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 1974 and grew up in a large, white, lower-middle class family. My father worked as a construction project manager and we moved around a lot. Nearly all of our time was spent in the upper Midwest — small towns in Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Dakota, and Upper Michigan. Despite the constant moving, it was an idyllic childhood. Most of the towns we lived in were either 100 percent, or nearly 100 percent white.

I saw absolutely no drug use whatsoever during my entire childhood. The only substance use that I saw first-hand was alcohol and tobacco. My family was Protestant Christian, of the gentle Northern European variety, and so I was fed a steady diet of anti-racism and anti-discrimination indoctrination from a very young age. In short, my knowledge of non-whites was entirely theoretical until I enlisted in the US Navy after high school. The day before I left home, I believed everything my schools, churches, and the media had told me about race relations in America.

I was immediately thrust into a totally alien world. Boot camp was a transformative experience for me. Fully 40 percent of my boot camp company was black, another 20 percent was Hispanic. I saw first-hand how different races intentionally, happily, self-segregate. Even though our bunk assignments were almost totally random, during our very limited down time the blacks quickly took the back half of the barracks for themselves, the Hispanics claimed a few next to them, and us whites kept to ourselves near the front.

For the first time in my life, I experienced racism when I naïvely tried to interact with blacks and Hispanics the same way that I did with my white shipmates. It was confusing: I had moved around enough in my childhood that I had learned how to get along with nearly any personality type, but just my appearance and voice seemed to irritate non-whites. As soon as I opened my mouth their eyes would go flat, they’d put on a hostile expression, and they’d either ignore me outright or mock the fact that I enunciated my words and used normal grammar. This was also the first time I witnessed how quickly non-whites can shift from passivity to violence. I saw more fights in ten weeks of boot camp than I had in 18 years of my civilian life.

The military was a fascinating experience in many ways, but what stood out most was how recruits were given a completely clean slate. Regardless of who you had been, where you were from, or how you’d normally behaved before you joined, once you were in the Navy, you could be anything or do anything you set your mind to. And what all the black men in my company seemed to want to do was loaf around and talk as loudly as possible when the company commanders weren’t around. Beyond that, it was as though they had no desire to make anything at all out of their enlistment.

The Hispanics were quieter but just as aggressive, and spoke exclusively Spanish when together. Every sailor who showed an interest in BUD/S (the preliminary SEAL training school) was white. In fact, every sailor who showed an interest in any kind for difficult, dangerous, or highly selective training was white. Even though we were in the Navy, almost none of my black shipmates knew how to swim and they all had to go through weeks of remedial swim instruction. The blacks and Hispanics showed almost no ability whatsoever to master the simple academic instruction we were given. The Hispanics at least made an effort, and they all eventually passed the few tests they had to take. Every sailor that was “washed back” (held back to join a later company) for academic standards was black. In nearly everything about Navy life, there were obvious racial divisions.

I stayed in the Navy for ten years of active duty service and I never saw anything to change those early observations. The US has sailors from a dizzying variety of backgrounds. I met Filipinos and saw first-hand why their culture has the reputation it does for hard work and family values, but saw the flip side of their culture when I learned how openly racist they are. I worked alongside Caribbean blacks, and learned to my surprise that they despise American blacks and had more in common with white Americans. I dated a young black woman from the Caribbean for a time and was shocked at the amount of racist comments we got from black shipmates. In all the months we dated I never once — not a single time — heard a racist comment from a white person about our relationship. Before I was able to move out of the barracks and live in town, I had a number of black and Hispanic roommates. Most of them were totally mystified by my upbringing and some of them accused me of lying. These men just couldn’t believe that it had been as safe and happy as I described.

I worked in intelligence and went through years of linguistic and special operations training. In all my years of working alongside SEAL and other special forces teams I only worked with one black man, an Army soldier who had been through Ranger and Green Beret training. He was dedicated, intelligent, focused, and almost wholly unique. Nearly every other black I knew worked in administrative, food service, or supply roles.

There were a few blacks in Naval intelligence, but they all had exclusively rear-echelon positions. And although there were exceptions, most blacks who I came into contact with were spectacularly lazy and indolent. Aboard ships, theft was common and I was witness to (and involved in) countless fights, usually over something as minor as changing the channel on the television. You can imagine the racial dynamics of these problems. In our off time, we lived almost completely segregated lives. Black sailors went to their bars and clubs, Hispanics to theirs, and whites to theirs.

What did my time in the military teach me about race relations in America? First, that racial differences are real, tangible, and significant. Years of propaganda were washed away in hours when faced with that reality. Second, that without exception, everything holding blacks and Hispanics back from being successful is either self-inflicted or the result of their natural deficiencies. If you have an interest in something and can meet the basic qualifications to get started, the military will teach you absolutely everything you need to know for a huge variety of fields.

I knew nuclear submarine engineers who were taught everything from pre-algebra to nuclear physics for their job. At my Arabic school we spent the first few months learning how to count and write the alphabet, and by the time we graduated we were reading newspapers and discussing international relations in Arabic. And yet, with very few exceptions, the only people truly seeking these difficult career fields are white.

Third, and this was the most important lesson, I learned that every race prefers its own kind, and has the freedom to be openly racist, with the sole exception of whites. We are scolded by our own institutions — academic, religious, cultural, and governmental — for the very same behavior that is tolerated, and sometimes even encouraged, in other races.

From working in intelligence, I learned a lot about psychological operations and propaganda, and the people pushing multiculturalism clearly know what they’re doing. It’s a purposeful effort to weaken our culture. The only thing that gives me hope is that what they seek is entirely unnatural. Racial frustrations and unrest will continue to escalate until nature reasserts herself and we all live in homogeneous communities once again.

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.