I Used to Be a Miscegenist — Now I’m an Identitarian

This is part of our continuing series of accounts by readers of how they shed the illusions of liberalism and became race realists.

I am from a small town in the Pacific Northwest and had almost no contact with people of other races until after age 21. I am in my forties now. I was completely “liberal” about race until my early thirties. I was aware since my teens that the average IQ score of blacks is 15 points lower than that of whites, but I thought the cause was cultural factors. I remember thinking that there are different subspecies (races) of birds, but they all fly well even if they have distinctive colors, and that it was therefore unlikely that different races of people would have a significant difference in the most essential characteristic of humans: intelligence. In my upbringing race was never mentioned at all. My family hardly ever spoke about politics, either, but I am sure they were Democrats.

When I was a child I remember seeing television footage of black protesters being pushed back with fire hoses, and hearing that they were excluded from Southern “whites-only” restaurants. I remember thinking that we Yankees were morally superior, since it was obvious that all you had to do to get along with black people was treat them courteously and fairly.

I learned Spanish and went to live in Mexico for a year after dropping out of college. I was amazed at the corruption. I had to pay many bribes to police despite having done nothing wrong. Ordinary people were very dishonest, too. I don’t remember thinking about immigration at all. This was the early 1980s, before immigration became really massive. I was still “liberal” on race but I wasn’t afraid to recognize negative cultural differences between us and Mexicans. When I returned to the US I found people were uncomfortable if I told them about my experiences with corruption, even though I refrained from making any racial or cultural generalizations.

I moved to the Southwest and attended a trade school that was about 40 percent black. That was the first time I had been around large numbers of black people. I dated black women and even wound up living with one for three years. Race was not a factor in our eventual break up and (thank goodness!) we had no children. At that time I worked in a company where 50 percent of the workers were black. My opinion of black people was starting to erode but I still clung to the idea that blacks are culturally deprived. Ebonics and cursing grated on me, but I attributed all “differences” to social class and deprivation.

I can remember a few incidents that roused the first traces of race-consciousness. I remember telling a dirty joke to one of my black co-workers, which included the word “prostitute,” and it dawned on me that he didn’t know the meaning of the word! I know he understood the concept because he once invited me to go look for “hos” after work, which I found repugnant.

I once told another black co-worker I had lived in Mexico and spoke Spanish, and it became clear he didn’t know where Mexico was, and didn’t know that Mexican-Americans speak Spanish rather than “Mexican.” He also didn’t know the locations of any of the states in the Pacific Northwest. The change in my thinking was taking place on a more or less unconscious level.

I was still living with my black girlfriend. She had an IQ of 105 and spoke Standard English, so gave me no reasons to re-examine my thinking, but I do remember something that made me wonder whether our relationship was a good idea. I was watching a television talk show about racially-mixed people, and a woman in the audience said she was mixed because some slave master raped one of his female slaves. It occurred to me that she probably knew nothing about her ancestors, and that it was just as likely she had an ancestor who was a prostitute impregnated by a white customer. It was striking to me that even mixed-race people demonize whites. I could imagine my great-great-grandchildren with this black woman being just as anti-white, and saying they were mixed because I had raped her.

Some time after I broke up with her I got a new job in a place with full-blown affirmative action. The workforce was 80 percent black, in an area that was about 20 percent black. Management was 80 percent black, too, and blacks seemed to feel freer to be themselves in such an environment. Every day I would hear the word “mother-f*cker” shouted out within 30 seconds of coming to work. I once saw a middle-aged black man pantomime anal rape, saying “Ah’m gonna be oooon yo’ ass, m*therf*cker, Ah’m gonna be f*cking on yo’ mother-f*cking ass!!” I had been making allowances for blacks but now I began to see an unmistakable, dramatic difference between blacks and whites of the same socioeconomic class.

Affirmative action completed my mental transformation. I had uncritically accepted the media view that it was an extra effort to search for qualified minorities, but at this new job it was obviously about lowering standards. I saw a white man with a BA passed over for a promotion that went to a black nincompoop who must have had an IQ of 75. I was enraged at how the mass media insist whites are not hurt by affirmative action. My first full-blown heretical thought was: “They really are as stupid as they sound!!”

I started looking for information — on the internet because I didn’t want to have to explain ordering a “racist” book in a bookstore. I started lurking in the Usenet group alt.politics.nationalism.white. The posts of someone calling himself Yggdrasil caught my attention and I started collecting them. I had been thinking of getting some of the books he mentioned, and by chance I came across a couple of them in a used book store. The first racialist book I read was Jared Taylor’s Paved with Good Intentions and the next was America Balkanized by Brent Nelson. Since that time, almost ten years ago, my interest in ethnic conflict has prompted me to read about 200 books, though many of them are on broader subjects, like general political science.

I haven’t had much success in changing anybody’s mind. I’ve tried talking with relatives about immigration but it just makes them uncomfortable. Most people are committed to conformity. I did get one person to read about a dozen carefully selected books, but his reaction was very odd. He started babbling about how at one time the Irish weren’t even considered white, which was hilarious because none of the books said anything about the Irish. It was like trying to deprogram a cult member.

I have moved back to the Pacific Northwest.

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.