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

I was born into a lower middle class, white family, in the southeast United States. The small community where I was raised was an all white rural area. It was a friendly, safe, and traditional American community. Every Sunday, my entire family (about fourteen in all), went to church together and then met back at my grandmother’s house for dinner. Our Preacher would frequently attend dinner with us, and I remember as a child, how much I enjoyed just sitting and listening to the adults as they reminisced about how things used to be so much better.

When it came time for me to start school, my parents tried to enroll me into the school closest to home, which was about eight miles away, and around 70 percent white, 25 percent black, and 5 percent other. Unfortunately, they learned that for bureaucratic reasons, they would have to enroll me in a different school further away. It was approximately 98 percent black, 1 percent white, and 1 percent other. At that age, I didn’t understand the implications of this. I had never heard my parents discuss race, and had never thought much about it myself. The first time it ever came up was when we got the news about which school I was to attend. I remember my father telling my mother he was worried I would be, “picked on for being different,” and my mother replying that, “it’s not like it was when they were in school.” Over the next few days, there were several conversations about trying to enroll me in the local private school, but money wouldn’t allow it.

Aside from some teachers, I was the only white person in kindergarten and first grade. But those first two years weren’t so bad. The only thing my whiteness caused was a series of strange but innocent questions and comments:

“Why your hair like that?”
“Why you talk like that?”
“She your mamma?” (Referring to any, and every white school employee.)
“You smell funny.”
“Is your poop white like you?” (Yes, I was really asked that.)
“Why you pay for lunch?”
“Why you don’t wear Nikes?”
“Why you don’t like Koolaid?”
“Why white people smell like dog when they wet?”

Though things seemed to be going well, my parents still wanted me to attend the whiter local school, so used my aunt’s address to enroll me there, starting in second grade. I was shocked to see so many whites in my class, but that wasn’t enough to ensure that I fit in. I must have unknowingly adopted some of the behaviors and mannerisms of my black classmates from my first school, because when I attempted to make friends with the other white kids in second and third grade, I was repeatedly asked why I, “acted black.” I never managed to feel like anything but an outsider at that school. Then, near the end of third grade, a teacher overheard me telling another student where I lived, and after questioning me, she sent me to the principal. He called my parents in, and told them that he would allow me to finish out the year, but I would not be allowed back next fall.

So I returned to my first school for fourth grade. To my surprise, there were now two other white kids in my class this time, one boy, and one girl. The boy and I quickly became friends, and for the most part we were left alone. The big exception was during meals. My father’s income was just high enough that I didn’t qualify for free lunch or free breakfast — unlike every other student. The fact that I paid for my meals was considered incredibly funny by my schoolmates. Trying to explain to them that I couldn’t get free lunch because my dad made too much money didn’t work. They called me a liar and said, “If your pops was that rich, you wouldn’t be wearing them Walmart clothes, and ‘bobo’ shoes” — a reference to the fact that despite their relative poverty, most kids at my school wore name brand clothes and Nikes, unlike me. They also suggested, my parents were just stupid because they didn’t know that all they had to do was show the school their E.B.T card and I could get my lunch for free. Once again, I tried to explain that our family didn’t qualify for an E.B.T card, but again, they figured this must be a lie, or further evidence of my parents’ stupidity because, “Everybody get food stamps.” Eventually, I gave up trying to explain myself on the free lunch issue, and began sitting at the teacher’s end of the table, to avoid the interrogations. However, outside of meal times, as long as I was able to sidestep any topic concerning money, things went relatively smoothly the rest of the year.

When my parents got divorced, I started living with my mom at her new place, which meant that I could return to the local white school my parents had always wanted me to go to. I started fifth grade there, and once again found myself friendless. My skin was too white for the black kids, my character too black for the white kids. For the next few years, I was your typical adolescent “loner.”

The summer before eighth grade my mom moved, putting me back in the district of the nearly all black school once again, which I returned to that September. I was the only white face in six of my nine classes, and I soon found myself answering the same strange questions about white people. Although some of the questions had gotten far more sexual in nature, they were just questions, so I tried to be as accommodating as possible. It was when they asked personal questions that things got awkward and hostile. Someone would ask, “What kinda music you like?” Trying to be honest, I would reply “Mostly country, but some rock, and oldies.” Inevitably, the very next question would be, “Why you don’t listen to rap? Why? You don’t like black people? You one dem rednecks, huh? You racist, huh?” Once I was asked by one of the kids who rode the same bus as me, “How many black people live on your road?” When I said, “None.” the reaction from everyone listening was teeth sucking, grumbling “Y’all racist,” and “Fuck them, they hate black folks down there.” I’ve never really considered myself a coward, but when you’re fourteen years old, being condemned as a racist, and threatened with a beat down by eight to ten people at once, you choose your follow up words and actions carefully. So, from then on, I tried to avoid questions about my home life, and began making extra efforts to try to, “act more black.” Like most white kids in a nearly all black school, I did everything humanly possible to keep from being called “racist.”

For young white guys in that position, there are three options:

Fit in. Listen to nothing but rap, sag your pants, wear your hat kicked to the side, intentionally fail tests so you don’t seem smart, speak in ebonics, call other whites “racist,” etc.
Be invisible. Isolate yourself, interact with no one.
Stand up for yourself. Get labeled a “racist,” be shunned and ready for physical attacks.

White girls have it worse than boys. Every day, from the first bell to the last, they were bombarded by a never ending wave of black boys groping, grabbing at, and catcalling them. Their miserable “options” were:

Give in. Date a black guy, be used for sex, and continue to be harassed by every other black guy in school.
Lie. Tell everyone they weren’t allowed to date at all.
Lie. Tell everyone they were lesbians.
Stand up for themselves. Admit they didn’t like black guys, get labeled “racist,” and brave the constant harassment, threats, and violence from black boys and girls alike.

I chose to try to fit in. The charade worked for a few months, but fell apart at the end of the year, after just one incident. I was sitting in class, and this black kid, Terry, wanted my seat, so he walked over and said, “Move man.” I decided to stand my ground and told him, “Nah man, sit somewhere else.” He scoffed, and sat a few seats over mumbling, “That white boy think I playin’ wit’ him.” A few minutes later, I went to the front of the class to turn in a paper, and when I came back he was in my seat. When I asked him to move, he said, “Get da fuck outta my face, boy.” I leaned down, and told him, “Get the fuck out of my seat.” He shoved me away from the desk. I grabbed the desk by the legs and flipped it on its side with him in it. The teacher came running over and broke it up before it went any further.

Altercations like that were not uncommon, so I figured that was the end of it. But later that day, I was sitting on the bleachers that surrounded the school gym, and one of Terry’s friends snuck up behind me and smacked me across the back of my head. I was livid, spun around and kicked him in the shins, which sent him falling to the ground face-first. I jumped to my feet just in time to see Terry running down the bleachers toward me. As he lunged for me I landed a punch on his jaw and he collapsed on the floor. Then, in a haze of adrenaline and anger, and under the foolish assumption that my attempts to fit in had worked fully and truly, I turned so I was facing everyone, threw my arms open, and shouted, “If any of you other n*****s want some, come on!” A tidal wave of black bodies — including guys who were supposed to be my friends — descended the bleachers, eager to call my bluff.

In that exact instant, I realized three important and immutable facts:

Always be ready.
Numbers matter.
I am white — not black.

The (white) coach teaching the class fled to his office, locked the door, and called the front desk, hoping they would send somebody in so he wouldn’t have to break it up. I am not sure how much time passed, but eventually the head football coach and his assistant arrived to save me from meeting my end right then and there. Seven of my attackers and I were sent to the front office. There, the assistant principal said he wanted to press criminal charges on me for disrupting school and inciting a riot. Local law enforcement and my mother were called in, and thanks to them, the administration settled for a week-long suspension. The seven boys the coaches witnessed attacking me (they said they couldn’t tell if any others were or not) were sent to in-school suspension for the remainder of that day.

When I returned to school, it was clear all the energy I had spent trying to fit in had been for nothing. I was back to being the white country boy I was born as. Everyone called me: cracker, white bread, racist, peckerwood, Wonder Bread, saltine, snow boy, Hitler, milky, pasty, honky, Klan man, powder, white boy, bitch-ass white boy, pussy-ass white boy, faggot-ass white boy, and plent of other colorful monickers. Another low-point that year was Black History Month (aka February), when my class watched a great deal of the TV show Roots. If you’re white and have never watched Roots — there is no better way to watch it than trapped in a room with 30 blacks as they soak in the highly dramatized depictions of the American slave trade. The pure hatred in their eyes, directed straight at the only white face in the room is quite the experience.

I graduated early and joined the real world. Despite everything that had happened to me, I still had a fairly liberal worldview, and a number of black friends. Just like when I was a small child, I didn’t think much about race. That started to change when I became a father. It got me thinking about the world I would leave behind when I passed on. I couldn’t help but wonder what had happened to the world that my family spoke of at those Sunday dinners long ago. I didn’t like the world I was seeing, and started looking into the problems in my town, my state, and my country. I wanted to know what was behind our society’s decline.

As I looked around, I was constantly reminded of something my grandfather told me when I was young: “If you wanna know who’s telling the truth, look for the man everybody’s mad at.” Every time I checked social media there was some straight, white, male being denounced as “racist, homophobic, misogynistic, anti-trans, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, or anti-Semitic.” My Facebook feed was always flooded with posts about “stupid shit white people do,” and sarcastic rants bashing white people from every angle imaginable. Meanwhile at work, I was having to attend sensitivity training and listen to some self-righteous black man — who is apparently a presiding judge on some southeast discrimination counsel — condescend to a room full of white men about how white men have been the cause of nearly every single problem in human history.

As is often the case, I started digging for the truth online, figuring that I couldn’t possibly be the only one that felt so frustrated, angry, and confused about the anti-white trends I was seeing everywhere. It wasn’t long before I found Red Ice TV, and then American Renaissance, Way of the World, Going Postal, Red Elephants, No White Guilt, The Iconoclast, Laura Towler, and others. At last, I had found the truth — and from there, there’s no turning back.

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.