Leaving Home

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This past summer, my wife and I uprooted our lives and those of our three young children to move across the country to Idaho, far away from the east coast where we both grew up and away from our immediate families. Many people were curious as to why we would choose to do something so drastic, especially since neither of us was relocating for a lucrative job opportunity. Though we were never untruthful, the answers we gave to that question depended largely on who was asking. We had many reasons why we wanted to move to Idaho, such as the beautiful scenery, the outdoor lifestyle, and its conservative political climate. However, we seldom shared explicitly the most important reasons of all, and those reasons came down to race.

A decade ago, our neighborhood racial demographic was mixed, but clearly the majority of people were white. As years went by and more and more homes went up for sale, it seemed just about every new family moving in was black. Simultaneously, we noticed the types of crimes in the surrounding area were beginning to feel more like those of the city, not the small town we knew. Most disturbing to my wife and me were the crimes happening in local schools. Guns being brought to school, teenagers shot at football games, and the ever-increasing number of mass brawls at the local high school were all clear indications that things were changing for the worse. One does not need a degree in criminology to guess correctly the race of the people who were, by and large, responsible for these incidents.

We also began personally to have periodic encounters with blacks in and around our neighborhood. There were loads of children in the neighborhood, but the only one who consistently gave us any trouble was, surprise, a teenage black boy. He seemed to enjoy finding various ways to be a disrespectful punk, even toward those who were attempting to be kind to him.

There were other encounters, such as when a group of young black teenagers walked past our house and asked if my dog was nice. I answered that he liked almost everyone, to which one boy yelled, “Yeah, I bet he don’t like niggers!” and proceeded to laugh hysterically, sauntering away. The one incident that affected me most deeply though was when I overheard two black boys, no older than nine, say something about me on the playground as my kids played. They laughed and snickered, commenting that they better stay away from me because “They use to whip us!” “Pick that cotton, nigger!” they exclaimed. Children that young don’t spout such things without having been heavily influenced to think that way. Sadly, their public-school education was probably enough to demonize me as a white man around the same time they should have been studying addition and subtraction.

As my oldest child entered the school system for the first time, the racial changes of our neighborhood and surrounding school system became that much more real. During our first “meet the teacher” night, I noticed that the demographic makeup of my daughter’s class made her a minority, with well over half of the students in her class being non-white, most of whom were black. That evening, her new teacher, who was also black, asked, “Was you looking for Miss Briggs?” After that assault on basic grammar, her mispronunciation of the word “library” wasn’t much of a shock. Would this really be the woman responsible for educating my child for the next year?

As my daughter and my other children progressed through the grades, what messages would they receive regarding race, gender, and the role of whites throughout history? How would their peer relationships change? Would they feel demonized and tasked with the welfare of every other group but their own?

Given the increasingly anti-white sentiments from the progressive left and virtually every corner of the media, combined with the behavior of local black highschoolers, there was little need to guess the answers to those questions. Instead of the diverse utopia the progressives promised, all I could see was a darkening future for my family. As a racially conscious white father, I knew I needed to take action to safeguard my family and give my children the best chance to grow up with a healthy white consciousness in a place where their physical safety was protected.

The question many race-conscious whites ask is, “Where do our people go?” With demographics in the US rapidly sliding past the point of no return and progressivism infecting so many well-to-do white communities, prospects are thin. Where can a white father go for assurance that his family will be surrounded by the best of white culture with a strong majority of white people? Those questions heavily guided our search.

I am very thankful for my wife and her support during this early stage. At times, it was easy to feel that the task was too monumental or too scary to be undertaken. Would things really be better? Could we leave our friends and family behind? Would the sacrifices be worth the gains? When I would begin to lose motivation early on, my wife would appear with just the right new piece of research on a possible new home for us. She helped look at demographics, political leanings, population density, cost of living, job opportunities, and a litany of other considerations for choosing a new life. Of course I participated in this effort, but it was she who spear-headed much of the early research. To any young single men reading this, take the time to find a good wife and then put in the effort to build a strong relationship. Having a loving wife and children is easily the biggest blessing of my life.

After extensive research, we settled on Idaho as our destination, specifically the Boise area. We soon learned that this location was not a secret and had been a popular destination for whites fleeing California in particular. I can’t help but wonder how many of them felt just as we did about the changing racial demographics of their home state but simply lacked the courage to admit it, even to themselves. Surely, they came for lower taxes, better schools, and safer cities, but just why does 86-percent-white Idaho do so much better in all these areas than 35-percent-white California? I suspect it’s less of a mystery to them than they like to let on.

When visiting in and around Boise in late spring of this year, we fell in love with the area. We acted swiftly and decisively, managing to sell our home, get new jobs, and buy a new house in Idaho all in about three months. Breaking the news to our families was the hardest part, but virtually everyone we told was supportive, apart from some of our more liberal friends who just couldn’t seem to understand it.

If you truly believe in the value of healthy, homogenous white communities but have never been in one, I highly recommend it. Merely going to a local park in Boise during a children’s soccer game seemed unreal. The sheer number of white faces with virtually no exception was pleasantly shocking when we first arrived. I felt more comfortable than I had in recent memory, and being there produced a real sense of safety and belonging. As we explored further, visiting mountain-lake campgrounds, local riverside hangouts, suburban playgrounds, and even the city, white faces were heavily concentrated everywhere. The only downside was that it was harder to keep an eye on my children, since they resembled so many of the local kids! The genetic kinship between us was obvious, and we felt as if we were coming home.

While shopping one afternoon, I noticed that despite the number of people in the store, it was calm and quiet. Back on the east coast, I had become so accustomed to blacks practically shouting or talking incessantly on their cellphones that I eventually thought that was the natural state of things.

I tend to detest cities for many reasons but not least of all are the dangerous people that often reside there. Few places give me more anxiety than an inner city. Boise, on the other hand, is a treat. For starters, it is clean, almost to a fault. Its homeless population is virtually non-existent. Despite cities in general being known for racial diversity, Boise has such a pleasant concentration of whites, it almost doesn’t seem possible. Thanks to this, the crime rate is unsurprisingly and impressively low for a large city. I enjoy visiting the city with my children, even during a busy weekend evening.

Critical race theorists love to express public health concerns about how racism negatively effects the wellbeing of non-whites. If anything, whites are the ones experiencing negative health consequences as a result of living around large numbers of non-whites. I used to feel less safe around groups of blacks — not just physically, but also socially. Would a simple utterance or benign action be taken as evidence of racism on my part? Walking on eggshells and biting your tongue may be useful in avoiding unpleasant encounters with blacks, but it takes a toll on you emotionally, even spiritually. This was a burden I never fully appreciated until I no longer was forced to carry it.

I am not the first to suggest that “deaths of despair” among white males are at least in part caused by racial and cultural shifts that have placed us at the bottom of the pile. We live in a society that expects us to be silent about our dispossession. With the percentage of non-whites steadily increasing in our old school district, I foresaw my children’s high-school experiences would be littered with exactly the kind of racial anxiety and tight-rope walking I desperately wanted them to avoid.

Our decision to uproot our lives was costly at first, but the long-term dividends are already paying off, and we couldn’t be happier with the decision to move. Every day that I walk to pick my daughter up from her school, I am reminded of what a healthy white community feels like. Now when I think of the path my children’s lives are on, I smile instead of worrying. How lucky we are to live in a place where whites are the unquestioning majority. Our parents took this for granted 40 years ago and largely became complacent. Now it’s our turn to stand up as whites to ensure places like this remain for ourselves and our children.