Interesting that you had a change of heart in the 90s. So did I. Even though I think you have about 15 years on me, I noticed the same trend, and it was a real disappointment. My dad’s family were urban New Deal Democrats, so I actually cast my first vote for Bill Clinton (I turned 18 shortly before the election), and was enthusiastic about his presidency. Boy was I disillusioned quickly.

Soon, I began to notice that I was the enemy. As a white kid from a working/middle class background, I was the enemy of the right, the left, and everyone with a public voice in between. I saw the same comics, movies and TV shows that all portrayed my people as the scum of the earth. You’d think that instead of building the greatest, most prosperous nation in history, making stunning advances in agriculture, medicine, aviation, science, industry, entertainment and countless other fields, we’d just starved and enslaved the world and set us all on the path to armageddon.

I’m not sure folks older than I am can fully appreciate what it was like to go from a patriotic childhood in which we openly and without reservation celebrated our heritage and patriotism to an atmosphere in which all of that was suddenly stamped out within less than a decade. It was really demoralizing.

Now, I have to tell my kids to hide their thoughts from their teachers, not to trust what authorities say, and to value themselves and their heritage despite what they are taught in school. I also have to tell them that a lot of people in the city won’t like them simply because of their ethnic background, and that they should not be surprised or shocked when they encounter racial hostility.

Perhaps the only silver lining to all of this is that the anti-racist whites, who are the most terrible of all (I really can’t blame others for promoting their ethnic interests — it’s a human thing to do after all), are not having kids in appreciable numbers, so for the most part my kids will grow up among peers with like-minded families. The number of liberal urban whites without children by age 40 is unprecedented. Aside from the heirs of the truly wealthy elite, who can afford as many children as they want (usually two), they are practically sterile.