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'The Klansman’s Son': A memoir of renouncing white nationalism on Access Utah

The cover of "The Klansman's Son: My Journey from White Nationalism to Antiracism" by R. Derek Black.

This episode first aired in May 2024.

Today we’ll talk with Derek Black about their new book "The Klansman’s Son."

Derek Black was raised to take over the white nationalist movement in the United States. Their father, Don Black, was a former Grand Wizard in the Ku Klux Klan and started Stormfront, the internet’s first white supremacist website — Derek built the kids’ page. David Duke was also their close family friend and mentor. Racist hatred, though often wrapped up in respectability, was all Derek knew.

Then, while in college in 2013, Derek publicly renounced white nationalism and apologized for their actions and the suffering that they had caused. The majority of their family stopped speaking to them, and they disappeared into academia, convinced that they had done so much harm that there was no place for them in public life. But in 2016, as they watched the rise of Donald Trump, they immediately recognized what they were hearing—the spread and mainstreaming of the hate they had helped cultivate—and they knew that they couldn’t stay silent.

Derek Black is a doctoral student in history at the University of Chicago, researching the medieval and early modern origins of the concept of race and of racist hierarchies and ideologies. Since 2016, they have spoken to many audiences at universities, foundations, institutions, museums, synagogues, and churches. They were honored with the first Elie Wiesel Award, given by the Wiesel family after the Nobel Peace Laureate’s passing, and also received a humanitarian award from the Anti-Defamation League. They have been profiled in the Washington Post, People, and O!, and interviewed for Fresh Air, The Daily, On Being, The Daily Show, and elsewhere. This is their first book.

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Tom Williams worked as a part-time UPR announcer for a few years and joined Utah Public Radio full-time in 1996. He is a proud graduate of Uintah High School in Vernal and Utah State University (B. A. in Liberal Arts and Master of Business Administration.) He grew up in a family that regularly discussed everything from opera to religion to politics. He is interested in just about everything and loves to engage people in conversation, so you could say he has found the perfect job as host “Access Utah.” He and his wife Becky, live in Logan.