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It is truly not fun to be the family that sticks out in an all-white community. On the other side, I have five brothers and sisters; we all look exactly the same, and we're very, very tight. The lessons about race were not pleasant, but there are things that I loved about my childhood.

You know, growing up, I lived in a neighborhood in Long Island where there was basically one black family. And I remember hearing all the parents and the kids in the neighborhood say racist things about this family.

I think that in any family - black, white, Chinese, Spanish, whatever - family is family. You know that there's dysfunction, and that there's this cousin who doesn't like this auntie. But, at the end of the day, like I say, love brings everybody together.

I know black kids who don't even know any other black kids except their cousins. And that's enough. You wouldn't look at these kids and say that they are Uncle Toms or self-hating or fleeing or trying to be white, given the culture in which they live, which is very natural to them as kids.

My encounters with racism are sort of second-hand situations where I might be standing around with a group of white friends and someone makes a comment that they wouldn't make at my family reunion.

I have friends who are black whose families opened their arms to them when they came out; I have friends who were white where they were rejected.

We were the only black family in my neighborhood for many years. Wherever we lived, we were often the only black family, and certainly the only Haitian family. But my parents were really great at providing a loving home where we could feel safe and secure.

You notice patterns. White guests often are mortified - that word again - when they learn their ancestors owned slaves. But I've never had a black guest who was upset to learn about white ancestry that probably involved forced sexual relations.

We're the first not-white family to ever live in the governor's mansion. My son-in-law is Puerto Rican. I have a beautiful little granddaughter who is half Korean and half Latina. I'm the only white guy in the house.

African-Americans know about racism, but I don't think we really know the causes. I decided it's first of all a family problem.