her engine and drove as fast as she could into the parking space, forcing me to jump quickly out of the way onto the sidewalk. Instead of confronting her directly, I walked with haste into the train station and found an attendant and asked for him to call the police. As I was talking to the attendant, the black woman walked by us and said, “You shouldn’t have gotten in my way!” I immediately asked her, “Is that why you tried to hit me with your car?” She replied, “Yeah,” as she walked by, shaking her head side to side. I turned immediately to the attendant, an older black man, and said, “She just admitted that she attempted to hit me with her car.” He seemed to think about it for a moment and then nodded his head. At this point, there were already police at the train station (I would later find out the station had its own police precinct). There were two police officers that were walking quickly in our direction, and the attendant pointed to the young black woman who was about to disappear into the station. The police quickly called out to her, “Ma’am! Ma’am!” as she turned to see them moving toward her.
To summarize the next two hours, after repeated failed attempts at an apology, the black woman finally began to cry when she realized I was about to have her arrested for assault with a motor vehicle. It was only then that she began to ask for mercy as the officers explained that it was my prerogative to press charges, especially with an eyewitness collaborating her earlier confession. But instead I said I was satisfied with her apology. It was what happened next that still makes my heart sink. The moment she realized she was free to go, she rushed past me to get in front of me to enter the station. This provoked the officers enough to rush past me and detain her again. I could hear the officers remarking sternly about her obvious lack of gratitude, among other things, and they held onto her, each holding one of her elbows, until I had entered the station. I had a prayerful inclination to let it go and forgive her, and I did forgive her. But I have often regretted not pressing charges at her obvious lack of actual repentance. The whole affair had made me hours late for work that day, and I felt at the time that it was going to be more trouble than it was worth.
There are so many other direct experiences I have had, especially in regards to preference to non-whites at work, that all make me terribly angry as I reflect back on them. As a son of the South, I look back at all my experiences and can say in absolute truth that I have seen many, many acts of discrimination in my life, but none of them were done by whites toward non-whites. It has always been the other way around. I have begun to pray fervently for many years now that all whites, wherever they are, wake from their self-hating stupor and realize their God given ancestry and culture is worth defending.
If you have a story about how you became racially aware, we’d like to hear it. If it is well written and compelling, we will publish it. Use a pen name, stay under 1,200 words, and send it to us here.