From the first day of school, I realized that I did not quite…fit into the social puzzle. It seemed like every person had a place, a place surrounded by similar people. From elementary school on, lunch tables were segregated; Asians, blacks, Latinos, whites all occupied not just their own table, but their own section of the cafeteria. But where did I belong? Between the white side and black side? There was an unspoken, universally accepted code: One may say hi to whomever he wishes as you walk through the cafeteria but must sit with his own color. In this world of unspoken apartheid laws, where did this half Jamaican, fourth Irish, fourth Italian boy belong?
I took my first state standardized test in the third grade. At the tender, ripe age of nine, I felt well prepared for all of the questions on the test. The only questions for which I was not prepared were those right before the exam started: the personal informational survey questions. First off was my name. Simple. “FOSTER VINCENT G,” I wrote in big, capital letters and then bubbled in the corresponding cirlces. Question two: “What is your ethnicity?” My hand shot up. “What’s an ethni-city,” I asked. My teacher came over to my table and pointed, “Here, mark in this one.” Her pale, weathered finger extended and a flattened snail shell underlined the option “Black/African American.” I knew what black was, and I knew what African American was. I did a book report on a biography of Martin Luther King Junior. He was African American. But I was not black. My mother was white. I suppose my father was dark, but black? No, not that. He might have been African American…But I had always considered him, and the rest of my family on my dad’s side as white – they were just a whole lot darker and had funny accents. To be black was just short of an insult. In the ignorant state of North Carolina, my elementary aged peers did not identify themselves as black but brown, hazel, caramel, or a...