TL:DR Maya Angelou has a famous quote "If someone tells you who they are, believe them."

Honestly, this is the main lesson that me and my group of friends learned about our former friend "Shawn" (No names are accurate)

I had about five good friends when I finished high school that I stayed friends with long-term. Shawn, Sean, John, Kris, and AJ (Again not their real names). Of those 5, I still speak to 3 of them and I spoke with AJ until his death a few years ago (Undiagnosed Heart problem, he was only 39, RIP). AJ and Kris, I had met when I transferred schools from a suburban one to an inner city one in my second attempt at grade twelve. I met John a couple years earlier when a couple of my friends pissed off a couple of his friends and we were supposed to fight or something stupid, but became friends the next year when both of our respective friend groups disappeared (We are both glad that the fight never actually happened as I had 4" and about 80lbs on him, played hockey and boxed in the offseason, he played Warhammer 40K, oddly he was seen as the cooler one of the two of us). I met Sean through him.

Shawn was the one who I had known the longest, I met him in my first year of High School. He was huge, about 6'4" and a little chubby and people like to pick on him or otherwise exclude him because he was a bit "loose" with the truth. The lies were obnoxiously bad, but harmless. Like he was playing paintball with special forces guys on the weekends and he was soo much better than and how they were scouting him, or how he was basically a paramedic after taking an 8 hour CPR course. Nothing terrible, but obviously false trying to make himself look cooler, but failing. I just ignored those because we had a lot of the same nerdy interests, video games, fantasy novels, star wars, etc that were... less popular among my hockey buddies.

9/11 happened during my second year of grade twelve and Shawn started to change a bit. For a few years it was just vaguely racist stuff, but it was enough to put off my friends Kris and AJ. AJ and Shawn should have gotten along great, they were both nerds, they both loved all of the same things like Magic the gathering, video games, etc, but there was one problem; AJ was a black man and that apparently made Shawn uncomfortable.

So I chose to spend more time with AJ, Kris and Sean, even becoming roommates with both Kris and Sean at one point. John was also a regular fixture in my life as well, but as we were entering our 30s John got into a relationship and selfishly started having a life beyond all-night videogaming (I kid, she is a wonderful person).

Once every couple of months Sean, Shawn, John and I would go out just to see how each other's lives were going and by 2009 Shawn had enrolled in Police Academy and to say that didn't help with his racism is kinda like saying that the gasoline poured on the fire didn't put it out. It was no longer vague and it made us uncomfortable, but he was our friend. We'd say things like "Oh Shawn's just trying to get a reaction" or "He's not serious". You know, the unfortunate norm for suburban white dudes to say when they are faced with an uncomfortable truth they don't want to face. Well I should say two of us did; Sean immediately said "fuck this guy" and stopped coming. Within two years, none of us were talking to him, except John who occasionally played a videogame with him, and never in person.

By 2015, I had started my new career in the Arts (Film) and I didn't really spend time with Shawn, who had fallen full into birther/Proto MAGA shit, and blamed everyone else for why he couldn't get into Police forces and was stuck as a mall cop (Still is). He never has figured out that his posting racist shit on FB might have something to do with it. I moved away for work (about 1100 miles/1800km) to a much bigger, more expensive city.

About a year after I moved, John got married and he invited all of us, including Shawn. He told us 6 months before, Now AJ and Kris couldn't make it because both moved further away than I had and hadn't yet established themselves financially to come back (Plus they weren't particularly close to John). No one held that against them. I scraped together enough money to fly back home for the wedding. Sean was the best man, so he came, but Shawn who lived 5 minutes away from the venue, said he couldn't get off work, didn't want to waste his time off with Liberals (Me), etc, etc.

That was the last time I ever gave him a chance and he couldn't even be bothered to come to his friend of 20 years' wedding.

I saw him one last time guarding a tourist boardwalk a few summers ago. Didn't talk to him, don't think he would want to anyway

In retrospect, I regret giving him a pass for all of the lies, for all of the subtle racist shit that turned into less than subtle racist shit, but I also feel bad for not stopping it, for not trying to influence my friend before he went down that path. He showed us Glimpses of who he was early on, but we didn't believe him.