This is part of our continuing series of accounts by readers of how they shed the illusions of liberalism and became race realists. American Renaissance published a previous account by this author here.

This essay is based not on a sudden, dramatic moment of racial insight. Rather, these are observations made during a particularly heartrending time in the lives of me, my wife, and our family that contributed significantly to my still-evolving race realism journey.

There is a long history of congenital heart disease in the males of my line that has rarely skipped a generation since records were kept, resulting in shortened lives and at least a few tragic childhood deaths. Our youngest son, who I will refer to as David, was diagnosed while still in the womb as the next unlucky victim in his generation. Although he was born normally and progressed into preadolescence with nothing more noticeable than a pronounced heart murmur, we knew from the start of his life that he would eventually require serious, invasive surgery if he was to survive into adulthood.

The time came when we could put off intervention no longer. With the school year finished, we delivered David into the capable hands of a pediatric cardiology team that had pioneered the complicated and dangerous open-heart operation that would hopefully secure for him the many more years a child deserves. There were two other boys — a Chinese teenager named Han and a black adolescent roughly the same age as my son named Daunte — who were having similar surgeries at the same time. They ended up sharing a hospital room for a portion of their stays.

In passing the long days at the medical complex, we met and interacted with the families of the other boys sharing David’s room. Han’s parents were first-generation Chinese, with a command of English that was poor, at best. We managed nonetheless to bond as parents of beloved sons with significant health problems, sharing food from home and spending many hours speaking of our hopes and dreams for our children.

By stark contrast, Daunte’s mother, who could not have been more than 25 years old, showed up only sporadically, and only for an hour or two. Some days, she never appeared at all. When she did, she brought along three rambunctious, uncontrollable children younger than Daunte, who terrorized the otherwise calm pediatric ward at the prestigious hospital. To no one’s surprise, no father appeared to check up on his desperately ill son.

Daunte siblings, two boys and a girl, caused a ruckus as they tore around, unsupervised. They knocked into medical staff and equipment, destroyed toys in the playroom, and screamed loudly. All the while, they spewed shockingly crude, sexually-tinged vitriol at one another, at other parents, and at their own mother and hospital staff. None of them was over age ten. One of the things that Han’s mother would very ably express to us despite her poor English, with what I would assume was uncharacteristic anger, was the warning, “They here again.” She would never leave her son’s bedside while les enfants terribles disrupted the unit, and neither would we.

If they happened to be present during meal service, Daunte’s siblings would dive on the poor boy’s tray as it arrived, grabbing everything they could and fighting over it. We had to guard our son’s meals, as did Han’s parents. Following a couple of days of this, they arrived after Daunte had finally eaten a lunch in peace and indignantly demanded to know of startled hospital staff, “Where tha food an’ drink at?” As if feeding them on demand were just another line item in the reparational danegeld owed them for their darkened skin.

We bent the rules, slightly, sneaking in David’s Nintendo 64 from home with the tacit approval of hospital staff. We gave him three new games he had been wanting as his reward for bravery far beyond any eleven year old’s duty. He and Han spent many happy hours playing Blast Corps, Star Fox 64, and another game I can’t recall. Daunte, sickly and frail, demonstrated a failure to thrive, as the doctors described it, and could join the other boys only once, briefly.

Han was a few years older than the other two children. In my opinion, he tended to malinger a bit, showing little interest in the rehab that was encouraged for post-surgery patients. He could perhaps be excused for some self-pity and passive resistance by his pubescent state, but he did manage to recover eventually. With the least invasive procedure of the three boys, Han was discharged home after about five days. We maintained contact with Han’s parents for a number of years, exchanging holiday greetings, photos, and well-wishes.

As for David, he had earned his nickname of “Little Napoleon” as a precocious toddler, and had no time to waste on such trivialities as sitting around in bed recuperating when there were places to go and things to do. He grew bored with the slow pace of life on the pediatric ward and would march briskly up and down the halls of the unit dragging along his IV pole, his therapeutic aide struggling to keep up. He demanded to know when he would be allowed to go home. It was, after all, summer break.

When there seemed no legitimate reason to keep him, and due perhaps more than a little to his persistent lobbying on his own behalf, David was sprung from the hospital a day ahead of schedule, leaving Daunte as the last child in the room. David’s Blast Corp game had mysteriously gone missing during the days he shared a room with the other two boys, but we were not terribly surprised and we replaced it once safely clear of the apparent danger of repeat theft. We had not seen Daunte’s mother in two days, and Daunte cried when he realized that David, too, was going home.

My wife was deeply touched and went to the boy’s bedside as I gathered up our belongings. The transport aide popped wheelies for David in the wheelchair that could barely contain him as he bounced and laughed, anticipating his break for freedom. As my kind-hearted wife passed her hand soothingly over the black child’s fevered little nappy head and tried to dry his tears, she uttered the only deliberate lies I have ever known her to speak: “It’s okay, Daunte. Everything will be all right.”

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.