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

I am an educated, self-employed professional working in a technical field in a large mid-western city. I first met black people in elementary school when they were bused from the black part of the city to our genteel neighborhood school. My observations at the time, as a 4th, 5th, and 6th grader, were that the few black children tended to be loud, unruly, and not too smart. With the exception of one well-behaved black boy who applied himself, the others caused my teachers a disproportionate amount of the relatively little trouble they had in a 1960s middle-class elementary school.

I wish you could see the class photo of my 6th grade class — three rows of beaming white faces, two smiling black girls who were amiable but loud and dull-witted, and one large-for-his age, scowling black boy standing in the back row, half-turned away from the camera, with a classic case of “attitude.” He was also the class bully, and terrorized some of my friends and me. At this point I had already begun to form a poor impression of blacks but, as a child, I didn’t think deeply about this.

As I went through high school, more and more blacks were bused to our school, and the pattern of classroom disruption continued. There were the outbursts of hallway fighting between blacks or between blacks and the tough whites from the poorer neighborhoods. I had two black friends, girls who were gregarious and reasonably studious. One became pregnant by a 15-year-old black boy when she was a senior. By the end of high school, my impression of blacks as dull-witted, irresponsible, loud and disruptive was pretty well set, but I still did not think in terms of racial consciousness. I didn’t feel comfortable around blacks, and I didn’t respect any of the blacks I knew (except for one studious girl and the studious boy from elementary school), but I felt that being outspoken about my “racist” feelings was something immoral that had to be hidden, something I needed to grow out of.

As the years passed and I met more black people in college, graduate school, and in the workplace, my impressions did not change. There was the psychotic black woman in the dormitory where I worked as a residential advisor, who harassed the white women on her floor; the clique of black students who insisted on having a “blacks only” social organization funded with student government money; my advisor in graduate school, a black woman who taught in a graduate journalism program but was a poor speller and who could not finish paperwork by the necessary deadlines. In my field of computers, the few blacks I have met have been at best borderline competent.

By my mid-30s, I was firmly convinced that blacks are a problem for white society but I didn’t see a moral justification for doing anything about it. I had never been exposed to anything like AR or a well-reasoned racialist argument. I felt that my secret resentments of and poor opinion of blacks were personal weaknesses for which I would be answerable in the next life.

What changed my mind were two arguments.

I had arrived at a political view that was mostly libertarian: Give us back our freedom of association and we can voluntarily separate from troublesome blacks. Stop taking away our money to support indolent, sexually irresponsible blacks, and we will have fewer problems. But then I read that whites will eventually become a minority in this country. Combine that with the fact that no majority-black or -Hispanic nation has ever maintained a society of the kind whites create, and it becomes a logical certainty that whites must politically and geographically separate themselves from blacks and Hispanics if we are to survive as a people.

The other powerful argument that convinced me a racialist approach was necessary was evidence like that presented in The Bell Curve, that blacks are less intelligent than whites and more emotional and disruptive and crime-prone for genetic reasons. I used to think blacks’ problems could be fixed with education or social programs, but I became convinced social programs can’t work.

I began to search for web sites that had articles on these matters, and this is when I came across American Renaissance. I have concluded, based on the dispassionate, reasoned arguments I have found in AR and a few other places, that much as I would like to be an idealist, the reality is that whites simply must separate themselves from blacks in some manner that protects us as a people. I feel a sadness for the decent black people who through no fault of their own are part of a race that as a whole is unable to manage its affairs. I hope there is a way to order the world so that blacks can be free and prosperous and that people can have goodwill towards one another.

The only approach to race that has a chance of working is one that avoids histrionics and does not demonize others. One reason so many whites feel uncomfortable with racialist ideas is their historical association with violence and white supremacy. The white man who blew up the black girls in that Birmingham church did a great deal of harm to the white race. Violence or shrillness will never convince white people who may well have doubts about blacks but think it is immoral to be “racist.” Talking about “Jews” as the source of the problem smacks of Nazism — another violent movement that did us great harm.

I have made racial arguments to a few of my closest friends, and I know they can have an impact. Still, it takes time for people to give themselves permission to think in a racially conscious way. Even I am still not 100 percent comfortable doing so. But the arguments, the facts, the studies — these, combined with personal experiences will eventually change enough minds to make a difference.

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.