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 raised by bleeding heart liberals in the western United States. I lived among American Indians, whites, and Hispanics. I was taught we are all the same and we shouldn’t categorize people by race or sex. My only early experience with blacks was with two children adopted by a woman who lived in my neighborhood — and neither of them were like the rest of the kids our age. The boy was shockingly violent. His favorite pastime seemed to be hurling rocks at other children, aiming for their heads. One of my most vivid memories of him is from when he stabbed his older adoptive brother in the arm with a sharpened pencil, unprovoked, and deliberately snapping it so that the tip stayed in his brother’s flesh. The girl, meanwhile, spent most of her time in rageful screaming fits, lashing out at anybody who came near her, and trying to bite them. As a child, I just assumed they were not nice people and avoided them if at all possible — I never thought race had anything to do with it.

It was when I went to Mississippi for graduate school that I started interacting with blacks on a regular basis. I spent a semester in the dorms, living two floors below the school’s exclusively black football players. You had to be careful entering the building because they loved tossing glass bottles from the eighth-floor balcony at people coming in. Mississippi was also the first place I lived where I had to worry about crime: my car was broken into and stolen on two separate occasions — something that hadn’t happened to me even once back home.

But more than anything else, it was seeing the consequences of affirmative action that made me discover the importance of race. As a grad student, I taught a few introductory level classes to undergraduates. One student who caught my attention was a clean-cut young black man. He was not a jock there for easy credit, he was a serious student and clearly enthusiastic to be in college. Unlike many of my students, he always showed up for class on time and dressed professionally. The trouble was, he was woefully ill equipped for college. He could not write a full sentence or complete the simplest algebraic equations. I felt bad for him, and because he was clearly serious about his work, I bent over backwards to try and help him. Sadly, I could not cram a full remedial high school education into half a semester. During the midterm, he got so overwhelmed with frustration he actually broke down and cried. He turned in a mostly blank test and I never saw him on campus after that.

This young black man was a casualty of affirmative action. He should not have graduated high school. He should never have been granted admission to that university. It’s likely that for all his life, people refrained from ever challenging him to excel, seeing him as just some poor dumb black guy who should be given a pass for the sake of diversity. Everyone who didn’t hold him to the highest standards simply because of his race ultimately betrayed him. The school didn’t care that they had done this guy a disservice and simultaneously wasted a spot that could have gone to somebody qualified for it. They got to charge him for a semester of classes and check their diversity box, and that was good enough for them.

Up until that point, I had always just nodded my head and repeated the mantra of “diversity good, diversity makes us stronger” without questioning it. Exposure to black people was a real shock. My experience with this young black man failing my class because the system screwed him over opened my eyes to the grossly paternalistic way “enlightened liberals” talk about blacks and other non-whites. It is condescending and demeaning — and it doesn’t benefit anybody.

Years later, a job opportunity sent me to southern Maryland, and lived among blacks once again. It was not pleasant. My new car was broken into for a handful of change while it was parked in my driveway. Every minor traffic incident with a black person eventually turned into an attempt by them to commit insurance fraud. My neighbors would regularly scream at each other and fight in the street until 4 AM. People routinely drove 50 MPH down our residential street at all times of the day, making it impossible for me to safely teach my daughter to ride her bike. One night, I was laying in bed, listening to the gunshots a few blocks away punctuate the low bass rattle of the loud music from the house on the corner one. Suddenly, I turned to my wife and said, “I think living here is turning me into a racist.”

I no longer believe that. I’m not a racist, I am a realist. The races are different and we should all acknowledge those differences. Exposure to blacks stripped me of the rosy glasses I had worn for so long, and discovering Jared Taylor on YouTube helped my refine and solidify my understanding of the science and genetics behind all my unpleasant experiences. My family and I no longer live in Maryland, and I hope we never live near any large group of blacks ever again — and I’m not ashamed to say so.

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.