Derek’s name symbolizes his association with white nationalism and his journey to renounce and then disavow his former identity. When Derek is born, his parents, Don and Chloe, name him Derek Roland Black. “Derek” comes from Theodoric the Great, a ruler who restored the Roman Empire to glory in the late fifth century. Roland comes from The Song of Roland, a fictional French poem about a soldier who dies as a martyr when fighting Spanish Muslims for Charlemagne’s army. In this way, his two names encapsulate the white nationalist ideal: Europeans militantly opposing people they perceive as outsiders.
When Derek decides to renounce white nationalism, he also changes his name, reversing his first and middle name to become Roland Derek Black. He does this for practical reasons, as he no longer wants to be haunted by his white nationalist past. But the reversal of his names represents his own reversal, as he has completely backtracked on all his white nationalist beliefs.
By the end of the book, however, Derek realizes that he can’t completely escape his past—he also has a responsibility to own up to it. And so, when he starts publishing stories denouncing white nationalism, he does so under the name “R. Derek Black.” In this way, Derek is still underlining the symbolic shift that he has made. But he’s also acknowledging the harm he did under his own name as a white nationalist and trying to rectify it, rather than simply trying to make it disappear.
Derek’s Name Quotes in Rising Out of Hatred
“Derek Roland Black,” Don said, lingering on each syllable years later, on Derek’s twenty-first birthday, as they reminisced together on their joint radio show. Derek in honor of Theodoric, the great Aryan leader. Roland in remembrance of a white martyr who died speaking out for his cause. “There’s something about that name I really liked,” Don said. “It’s the name of a Viking in many ways, a real fighter. Solid and unshakable. When you say it, you can almost hear the sound of clashing steel.”
Their conversation on the roof had remained mostly civil and productive, largely because Allison also had the advantage of being white. Derek didn’t feel implicitly challenged by her racial identity; Allison didn’t feel personally threatened by his beliefs. Because she wasn’t the one he hoped to oppress or deport, she could also engage with him in discussions that were less emotional than logical. She could present herself not as an enemy armed for battle but as a confused and curious friend who hoped to better understand Derek’s racial conclusions.
For the last decade he had been one person in public, and now he was another. All of the stereotypes he had promoted, all of the misinformation he'd helped spread, all of the hurtful and racist things he had believed and then said—it was all behind him now. That was Derek. This was Roland. He told Allison he never wanted to log on to Stormfront or watch cable news or so much as think about white nationalism or white supremacy ever again.
"It's all over and done with," he told her. Except at that very moment, at a white nationalist conference in Tennessee and beyond, the ideas he'd been promoting were continuing to spread.
The wave of violence and vile language that has risen since the election is only one immediate piece of evidence that this campaign’s reckless assertion of white identity comes at a huge cost. More and more people are being forced to recognize now what I learned early: Our country is susceptible to some of our worst instincts when the message is packaged correctly.
No checks and balances can redeem what we’ve unleashed. The reality is that half of the voters chose white supremacy...
It’s now our job to argue constantly that what voters did in elevating this man to the White House constitutes the greatest assault on our own people in a generation, and to offer another option…
Those of us on the other side need to be clear that Mr. Trump’s callous disregard for people outside his demographic is intolerable, and will be destructive to the entire nation.
Derek’s Name Symbol Timeline in Rising Out of Hatred
