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

I grew up in a very diverse town, but not in the sense most people would think. Its non-white population was well below ten percent. Rather, the diversity was found within the white population, with nearly every European background under the sun accounted for. Off the top of my head, I can think of high school classes that had Hungarian, Ukrainian, English, Italian, Irish, Lithuanian, Scottish, German, Greek, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, and Polish representation, with most of the kids having several nationalities in their bloodstreams. Back then, it was a blue-collar town, and we all saw each other as white, fellow townsmen.

When I was a child, our town appeared right at the top of a list of the country’s safest cities. You could practically hear the head-scratching from the writers. Why was this town on the list? It was much less wealthy than the cities ranked below it. Moreover, it was less wealthy than almost all its neighboring cities. Our population wasn’t terribly educated, either. My friends’ parents were HVAC repairmen, longshoremen, secretaries, cell phone salesmen, construction contractors, and bus drivers. Few of the adults I grew up with had lofty goals or intellectual pursuits. Several amusing, though presumably sincere, explanations were given for why the place was so safe and liveable. My favorite claim was that because there were so many roads winding around lagoons and inlets, criminals would have a hard time navigating in and out of it. None of the writers thought to — or dared to — look into what this barely middle-class town had in common with the other cities on the list. Nor did they notice how other nearby cities had very different racial compositions.

I never had a big moment of revelation about the reality of race. The honest truth is that the difference between my safe town and the nearby towns with large black and Hispanic populations was an uncontroversial truth in my mind from the first moments I started thinking about societal matters. Nobody talked about race when I was growing up, so I don’t think my perceptions were molded, either. I just always understood the way things are.

My town was a wonderful place. Racially homogenous, with a cohesive community defined by good values and morals. It was a place where even a bunch of men who catch fish for a living can have dignity and raise a family. This year, I checked out my old elementary school’s website. I would no longer be in the clear supermajority there. Within a few years of graduating high school and leaving, I heard about black students from the county over being bused in, and fights between white and black students breaking out in front of the school. I also looked up the lists of the country’s safest cities. My town no longer makes the cut. I guess the criminals figured out those lagoons and inlets.