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 in Albania, and my parents immigrated to the United States when I was three. My immigrant background gave me a sense of cultural and ethnic identity at a very young age, but even so, I assimilated into white American suburbia. During high school, I grew more curious about my heritage and soon came to consider myself an Albanian nationalist (in the most chauvinistic and naïve meaning of the word “nationalist”). But the political views that came with that were relegated almost entirely to the Balkans. In the context of America, I was a typical individualist conservative.

My path toward race realism began when I started college in 2018. Reading about history, genetics, archeology, and linguistics, I came to realize the astonishing interconnectedness of all European peoples. Meanwhile, my classes that dealt with politics and race were vehemently anti-American and anti-white. My professors portrayed history and the modern world as tales of white wickedness. I viewed this as an attack on my identity, both as an Albanian and as a white man. And all this academic invective made me want to stand up for myself and for my people.

In 2019, I started looking online for counter-narratives to the anti-white ones I was being taught. First I found Ben Shapiro, Sam Harris, Jordan Peterson, and other typical individualist thinkers. Their views were better than the ones found at my college, but I still found their philosophies somewhat weak and lacking true substance. I also disagreed with many of their views on race and the proper role of racial politics (aka “identity politics”).

My continued hunt for better thinkers and better points of view led me to Jared Taylor. Back then, I was still very much ignorant of the dire state white people are in. It was a slow process of truly digesting and understanding the facts I was hearing for the first time — and then confirming them myself. Meanwhile, I kept up my hobby of reading about genetics, history, and linguistics.

The process of my awakening accelerated rapidly during the 2020 Black Lives Matter/antifa riots and the anti-white posturing that came with them. I spent much of that summer learning about the concerns of people such as Jared Taylor and the desperate situation white Americans find themselves in. By the end of 2020, I had developed most of my current views on race realism and white identity. Today, I’m happy to spread my knowledge about these topics to friends and family.

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.