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MAN WHO DIDN'T KNOW HIS RACE SPEAKS
By Amy Schweitzer
Grand Island Independent
http://www.theindependent.com/articles/2011/10/20/news/local/doc4ea0f9259c2ba770153427.txt
Oct 20 2011
Imagine discovering you are not the person, or even the race, you
grew up thinking you were.
Michael Fosberg, the keynote speaker at the Multicultural Coalition
Conference in Grand Island Thursday, found out when he was in his
30s that his biological father is African-American.
He told his story of self-discovery of family and race in a one-man
play he wrote about his life. It is called "Incognito."
After Fosberg~Rs mother and stepfather divorced in the early 1990s,
he began asking questions about his father, whom he hadn~Rt seen
since he was 2 years old.
"It was like I~Rm a jigsaw puzzle and there is this one last piece
missing that I need to find to complete the picture," he said he told
his mother.
Knowing only his father~Rs name and the last city he was known to
have lived in, Fosberg was able to find his father. But in the first
phone call, he learned his mother had left out a few details.
"There~Rs one thing I~Rm sure your mother never told you ~W I~Rm
African-American," his father told him. Because Fosberg has very
light skin, he had never guessed he was part black.
"I went from growing up in a middle class white family to being a
black man in the blink of an eye," Fosberg said, adding that at first
he was angry with his mother for not telling him sooner, but then a
friend helped him realize what she had probably gone through as her
parents forced her to come live with them.
She was a 19-year-old, first-generation immigrant Armenian girl in 1957
forced to leave the man she loved to return to a mostly hostile family
environment and raise her child as a single mother, Fosberg said.
Once he met his father, whom he looks just like, and the rest of his
"black family," he started thinking about where he stood as far as
race was considered.
"What race am I? Am I white? Am I black?" Fosberg asked himself,
adding that he believed he was more than a label or a race.
"I'm a triple A - African-American-Armenian," Fosberg with a smile,
also wondering if he is "less black" because he was never persecuted
for his race growing up.
"I was not raised black. I did not live through the black experience.
I was not singled out because of the color of my skin," he said. "Did
I have to have that experience to be black?"
He told the audience that he has come to believe that although
ethnic groups certainly share some cultural similarities, everyone
has different experiences.
"There are cultural differences among all of us," Fosberg explained.
"There is no one black experience or white experience or Hispanic
experience."
Always an actor, about seven years after finding his father, he first
performed "Incognito" and he has been performing it for schools,
civic organizations and conferences for the past eight years.
"As a biracial person, and there are many of us now, we have an
obligation to help bridge the gap between the races and cultures,"
he said. "We all look for differences first. What if we looked for
similarities first?"
By Amy Schweitzer
Grand Island Independent
http://www.theindependent.com/articles/2011/10/20/news/local/doc4ea0f9259c2ba770153427.txt
Oct 20 2011
Imagine discovering you are not the person, or even the race, you
grew up thinking you were.
Michael Fosberg, the keynote speaker at the Multicultural Coalition
Conference in Grand Island Thursday, found out when he was in his
30s that his biological father is African-American.
He told his story of self-discovery of family and race in a one-man
play he wrote about his life. It is called "Incognito."
After Fosberg~Rs mother and stepfather divorced in the early 1990s,
he began asking questions about his father, whom he hadn~Rt seen
since he was 2 years old.
"It was like I~Rm a jigsaw puzzle and there is this one last piece
missing that I need to find to complete the picture," he said he told
his mother.
Knowing only his father~Rs name and the last city he was known to
have lived in, Fosberg was able to find his father. But in the first
phone call, he learned his mother had left out a few details.
"There~Rs one thing I~Rm sure your mother never told you ~W I~Rm
African-American," his father told him. Because Fosberg has very
light skin, he had never guessed he was part black.
"I went from growing up in a middle class white family to being a
black man in the blink of an eye," Fosberg said, adding that at first
he was angry with his mother for not telling him sooner, but then a
friend helped him realize what she had probably gone through as her
parents forced her to come live with them.
She was a 19-year-old, first-generation immigrant Armenian girl in 1957
forced to leave the man she loved to return to a mostly hostile family
environment and raise her child as a single mother, Fosberg said.
Once he met his father, whom he looks just like, and the rest of his
"black family," he started thinking about where he stood as far as
race was considered.
"What race am I? Am I white? Am I black?" Fosberg asked himself,
adding that he believed he was more than a label or a race.
"I'm a triple A - African-American-Armenian," Fosberg with a smile,
also wondering if he is "less black" because he was never persecuted
for his race growing up.
"I was not raised black. I did not live through the black experience.
I was not singled out because of the color of my skin," he said. "Did
I have to have that experience to be black?"
He told the audience that he has come to believe that although
ethnic groups certainly share some cultural similarities, everyone
has different experiences.
"There are cultural differences among all of us," Fosberg explained.
"There is no one black experience or white experience or Hispanic
experience."
Always an actor, about seven years after finding his father, he first
performed "Incognito" and he has been performing it for schools,
civic organizations and conferences for the past eight years.
"As a biracial person, and there are many of us now, we have an
obligation to help bridge the gap between the races and cultures,"
he said. "We all look for differences first. What if we looked for
similarities first?"