How I Stopped Being a Leftist

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 December 1959. During my youthful rebellion against parental authority, I became a leftist with socialist and racial egalitarian views.

I remained a leftist until I was almost 35 years old. In late 1995, I entered a debate against some “racists” from the National Alliance in a chat room on the old intranet of the MicroSoft Network (MSN). The subject of debate was “The Cause, Size, and Significance of Racial Differences.” I went into that debate sure that I’d win.

I lost. Now, being a leftist, I did what leftists usually do when they begin to sense that their opponents actually do have the truth on their side and the evidence with which to prove it. I began making ad hominem arguments and retreated under a smoke screen of vituperation, all the while pretending that I wasn’t retreating.

But, I’d had a certain amount of scientific training. This had taught me not to take it personally when one of my hypotheses got shot down in discussions with others who had considered the same ideas that I’d had an opinion on. I think that’s what enabled me to confront my cognitive dissonance on race and, in the end, admit to myself that my opponents, the racists, had been right in that debate on MSN.

Slowly, I began to learn the facts about race differences and about the history of race relations. I realized that some mixtures of human beings are nearly always unstable, such that, even if you were to build a momentarily placid mixed-race society, the slightest misstep would dissolve it into acrimony and violence, like a breeze brings down a “house of cards.”

Thus, I’m a “racist,” too, now.

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.