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Derek Black was poised to inherit and lead the white nationalist community in America. His father was a KKK leader in Alabama who founded a major white nationalist web forum, StormFront (Derek founded the kids’ companion site, KidsStormFront). His godfather was David Duke, a Klan grand wizard. He was home-schooled in Florida; his pickup truck proudly sported a Confederate flag sticker. At 19, he was a radio host, speaker and elected official, believing and spreading white nationalist views to any willing audience. In this New York Times Opinion piece, he writes that he was “considered the bright future of the movement.”

But Derek chose to leave it all.

He explains in the same Opinion piece, “I began attending a liberal college [New College of Florida] where my presence prompted huge controversy.” He had continued to secretly broadcast his radio show, until a fellow student discovered and revealed his double identity. His views were challenged and protested. Some fellow students reached out to Derek personally, including with a regular invitation to a weekly Shabbat dinner. For the first time in his life, he was exposed to — and connected with — those who were different. That community completely changed his assumptions and worldview.

“Through many talks with devoted and diverse people there — people who chose to invite me into their dorms and conversations rather than ostracize me — I began to realize the damage I had done. Ever since, I have been trying to make up for it… For me, the conversations that led me to change my views started because I couldn’t understand why anyone would fear me. I thought I was only doing what was right and defending those I loved… Now is the time for me to pass on that outrage by clearly and unremittingly denouncing the people who used a wave of white anger to take the White House.”

In 2013, Derek wrote a letter to the Southern Poverty Law Center about his “gradual awakening:” it was a “slow but steady disaffiliation from white nationalism… Promoting a victim complex for whites does not recognize the oppressed experiences of others not in the position of a white person in society, and that’s what my efforts have done… Advocating for white nationalism means that we are opposed to minority attempts to elevate themselves to a position equal to our own. It is an advocacy that I cannot support, having grown past my bubble, talked to the people I affected, read more widely, and realized the necessary impact my actions had on people I never wanted to harm… I believe we can move beyond the sort of mind-boggling emphasis white nationalism puts on maintaining an oppressive, exclusive sense of identity — oppressive for others and stifling for our society.”

Trevor Noah asked Derek in a recent interview on The Daily ShowHow do you even begin the journey of starting to think differently? Derek answered:

“I didn’t until I was at college. I spent all my younger years getting more and more involved and feeling like I really needed to help push this as my parents were getting older. And it wasn’t until this weird experience of being outside of that in this different environment, and seeing people who were not supposed to fit into my in-group but who I really liked and we were hanging out, and also a college community that really condemned everything I was saying… First thing I wanted to know was why do you condemn it so strongly.”

He continues, “The only thing that undermines a white nationalist who’s trying to ramp somebody up to a more extreme version of racism is somebody in the room challenging those beliefs. The person who’s going to ruin that for you is another white person who’s saying ‘stop that’… What they say shuts any sort of white nationalist racist thing you’re saying down… That’s the thing that people in college did, it’s the thing that anyone, anywhere can do, because being silent is a choice.”

Derek is the subject of Rising Out of Hatred, a book by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Eli Salslow. It also tells the broader story of how white-supremacist ideas migrated from the far-right fringe to the White House. Saslow asks in the book what Derek’s story tells us about current American divisions and how we can better understand each other and this cultural moment.

Curated by The Circle’s Creative Director & Editor, Lara Herscovitch (Cohort 10). To reach Lara directly: thecircle@clpnewhaven.org or Lara@LaraHerscovitch.com

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