Derek Black spends much of his early life making significant contributions to the white nationalist movement, like crafting websites and making suggestions for how to frame arguments about race. But with the help of his peers, and Derek’s efforts to educate himself, Derek formally denounces his former white nationalist beliefs and receives many notes of thanks and congratulations from other students. Afterwards, though, he realizes that he’s still ashamed and guilty about his involvement, as the white nationalist movement continues to use his contributions even after Derek is no longer a part of it. Derek then realizes that it’s up to him to continue the work that so many of his peers helped him through: persuading people away from white nationalism and continuing to denounce it as a flawed and harmful ideology. The book thus suggests that redemption can be possible for anyone, but it requires people to admit their mistakes, confront their past, and try to rectify the damage they’ve done.
The first important step in Derek’s redemption after committing to white nationalism for so long is opening himself up to his peers’ perspectives and admitting his own mistakes. When Derek befriends people whom he doesn’t necessarily agree with, like Juan, Moshe, and Matthew, he realizes that he doesn’t have to think of all ethnic and racial minorities as the “enemy.” They, in turn, appreciate that he’s actually a kind and intelligent person. In being open to their perspectives, Derek can take the first step toward redemption in their eyes and remain friends with them. Over time, Derek listens to another student, Allison’s, research on racism and systemic oppression. While he used to dismiss other students’ reactions to his beliefs as “hysterical,” learning more about others’ perspectives makes him realize that his classmates are “valid in their criticism and righteous in their anger.” He then stops participating in white pride websites and the white nationalist radio program he hosts with his father, Don. Thus, an important first step for Derek’s redemption is to acknowledge his mistaken thinking and to stop perpetuating those beliefs.
Yet the book emphasizes that it’s not enough for Derek to disappear from the white nationalist movement after recognizing that he is wrong—he must also formally disavow white nationalism to confront his past mistakes. As Derek extricates himself from the white nationalist movement, Allison explains that he has to write a public statement denouncing white nationalism because he contributed to the movement so greatly. Allison makes Derek consider, “How many had he radicalized? How many had he turned into activists? And how many millions of other people had his rhetoric offended or oppressed?” In this way, Derek acknowledges the consequences of his actions and understands that a key part of making amends for them is to address his actions directly. So, Derek does just that, disavowing white nationalism in a letter he sends to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and apologizing for the damage caused by his actions. He also reaches out individually to people he hurt, like Juan, Matthew, and another Jewish student named Rose. In return, they thank him, and many other students (even those he’s rarely talked to) send him notes of congratulations and thanks. In this way, he acknowledges his responsibility to apologize for his past, and the other students’ reactions suggest that this was necessary for Derek’s redemption.
The final, key step in Derek’s redemption is to try to undo the damage of his mistakes by being a vocal advocate for anti-racism and against white nationalism. Over time—particularly as the 2016 U.S. presidential election heats up, and Derek sees the white nationalist movement become more and more mainstream—Derek understands that the list of his victims is “incalculably long.” It is like he “helped feed a monster that won’t go back into the cage.” It’s not enough, he knows, to publicly admit to past mistakes—he must also find a way to counterbalance the damage that the “monster” he fed has caused. To do so, Derek continues to educate himself and becomes an unlikely advocate for anti-racism. After Donald Trump wins the 2016 election, Derek gets an urge to do something. Allison helps him realize that “by spending a decade at the forefront of white nationalism, he had built up a massive public debt to society and particularly to people of color, and he want[s] to pay some of it back.” He then writes op-eds for The New York Times, gives interviews about his transformation, and thinks about writing a book about his experiences. In this way, Derek shows his understanding that the only way he can truly redeem himself from his white nationalist past is to change his views, to apologize for his mistakes, and to offset the damage he has done at every possible opportunity.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Redemption ThemeTracker
Redemption Quotes in Rising Out of Hatred
Because there was nothing else to do that day—and nowhere else to go with classes canceled—Derek wandered by the event on his way to lunch and stopped at the edge of the quad to listen. In front of him he saw a few of his professors, Matthew, Moshe, and at least two hundred other students. For a brief moment, he wondered: If this many smart people were so affronted by his beliefs, could they all be wrong? He listened to a succession of minority speakers tell stories about the ways in which racism affected their feelings of safety and self-worth. All this time, Derek had dismissed his rejection on campus as an overreaction from hysterical classmates, but now he began to consider if there was truth to what they said. The moment felt significant to him, so he took out his phone and snapped a photo of the crowded quad.
On their long drive back to Sarasota the next day, she began to remind him of the public archive he had built within white nationalism: A website for “white children of the globe.” Thousands of public Stormfront posts. Several hundred radio shows. Dozens of interviews, speeches, and a conference now going into its third year. No matter how much Derek wanted to disappear, that legacy wasn’t going to disappear with him. In the car, Allison asked Derek how many people he had influenced during his time as a white nationalist. How many had he radicalized? How many had he turned into activists? And how many millions of other people had his rhetoric offended or oppressed?
She told him she was proud of his courage, and as the news continued to spread on Facebook and through the mainstream media, so were many others. Derek’s message in-box filled with congratulatory notes and voice mails, many of them from people who had never spoken with him directly about white nationalism. Rose, whom Derek had dated for a few weeks during his first year at New College, wrote that she was “happy/proud, and I know it can’t be easy.” Juan said he had always believed Derek was “smart and kind enough to find his own way out.” Moshe said it was “pretty damn brave.” Matthew thought Derek had shown “uncommon courage.”
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.
During the coming months, Don and Derek would watch as white nationalism continued to explode into mainstream politics. There would be fights over the destruction of Confederate monuments, followed by a succession of marches and rallies led by white nationalists throughout the South. One of those marches would arrive in downtown Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017, where Richard Spencer, David Duke, and hundreds of neo-Nazis would carry guns and torches into downtown, threatening counterprotesters with chants of “White lives matter” and “You will not replace us,” until one neo-Nazi rammed his car into a crowd, killing one counterprotester and injuring nineteen others. Trump would go on national TV to explain away the violence by blaming “both sides”—what he called the “alt-left” and also “the good people” on the “alt-right”—creating a moral equivalency between racists and antiracists. Don would call Trump’s comments “the high point” of white nationalism during his lifetime. Derek would write another opinion piece for The New York Times to say that Trump’s “frightening statement” had “legitimized” a racist ideology. Don would watch Stormfront's traffic triple overnight, spiking to 300,000 daily page views, signifying what he called the “full awakening of our people.”
