James Paulk has a portrait of Adolf Hitler tattooed on his back.
People like Paulk are not supposed to spend time with me, a mixed-race Hispanic man. At my prison, segregation by race is openly embraced.
But I got interested in Paulk’s life story when I learned, through a mutual friend, that he was no longer a white supremacist. He went from spreading hateful ideology to speaking out against it. I found his transformation fascinating.
So, in October 2023, I sat down to interview Paulk, who is serving 25 years for murder, in our prison, Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution.
During four interviews over several months, I learned that Paulk considers his time as a white supremacist to be one of his biggest regrets.
“Today, they don’t tell my story,” Paulk said of his tattoos. “They are repulsive to me.”
A rough childhood
Paulk believes the seeds of racism were planted early in his life, which made it easier to accept the racial divides in prison.
When Paulk was growing up in The Dalles, about 80 minutes east of Portland, Oregon, he experienced violent abuse from his father, who Paulk said was bigoted. As a kid, some of Paulk’s best friends were Hispanic, Native American and Samoan. But as soon as Paulk brought those friends to his house, his dad interfered, sometimes violently.
One time, his dad beat him up for borrowing a rap album from a friend.
Paulk was sent to foster homes for part of his childhood and turned to drugs and alcohol to cope. Substance abuse led to his first stint in prison, in 1999, when he became affiliated with a white supremacist gang.
“I never felt like I fit anywhere,” Paulk said. “There were some guys that showed me a lot of attention. … I just latched on to them.”
In his prison gang, Paulk said he was expected to “put in work,” which meant assaulting sex offenders, snitches or other people considered deplorable by prison moral standards.
“When you join a gang, you have a probation period where the members get to know you,” Paulk said. “In reality, they don’t get to know you. They are just using you. At the end of the probation period, the reward is that you get to wear their tattoo and have friends.”
When he was released from his first prison sentence in 2004, he tried to break ties with the white supremacist lifestyle. He was successful for a while. Leaving prison was the catalyst he needed to avoid gang life. But he eventually started using methamphetamine again and fell back in with the same crowd.
In 2007, at age 28, he killed a 32-year-old man, a fellow gang member. He was arrested and sentenced to 25 years in prison. Going back to prison meant rejoining the gang culture he had once tried to leave.
Afterward, in an effort to diminish the severity of what he’d done, Paulk told himself that the man was a drug addict and gang member. But he later recognized the error of that dehumanizing mindset.
“I’ve had the opportunity to change and my family can see that,” Paulk said. “But I took that opportunity to change from him [the man I killed]. That sits heavy on me.”
Leaving the ideology behind
From 2008 to 2014, Paulk was regularly involved in prison riots and fights with other races.
“The last one I got into was an 82-man riot,” he said.
Paulk noticed how easy it was for incarcerated people to be swept up into racial segregation, if simply out of self-preservation. Even when he was not involved in a fight, he could be placed in solitary confinement any time there was a gang-related incident — simply because he was associated with one.
During one stint in the hole, in 2010, Paulk’s mother died by suicide.
“She struggled with drug addiction her whole life, and I think she had finally just had enough,” he said. “The sad thing about when people die suddenly is that you don’t get a chance to fix things.”
This was the second time a close relative to Paulk died by suicide. When he was 13 years old, his grandmother killed herself while Paulk was living with her.
For four years after his mother’s death, Paulk repeated a cycle of fighting, gang activities and getting high, while never truly grieving the loss of his mom. He ignored his emotions, just as he was taught from a young age.
Then, in 2014, during another stint in solitary, Paulk decided to make a change. Tired of the negative cycle he was stuck in, Paulk made a commitment to leave the gang lifestyle behind. He stopped blaming the cops, his dad or his upbringing for his behavior.
“I was in my cell and I had nothing. I was so miserable,” said Paulk, who estimates he has cumulatively spent almost five years in solitary, with his longest stint lasting over a year. “I couldn’t live like that anymore.”
Paulk knew he wanted out of his gang, but leaving a prison gang can be a death sentence. When someone drops out of a prison gang, they are often moved to “safe harbor yards.” But it took time to unravel himself from the gang and secure the transfer.
“I trained to fight every single day,” Paulk said. “I knew they were going to come for me.”
After months had passed, Paulk thought he had navigated his way out of the gang with only minor conflicts. Then he was called to his counselor’s office.
Prison security staff had intercepted a note directing a white supremacist gang member to stab Paulk. Staff later found a large knife in the suspect’s cell. The man had drawn a diagram of a human body on his mattress and marked all the kill points and arteries.
The next day, Paulk was moved to a safe harbor yard.
A changed man
After leaving the gang, Paulk wanted to expose himself to different ways of thinking.
In 2020, he took a college class on race and public policy that was taught by a former member of the Black Panthers. He described this class as one of the more challenging experiences in his life. The course covered topics like systemic racism, classism and mass incarceration.
Paulk admits he was initially skeptical about the class.
“I was the only white person in the class,” he said. “I went there ready to learn, but I was still somewhat indoctrinated in the stuff from before. My guard was up, and I didn’t even realize it.”
About six weeks in, Paulk dropped the class.
“I felt attacked,” he said. “Any time I spoke, people would just laugh at what I said.”
The course examined how institutions like law enforcement and prisons have contributed to societal problems. But, at the time, Paulk thought the class was encouraging people to not take accountability for their actions. Paulk also struggled to come to terms with the idea of white privilege. Every week he left class mad.
Although he did not finish the course, Paulk still feels like that was the beginning of a shift in his thinking. Afterward, he started to make friends who were Black and Hispanic, but he was still trapped within some of the racist concepts he had been taught. He admitted that he still made racist jokes back then, not realizing how hurtful they were.
A further shift came for Paulk when he read a book called “Can’t Hurt Me” by David Goggins, a retired Navy SEAL and accomplished runner. Paulk described a section of the book where the author explained what it is like to be the only Black person in a room.
“It just hit me,” Paulk said. “I was crying. When I thought about things I’d said, it was a harsh reality. I set the book down. I prayed a little. I went out of my cell and talked to one of my [Black] friends. I told him I was sorry and we hugged. I told him I would never laugh at another racist joke again.”
Growing up in poverty and in an abusive household is an experience Paulk shared with many people of color at his prisons. This also helped change his way of thinking.
Eventually, he became best friends with a man named Trayvon, who was part of the Nation of Islam. Previously, they had been on opposite sides of gang riots. But now they were both in the safe harbor unit. They connected over their pasts.
“He was just like me,” Paulk said. “We had similar upbringings, and we were both sucked into that gang mentality.”
Paulk often dismissed white privilege because he grew up poor himself and felt like he had nothing easy. Now, Paulk regrets dropping the class on race and public policy.
“It took me a lot of years to understand what she meant,” Paulk said of the professor. “It wasn’t until the last couple of years I got the message. … Racism is a problem in America.”
A decade of good behavior
Paulk was once immersed in a harsh prison culture that glorified violence and encouraged racial segregation. But after nearly two decades of incarceration, he has found his true self to be a person of inclusion, compassion and empathy.
It has not always been an easy path for Paulk. He has experienced retaliation and abuse in prison for telling his story and encouraging others to leave the hate and gang life behind. But he has found purpose in being a positive mentor.
Today, as a result of good behavior, Paulk lives in honor housing at our prison — an incentive that allows him greater freedom of movement about the prison. His social circle includes people of various races.
Recently, Paulk reconnected with both his son and daughter. His daughter wasn’t even born when he went to prison. She just turned 16, and he met her for the first time last year. Paulk’s son is 18 and he has maintained a relationship with him over the years.
Paulk also continues to take college courses and is pursuing a degree in psychology. He hopes to work with trauma victims after he is released (the earliest would be in 2038). His free time is spent studying, maintaining his physical fitness, and serving his incarcerated community.
In May, Paulk started a position with the Amend program, which aims to increase the wellbeing of incarcerated people and staff through training on communication and de-escalation. Paulk was one of six incarcerated people in the 1,350-person facility asked to serve as a mentor for the program.
Paulk has continued to stay out of trouble, though he does return to the solitary confinement unit quite often—every Thursday night, he facilitates a mindfulness class for the people housed there.