When I was in college, round about 2002 or so, I did a paper on hate groups that necessitated a couple of visits to Stormfront, a white supremacist website and message board. One of the pages on the site was a "children's page" operated by the child of Storrmfront's founder, which was a unique form of horrifying. But I also remember looking at a photo of the kid on the site and thinking, that poor fuckin' kid, what kind of chance did he ever have?
But it was just a paper and that was just a photo of a child I didn't know, so I turned in the paper and graduated and got on with life.
In 2016, @archwrites posted a link to an article by the Washington Post titled "The White Flight of Derek Black" (sorry about the paywall, Arch's post quotes some relevant parts here). I thought it looked like an interesting read: it was about a white supremacist named Derek Black and a group of campus activists at the school Black eventually attended, who set out to see if they could change his mind about race with radical kindness. In large part because of their work, Black eventually renounced white supremacy and became an antiracist.
And then I hit a photo in the article and gasped, because I recognized it. I'd seen the same photo on the Stormfront children's website. The kid I'd seen and pitied was grown up and had gotten out. Immensely satisfying to see.
But it was just a news story about someone I didn't even know, so I posted about how pleased I was to see it, and I got on with life again.
I can't imagine better news I could have heard about them -- that they're out, they're thriving, and they're embracing themself.
Congratulations, kid. It's a great new photo.
[ID: A recent photograph of R. Derek Black, with long curly red hair, wearing a floral collared shirt and a red cardigan, smiling for the camera.]
