Child of Klan leader on abandoning white nationalism: ‘I am haunted by its legacy’

R Derek Black, whose dad is the notorious Ku Klux Klan leader Don Black, was once the poster child of the white nationalist movement in America. Now, they’ve abandoned their family’s beliefs, come out as transgender and recently released a book called The Klansman’s Son.

Published in May, the memoir tells the complex story of their journey from white nationalism to antiracism and how one’s upbringing doesn’t have to define their ideology.

“It’s terrible to have no sense of privacy as a child,” Black said. “But as an adult, I can reach out to the people I care about. I can engage in the world and be a person who stands up for things that are important to me.”

Related: Missouri Republicans disown Ku Klux Klan-linked candidate for governor

The book, published by Abrams Press, grapples with the theme of a childhood built around fear and is the product of years of internal reflection.

“I’ve never had a moment in my life when the world didn’t have some stake in me,” they added. “But now I’m focusing on the future.”

Growing up, Black bought into the hateful rhetoric of the belief system that surrounded them, co-hosting The Don and Derek Black Show , and starting a subset of Stormfront for kids. They were also perpetually surrounded by leaders of the movement like David Duke.

At age 10, they gave their first public interview on The Jenny Jones Show, declaring their intent to lead the white nationalist movement for the younger generation. Afterwards, the producers offered to pay for a trip to DisneyQuest, the virtual reality park that had recently opened nearby in downtown Chicago, as a reward.

“My family foreclosed on the possibility of having a private life,” Black said when describing revisiting this archival footage for the sake of the memoir. “It was revealing and emotional rewatching the years of my adolescence in those interviews, trying to remember what it felt like at the time.”

Black was born in 1989 in Florida, and their pathway to white nationalism began at home. Broadly, the movement is fueled by white supremacy and followers often claim that white people are unfairly persecuted and support the existence of ethnostates.

Experts believe white nationalism in the US became a popular term among white supremacists hoping to soften their image in the public sphere and disseminate their views into the mainstream. Derek’s father, Don, was instrumental in the movement. He led the KKK in the 1980s and created Stormfront, the first major international racial hate website generally credited with bringing the movement online.

I am haunted by the legacy of the White nationalist movement I inherited, and whose future I helped advance

R Derek Black

The site, which was shut down in 2017, was popular with extremist groups like neo-Nazis and holocaust deniers and included forums where subscribers promoted white power events. In 2002, it had 5,000 members. By 2008, this number had risen to 133,000.

A handful of these subscribers went on to commit hate crimes, according to the hate-watch group Southern Poverty Law Center. One message board user shot and wounded three children at a Jewish daycare center in Los Angeles in 1999.

“I am haunted by the legacy of the White nationalist movement I inherited, and whose future I helped advance,” Black writes in the book. “Its violence is a source of infinite guilt and irreparable harm.”

The opening chapters of the memoir deal with these early events in Black’s life, leading up to their moment of enlightenment while a student at New College of Florida in Sarasota. They describe feeling “boxed in” by the public appearances they were forced into making as a child, and difficult, seemingly painful childhood memories are recollected with candor and clarity.

“I gained more power to cause more harm to people and society in ways I deeply regret,” Black recounts, in the beginning chapters.

“Each additional interview, each choice to go deeper and become a more involved leader of the movement that my parents had helped create, constricted the possibilities I saw for myself.”

Related: Ibram X Kendi on why not being racist is not enough

While a student at New College in 2010, Black was forced, for the first time, to re-examine the core tenets of their belief system. When other students found out about their involvement with the white nationalist movement and exposed them, Black was ostracized by many, and gradually, things began to fall apart. Emphasizing that this shift happened while they were away from home was crucial to the author when writing their memoir.

“I wanted to emphasize when reading the book that we think of persuasion as submission,” Black said. “We can only look at what we know is true once we shift away from the people and community that defines us.”

In the years since, Black has used their platform to advocate for antiracism, delving deep into how our community shapes us and what individuals can do to be aware of this inevitability. Primarily, they lean into public education opportunities, writing, speaking and workshopping with organizations like Ibram X Kendi’s center for antiracism research and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum based in Washington DC.

“My focus isn’t speaking to white nationalists,” Black said.

“I’m more hopeful of using my experience and research to talk to a broader audience to draw attention to the way racist and antisemitic beliefs exist pervasively within our society, which fuels the movement.”

Figuring out how to come out as transgender, and talk about it and share it, was something they thought a lot about when writing the book. At the time, Black recalled they were just acknowledging this realization themselves, but if they were writing the memoir again at this point in time, they would include a lot more about it.

I realized silence was not a moral decision

R Derek Black

Notably, the decision to move ahead with writing stemmed mainly from the events following the 2020 election . Black believed that people weren’t focusing on the dangers a movement like white nationalism still posed nationwide, especially following the aftermath of the Trump presidency.

“For years, I felt like I’d done enough damage and didn’t want to speak out,” they said. “Then I realized silence was not a moral decision.”

Today, roughly 100 chapters of the white nationalist movement still exist in the US. The movement has been unable to mobilize in the same capacity as during Trump’s time in office, but the rhetoric and policies, such as opposition to immigration and a belief that national belonging should be decided by race, remain consistent.

Black’s family, which is still heavily aligned with the movement today, has not reacted pleasantly to the book and its revelations.

“I don’t want to talk about that too much,” the author said, “but I can say it hasn’t been a positive reaction. Ask me again in five years.”