Powell
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Joined: 27 Nov 2004
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 Posted: Mon 07 Jul 2008 15:28 Post subject: One Drop in its purest form - Chicago Tribune |
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http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/race/2008/07/incognito-from.html#more
Compare the glorification of this man - who embraces the ODR and goes from "white" to "black" at age 32 - to the demonization heaped on the name of Anatole Broyard and others who supposedly move from "black" to "white."
| Quote: | For years, Michael Sidney Fosberg believed he was white. He grew up in a white community in a Chicago suburb with his dark-haired Armenian mother and his blond and blue-eyed stepfather. Michael himself has light skin, curly hair and few other physical features that would suggest he was anything but white. But at age 32, Michael learned his biological father was African American. This began his exploration into race and identity. Michael is a writer and actor based in Chicago. For the past five years, he has toured the country with his one-man play, INCOGNITO, which entertains and encourages audiences to deconstruct their notions of race. Michael’s story opens with him standing in his rent-controlled, Santa Monica, Ca., apartment nearly 18 years ago. He’s holding a piece of paper with a list of names and getting ready to reach out to his father for the first time. This is Michael Sidney Fosberg’s essay:
On the day I attempted to find my father, I pushed through my fear and grabbed the telephone dialing the first name on the list. My mother had only told me my father’s name, that I bore a striking resemblance to him and that he had lived in Detroit. I set out to find him while my mother and stepfather were divorcing. Suddenly I realized that as I was about to lose one father, I had never known the other.
I dialed and a man answered:
"I'm looking for a John Sidney Woods?" I said, my voice trembling.
"You're speaking with him," he said.
"Did you live in the Boston area in 1957?"
"I did," he said. Now it was his voice that wavered.
"Were you married to a woman by the name of Adrienne Pilbosian?"
There was a long pause. Finally, he said he had been.
So this was my dad. I was elated and scared and nervous and relieved. Then, after we exchanged some more cursory information, he said: "You know son, there are a couple of things you should know. I'm sure your mother never told you."
"What's that?" I said.
"You should know that no matter what you thought happened, or what you were told, that I've always loved you and thought about you a lot."
For the first time (at least in my memory) my biological father told me 'he loved me.’ I strained to steady my emotions.
"There's one other thing I'm sure your mother never told you---I'm African American."
I was standing next to a dresser, the afternoon light reflecting off the mirrored door of the closet. I caught a glimpse of myself holding the telephone. In my semi-comatose shock, my tanned skin looked blacker than ever.
My father was right. Mother had never mentioned that I was part black. What I had always seen in the mirror hadn’t reflected that either.
I'd grown up in a white working-class family in the blue-collar Chicago suburb of Waukegan. I remember as a young boy of barely 3 years old, living with my mother at her parent's house, a richly traditional Armenian home. When my mother finally married the blonde-haired, blue-eyed man of Swedish descent who would become my father, I was a smiley robust boy of 5 sporting a typical crew-cut and nerd glasses.
When I learned about my father, I was shocked but not because of any negative cultural stereotypes I had about blacks. My parents always had taught my two siblings and me tolerance where race was concerned (only once had I heard a relative use the N-word, which made me sick). And, by high school, I had embraced black culture. I wore my hair so wild and kinky no manner of brush or comb would pass through its coarseness. I donned outrageous outfits of platform shoes, multi-colored rayon shirts, voluminous purple corduroy pants, topped off with a wide brim hat. Yet at no point did anything in my life suggest I actually might be black: Not my extensive collection of James Brown albums; nor my ability to recite verbatim every Richard Pryor routine; nor the fact that I was on the basketball team, one of only two “white” guys.
To this day, because of the way I look—my white skin, keen features and hazel colored eyes---white people never suspect I am black. But black people secretly wonder. It's as though blacks have a radar detection system and understand that our skin comes in many different shades and our features vary from keen to broad. Few white people understand just how extreme that can be and how genetics can play tricks in this regard.
Before I learned I was biracial, I was dating a British woman and we were serious enough to consider marriage. I’ve joked that if we had married and had a child, a brown child, I would have asked, “Who have you been sleeping with?” And the answer would have been me. Where skin color, eye color, hair texture, etc., are concerned, you never know what you’re going to get. He believes in the "black baby" throwback myth, too.
So what changed after I learned I was half black? My family grew and many of my new relatives welcomed me with open arms. My father apprised me of the family stock: My grandfather had been the chairman of the Science and Engineering Departments at Norfolk State University and the science building is named after him. There are unconfirmed family stories that my great-grandfather, Al Woods, was a first cousin of John Brown. My great-great-grandfather was a member of the 54th regiment of the Colored infantry unit in the Civil War. My grandmother's father, Charles "Lefty" Robinson, was once an all-star pitcher in the Negro Baseball Leagues.
Although I am half black, it’s true that my light skin gives me a certain degree of privilege. I have never been “stopped while driving black.” I have never been followed around in a store because of my skin color. I have never been called the N-word. Does that make me any less of a black man? Does a person have to have those experiences to be black? Is one's blackness a function of nature or nurture?
When forced to check a box regarding my race, I check biracial if that’s an option. Otherwise I check African American. But I find the box system is terribly faulty. What does it really say about my ancestry, or anybody else’s? Rarely does it tell the full and nuanced story. For that, I’ve learned, we have to go in search of ourselves.
Michael Sidney Fosberg is a writer and actor based in Chicago. He tours the country with his one-man play, INCOGNITO. His memoir will be published by Lawrence Hill Books, an imprint of Chicago Review Press, in the spring of '09. You can learn more about his story and play at www.incognitotheplay.com |
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