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I never really had to put much thought into my race, and neither did anybody else. I knew I was black. I knew there was a history that accompanied my skin color, and my parents taught me to be proud of it. End of story.

Like, you can't tell a certain race, like, 'You're supposed to act this way, and you're not supposed to act this way because of what color you are,' like, that's just holding everybody back, you know what I'm saying?

My parents raised me to not ever look at race or color, so it doesn't have a big part in my self-identity.

My brothers and I were raised by our parents to respect everyone regardless of background or race.

Traditionally, I have no right to talk about race. I'm white; I didn't grow up in an all-black neighborhood. But the license I see for myself is I'm a member of the world.

You know, I don't play the race card a lot. I'm half-black, half-white, and I'm proud of - my skin is brown. The world sees me as a black man, but my mother didn't raise me as a black man. She didn't raise me as a white guy.

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.

But you know, my dad called me the laziest white kid he ever met. When I screamed back at him that he was putting down a race of people to call me lazy, his answer was that's not what he was doing, and that I was also the dumbest white kid he ever met.

A white-boy attitude is 'I must exclude, denigrate, and leave behind.' They don't see it or think about it. It's a culture.

Race is used, by all of us, in the most manipulative ways, is often force-fit and reduced to something it isn't, to something that gives us a sense of comfort, a false one. Many of us thought - needed to feel - the whole business was 'settled.' But it's not, never has been. Laws have only taken us so far.