My Black Stepson Became a White Chauvinist

We lost him down a YouTube rabbit hole and don’t know how to get him back

Kerala Taylor
10 min readAug 20, 2021

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Photo by Becker1999 via Flickr.

My stepson hasn’t died, but we have lost him all the same. No one has brought us any casseroles.

He came close to dying, actually, last summer, when he accidentally discharged a firearm into his own leg. The bullet missed his femoral artery by millimeters and also graciously, but barely, spared his genitals.

I was almost relieved that the worst had nearly happened because at least he wouldn’t have that damn gun anymore. After nearly shooting off his own penis, surely he wouldn’t buy another one?

But he did. He returned to his job at a convenience store, just five blocks from our home. He continued to rant against the “SJWs,” the so-called Social Justice Warriors like myself and my husband, who had everything all wrong. At 21 years old, he knew better. White men reigned supreme for a reason, a good reason in his book, and everyone else should just shut up and stop whining.

Like many children born to one white parent and one Black parent, my stepson presents as Black. So when he first announced that he more or less considered himself a Proud Boy, my husband and I said, “What?”

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Kerala Taylor

Award-winning writer. Interrupting notions of what it means to be a mother, woman, worker, and wife. Subscribe: https://keralataylor.substack.com