Chris Collado “So, What Are You?”
“Are you black?” “I thought you were Mexican because you speak Spanish, right?” “So, what are you?” These are the types of questions I have answered my entire life. I used to get annoyed when people would ask me “What are you?” in a tone similar to one you might use to ask about a homemade Halloween costume. I have been mistaken for being black, Mexican, Italian, and, on one occasion, Greek. I even had an older woman once ask me, “Has anyone ever told you that you look like Pete Sampras?” I don’t think I look anything like Pete Sampras. It can be so frustrating to have the very part of you that makes you unique ignored. For the longest time, I couldn’t understand why people saw me as anything but biracial or, the more socially recognized term, “mixed.” My dad is Afro-Cuban, meaning that he is a Cuban of African ancestry and basically looks black, and my mom is white, with a European cultural background.
Before I delve into the development of my own racial identity, I feel it would be helpful to describe myself and provide a little more information on my upbringing. I am the oldest of five children. I would describe myself as having a caramel or light brown complexion, dark brown eyes, and thick, curly black (or at least really dark brown) hair. My dad has a dark brown complexion, dark brown eyes, and short black hair. My mom has long, straight brown hair, blue eyes, and a very fair skin tone. As I mentioned, my entire life I have been mistaken for being from a number of different races. It was difficult for me to understand why it was so hard for people to grasp that I am mixed. Maybe people aren’t familiar with the growing trend of multiracial children. I believe people are easily confused by unfamiliar physical characteristics or traits. For the longest time society, as reflected in job applications and census forms, has been conditioned to categorize people in one box. I always wondered why I had to be one thing, one race. It’s funny—I have had friends, acquaintances, and relatives mention how I look like my dad or have a certain feature my mother has, but I don’t really see it. I feel that I look like what the combination of my parents’ features should look like. Why shouldn’t I look a little like both?
When I was a child, race as it related to our family—more specifically, as it related to how I should identify myself—wasn’t a topic of discussion in my house. In fact, I never really asked my parents about my race. My younger siblings proved to be more curious about their racial heritage, especially in light of the election of Barack Obama and the discussion about his racial background. Looking back on my life, I think the reason I didn’t discuss race with my parents may have been because my experience, growing up as a mixed-race child, forced me to navigate issues my parents didn’t have to deal with growing up in one-race households. My dad had the same physical characteristics as the rest of his family (dark skin, black hair), and the same cultural background (Cuban food, Spanish language). My mom likewise shared the physical characteristics of her parents (white skin). I didn’t know if they could help me. It wasn’t like these issues were altogether negative, but could they help me negotiate how I would identify myself among different race groups? Clearly, in terms of a collective perception of racial differences in America, we have moved beyond our turbulent history of slavery, the civil rights movement, segregation, and Jim Crow laws. I grew up with an Afro-Cuban dad and a white mom who loved me; I had Cuban grandparents and a white grandmother who loved me. I had relatives along both racial lines that loved me and were important in my life. My parents didn’t push me to identify myself with a certain race and for the most part allowed me to try to define myself. At least I think that was their intention. My understanding of being a product of an interracial relationship was a realization that developed internally as I began to understand race and to learn about the history of race relations in school.
Today I openly recognize myself as being a biracial or “mixed” person. But up until this point in my life, my racial identity was constantly changing with my given environment. When I was a child, I only noticed that the color of my skin was halfway between the skin colors of my parents. At that age, race wasn’t important but rather something I merely noticed; I didn’t understand the connotations or stereotypes typically tied to race. The color of my skin was just that—the color of my skin.
From the time I was born until I was about four years old, I would spend most of the day at my paternal grandparents’ house while my parents worked. In spending time with my grandparents, who were Cuban immigrants, I was inundated with Cuban culture. I recall my grandmother cooking Cuban dishes like picadillo and frijoles negros as my grandfather would walk about the house singing in Spanish. In many ways Spanish was my first language, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say “Spanglish” was my first language. In the time I spent with my grandparents, I came to use certain Spanish words rather than their English equivalents. For example, I used leche instead of “milk.” I used elefante instead of “elephant.” At such an early age, however, I wasn’t aware of the idea of culture, and I was only slightly more aware of race. I remember being in preschool drawing pictures of my family with crayons. I recall one instance when a teacher asked me, “Why did you draw your mommy in pink?” At that time, I didn’t understand her assumption that my parents must be of the same race. I would simply respond by saying, “My mommy isn’t pink, she’s peach.” At that time, race was nothing but a color out of a crayon box to me. I was tan, my dad was brown, and my mom was peach. These colors did not correspond to racial identities, interracial relationships, or mixed heritages. My artistic sensibilities reflected not so much an awareness of my mixed racial identity but more the pragmatic realization that the color tan lies between brown and peach in the color spectrum. Looking back on it now, I understand the significance of demonstrating my awareness of racial difference at such a young age, because my classmates did not think about or demonstrate race in the same way. My classmates, whose parents were more than likely the same race, might not have been as aware of differences in skin color, or at least reflect it in the manner I did.
At different points early in my childhood, my family lived in New Jersey and southern California. Both of these communities had diverse populations which were represented in the schools I attended. This was particularly true when I lived in New Jersey. I had classmates who were of different racial backgrounds and ethnicities; the fact that there were many children of color made racial diversity the norm. I was aware of the fact that I had darker-colored skin, curly hair, and dark brown eyes, but I did not think much about it because everyone was a little different. There were kids with similar physical features to mine, but there were also kids with very different features. Racial difference, however, had no effect on whom I or others seemed to interact with. I always had friends of different races. By the time I had completed kindergarten, my understanding of race had evolved from the point of crayon box comparisons to physical characteristics, but I still didn’t perceive myself in broader racial terms or in the social implications of being a certain race. I didn’t feel different from my peers until I moved to the more homogenous suburbs in Ohio.
Right before I was about to enter the first grade, my family moved to Ohio because the company my dad worked for transferred him to their headquarters in Cincinnati. It was in Cincinnati that I came to better understand racial difference and the internal conflicts that would arise in forming my racial identity. In the past, I had lived in more racially and culturally diverse communities; now my community was a predominantly white, middle-class suburb. I still remember walking into the classroom on my first day at my new school and realizing that I was the only kid in my class who looked like me. It wasn’t that I was fearful or that I felt uncomfortable; I just knew I was different. Over time I developed a nice group of friends, all of whom were white. My understanding of being different didn’t have an impact on my relationships, but I clearly recall it being in the back of my mind. I was aware I looked different from my friends. I remember seeing old pictures of my grade school friends and me playing on the playground where I was the only brown face.
My first encounter with racism occurred when I was in the first or second grade. We were studying Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his accomplishments, and our class learned a song celebrating this civil rights pioneer and his ideals of equality, harmony, and brotherhood. As our class proceeded to sing, a white friend of mine who was sitting next to me started giggling. I remember him leaning over to ask me, “Why are we singing about some nigger?” Prior to this conversation I had never heard the word, and not really knowing what it meant, I giggled in agreement. Seeing as my friend had said it, I just thought the word to be some new comeback.
Later that night, my family decided to go to dinner. I remember being very anxious to get to our destination, and I was getting frustrated because my mother was delaying us. While my father, little brother, and I waited in the car, I blurted out, “Geez, why is mom being such a nigger?” I vividly remember seeing my father’s face tense up in anger. He exploded, yelling that I should “never say that word,” and asserted that he did not even call his own brothers that. From my father’s anger and the degree of personal sentiment that the word stirred in him, I immediately understood it then to be a very “bad” word. I did not understand the racial undertones or history that came along with it. This situation proved to be an excellent example of a drawback to my family not really discussing race while I was growing up. I didn’t intend to say something bad, and I was confused. It wasn’t until I grew older and studied the impact of slavery and the Jim Crow era on African Americans in the United States that I understood the hate this word carried.
In elementary school and through junior high school we were required to take Spanish class. I recall things coming very easily for me. Vocabulary came quickly because these were words I remembered hearing my grandparents use when I was younger. When we were required to do projects on Spanish-speaking countries, on more than one occasion I had the opportunity to learn about Cuba. I started to become more interested in my cultural background. I knew the colors of the Cuban flag, the country’s major cities, prominent Cuban leaders, famous Cuban baseball players, and I learned all about the food I loved!
By the time I reached high school, I had started to develop a better understanding of my racial and cultural background. More important, I had grown accustomed to being the minority. I came into high school believing that I had qualities reflecting both of my parents, and so I wanted to represent both. I didn’t want to be viewed as black alone, because I felt that by doing so I would be separating myself from my mother. Similarly, I did not want to be seen as white because I did not want to reject my father. Because of my appearance, it wasn’t very likely people would view me as being white in any case. At the same time, my efforts to incorporate the Cuban cultural background into my racial identity proved to be even more problematic.
I attended a private Christian high school where students came from families of high socioeconomic backgrounds and where there were very few minorities. In fact, in my graduating class of 108, I was one of only eight minority students. My core group of friends was predominantly white. Only one of my good friends was black. Despite the fact that I was in the Spanish club and took honors Spanish as well as AP Spanish, I was still recognized by my peers as black. It wasn’t because my friends and classmates were overtly racist by any means. In large part, the lack of diversity at my school made race designation simply about physical features. There were no other kids in my class who had a mixed racial background. Because of the fact that I was darker than the white kids, I was black. It didn’t matter that my mother was white or that I took upper-level Spanish classes and showed a heightened proficiency in the language. People classified me in the way in which people in the United States for centuries have been classified: by skin color. While I felt a little typecast, I was old enough to know that relegating someone to a single race group was a societal norm. It was nothing personal.
Regardless of how I felt about my racial and cultural background in high school, I found that it was a lot easier to play the part I was given. My decision in high school to ultimately identify as black definitely suppressed both my biracial and bicultural identity. When people asked me about my racial background, I would simply reply that I was black. By the end of junior high, I had started telling people that I was mixed, but in high school I took a major step backwards. I think that high school is just an awkward phase in life. No one wants to stand out; you just want to be “cool.” In fact, among my friends, being black was viewed as being a great thing because of the stereotypes of black people having superior athletic abilities. Not that I was an unbelievable athlete. I found myself playing up or humoring most of the stereotypes that defined me as being black. I would make jokes to my friends that they had no “rhythm,” or if I were to get by someone when we were playing football, I would say something like, “I was really going there. Must’ve been those old slave feet kicking in.” I even started addressing my friends as “suh.” I would do so mimicking the voice of Morgan Freeman’s character, Hoke, from the film Driving Miss Daisy. In the summer, some of my friends would come back from vacation with a tan and would argue that they were darker than me. I would always respond by saying, “I’m tan year round!” I even started to get my hair braided into cornrows, mimicking the hairstyle of many popular black athletes at the time. I wasn’t fully comfortable with this role, and looking back on it I am kind of embarrassed that I played the part, but I grew tired of trying to assert an identity that would never jibe with the “one or the other” mindset of my community. It seemed like in some ways, especially with regard to sports and athletic ability, being black was a lot “cooler” than being white.
I also found that upon assuming “black” identity, I was welcomed into the small black network of students in my school, despite the fact that I was, in the words of my mother, more “suburban white boy than hood.” She was obviously referring to my style of clothing, which was more preppy, and my family’s very comfortable lifestyle—a stark contrast to the hip-hop culture my friends and I appreciated at the time. Whenever my friends and I were in a largely white setting, my black friends would often joke with me that we were the “only brothas in the place.” Not only did my predominantly white peer group think I was black; I was in a sense adopted into the black peer group in my school solely on account of my appearance, and not necessarily because of my racial background.
Although thus far I have painted my adoption of a black racial identity through jokes and slang, I gradually came to realize that being perceived as black also revealed harsh societal realities and had a direct and negative impact on my life. When I was a junior in high school, I developed a crush on a white girl in my class. She had previously asked me to a Sadie Hawkins–type dance, and we had had a great time together. As prom quickly approached, I was excited by the prospect of perhaps going to another dance with her. With the prom only a couple of weeks away, I asked her if she wanted to go with me. Much to my excitement, she said yes. My happiness was short-lived, however; the next day, while I was chatting online with friends, she sent me an instant message saying that she could not go to the dance with me. Because of my relative shyness around girls and my not wanting to pry, I simply responded, “That’s totally cool,” and I never got an explanation as to why she could not go to the dance with me. I had to admit that her “out of the blue” rejection after agreeing to go with me and her lack of an explanation were hurtful and served as a strong blow to my confidence, like so many teenage romantic rejections, but I didn’t initially identify this rejection as a result of my race.
Later that weekend I was hanging out with a close friend, and I explained the strange prom date situation. My rather outgoing and inquisitive white friend decided to call this girl to get a reason as to why she apparently “changed her mind,” because he thought I was due a proper explanation. When he questioned her about my prom invitation, she explained to him what she had chosen not to tell me. She told my friend that she couldn’t go to the prom with me because her father was upset that she was going to the dance with “a black guy.” When my friend reminded her of the Sadie Hawkins dance, she explained that she had kept her father out of the loop. I remember being shocked, angered, and confused all at the same time. At this point in my life, I was not so naïve as to think that racism did not exist, but I never believed racism would directly affect me. I remember thinking, “My mom is white. She is a part of me. I mean, come on, I am as much white as I am black.” I never told my parents why the girl couldn’t go with me. I didn’t know what they would think. I remember being upset for a couple of days but ultimately having a fun time with my new prom date, who was black.
This incident remains etched in my mind because it proved to be the first time racism actually had an impact on me. It still really hurts to think about it. I wondered what her father would have thought if I had expressed the fact that I was “mixed”—that I was at least part white. I soon realized that it probably would not have mattered. It was like the reinstitution of the “one-drop rule”: “I am part black, therefore I am black.” I would still simply be a mulatto.
In high school I was called a “nigger” for the first time. It wasn’t a common occurrence. But whenever my sports teams would play our rival schools in rural or urban locations, I found that one way my opponents would try to get in my head was to attack my racial background. I could be either a “nigger” or an “Oreo” depending on whom and where we played. I did tend to take these racist comments less seriously because I knew it was more about affecting my performance on the field or court rather than pure hate speech. Being called a “nigger” would nevertheless anger me because of the history of hate the word carried.
Unlike the experiences of my black peers who must also have suffered racial slurs, I was denigrated by both whites and blacks. My white opponents would attack my black appearance, and my black opponents would try to delegitimize my claim to being black. Because I went to a private school and was part white, I got the impression that the black students from urban high schools didn’t feel as though I knew about being black. Or even knew how to “be” black. An opponent once called me an “Oreo” and told me that my football team had only “one and a half” black players, hinting that perhaps I didn’t have the athletic abilities black players were supposedly endowed with. To him, I was not black. As for those who thought I wasn’t black enough or didn’t think I knew about being black, I often wondered how the same people would handle the struggle of being “mixed.”
Upon graduating from high school and enrolling at college, I discovered the campus community to be an environment conducive to openly presenting myself racially. College is typically a period in people’s lives when they can take advantage of the opportunity to express themselves fully. I was no different. My college was much more diverse than my high school; I had students of different races in every one of my courses. During my freshman year I was drawn to a sociology seminar examining the racial identity development of multiracial adolescents. I went into the class hoping that I would be studying myself, and looking back on my experience, I do feel as though this class is largely responsible for the way I view myself today. We read books about people who had experienced being classified under the “one-drop rule,” we learned about the developments in legislation regarding racial identification, and we also learned about the social structures that impact whether or not multiracial adolescents develop a multiracial identity. There would be periods in the class when we would read transcripts of interviews in which young racially mixed people would explain how they came to view themselves, and I would notice a lot of parallels with my own life and my struggle to develop a racial identity. This involved growing up in a homogenous community, being recognized as the race of the parent you most resemble physically, and my period of “passing” as another race.
A large percentage of the students enrolled in the course were of mixed racial backgrounds themselves. Even more encouraging were the discussions I was able to have with them. I met a woman who was equal parts Native American and black, but because she was dark-skinned, she was frequently simply viewed as black. In public she was often forced to neglect her particular cultural heritage. We bonded over this concept of “passing” as a single race in the eyes of our peers and compartmentalizing our racial and cultural backgrounds, things that made us unique. It proved to be easier to play black than biracial. In her community it was much easier to pass as being black because all of her friends were black, and she possessed many physical characteristics stereotypically assigned to black people despite having a lighter complexion.
Still, not all of the students I met on campus with mixed racial backgrounds wanted to have a dual racial identity. One of my teammates on the football team was biracial; his dad was black and his mom was white, but he simply identified himself as black. His parents were divorced, and he actually spent most of his time living with his white mother. So I was intrigued that he was so openly and easily able to assert himself as being black. He wasn’t the only person I knew who took on a singular racial identity despite having parents of different races. The one common factor among all these students was that one of their parents was black and they looked black themselves. As opposed to having people say that they were black, like me, these students could look in the mirror and see they were black. I look in the mirror and I can see that I’m mixed, from my skin tone to my hair texture. What if I didn’t have the appearance I do? What if I had dark skin like my father or white skin like my mother? Would I identify myself differently? Honestly, I probably would.
After recognizing the number of people who deal with this struggle and also learning that multiracial children are a growing population, I became more comfortable in my own skin. It became a lot easier to identify myself as being mixed. I became more patient when I was asked to explain my racial background because I now felt that it was worth the time to explain it. I would tell people I was mixed, that my dad is a black Cuban and my mom is white. I noticed that I was beginning to hang out with a diverse group of friends in college. I also continued to pursue my mastery of the Spanish language, becoming a Spanish minor with an emphasis on Hispanic literature. My friends at school understood that I was part Cuban, and that it was an important part of my identity. In my Spanish classes I was able to meet and become friends with other Cubans, Dominicans, and Puerto Ricans, many of whom even looked like me and shared a mixed racial heritage. Once again it was easier for me to explain myself and my racial identity when I was able to hear the experiences of others in the same position. Despite the fact that I didn’t use Spanish in my daily life, my Spanish-language skills made me much more proud of my Cuban heritage. Thinking about it now, I admit that if I didn’t know Spanish, or hadn’t at least studied Spanish, I wouldn’t value my Cuban cultural background. I am the only one of my siblings who truly showed an interest in Spanish and developed a strong base in the language. At college I became very proud of being biracial and bicultural.
Being the product of an interracial relationship, I believe, has played a significant role in my dating life and, more specifically, the girls that I have been interested in. My parents never made race an issue, so neither have I. In my eyes, my parents’ interracial relationship served as a symbol of openness. They didn’t let racial difference prevent them from loving each other, and therefore I wouldn’t let racial difference prevent me from developing feelings for a person of another race. I feel as though coming from interracial parents provided me with a certain freedom that perhaps children of same-race parents might not have. I had seen firsthand a loving interracial relationship, and I had watched it succeed. Because race was not a prominent issue in my family, I didn’t feel restricted as to who I could date. In fact, for the most part I found girls of all races equally attractive. If you were cute, you were cute, no matter what your skin color, hair color, eye color, or whatever.
Despite the fact that I did not perceive race to be an issue when it came to who I should date, looking back on my experiences in a predominantly white private school system, I recognize that race definitely was an issue. I didn’t have much experience dating while growing up, in large part because I was particularly shy around members of the opposite sex. In junior high, when it first became “cool” to like girls and have a girlfriend, I felt the push from my peers to be interested in the few black girls in my grade. I recall bus rides to baseball games when my friends would be talking about who they liked and who they wanted to ask out. They would ask if I liked so-and-so and suggest that I ask her out. But in junior high it wasn’t just my guy friends that tried to shape my interests but girls as well. Friends of the black girls would ask me if I liked such and such a black girl, or tell me that a particular black girl was interested in me.
As I entered high school, I found that more black girls expressed their interest in me than girls of any other racial background. I actually attended the majority of my high school dances with black girls, despite the fact that throughout my high school experience I found myself attracted to girls of different races. It seemed, however, that each year a new black girl developed a crush on me. As I mentioned earlier, I was shy and relatively quiet around girls; I was by no means Casanova. I became curious as to whether or not my school environment, which was not very diverse, had an impact on why black girls seemed interested in me. Working off the idea that it is natural to date your own race, I began to consider that perhaps these girls were attracted to me because of my race rather than my personality. Looking back now, I can understand the way in which my peers and the girls I attracted helped to reinforce the “black” identity I adopted throughout high school. I had assumed that if my peers thought that I should be interested in black girls, and if mostly black girls responded to me, then it was only natural for me to identify with the black community around me.
Ironically, my longest and strongest relationship has been with my current girlfriend, who is white. She has blond hair, blue eyes, and fair skin. We have been together for over four years, and I consider her one of my best friends. I find it ironic that the majority of the past four years have mirrored my experience at college, a period of self-discovery that fostered the development of my biracial identity. When we began dating, race was never an issue for either her or her family, with whom I developed a very good relationship. I didn’t care that she was white and she didn’t care that I wasn’t. We were simply attracted to each other and really enjoyed being together. In fact, we didn’t even address the fact that we were of different races/ethnicities until we had been dating for several months! She has understood the importance I have placed on my mixed racial heritage, and she has never viewed me as one race or the other. In many ways I also credit her with helping to strengthen my identity. Prior to meeting me, she was already fluent in Spanish and deeply interested in the Hispanic/Latino culture. Upon learning of my racial heritage, she became influential in helping me to reconnect with my Cuban roots by trying to get me to speak Spanish more frequently with her (which she wasn’t very successful in accomplishing) and exciting my interest in cooking Cuban food. I am thankful that I have been able to grow closer to such an amazing person, and I am proud of the fact that we never perceived racial difference as an obstacle in developing our strong relationship.
After witnessing my parents’ relationship, I didn’t hold any of the stereotypes that often follow interracial couples, like being rejected by their families and communities. I understand that sometimes parents who are the same race might struggle with accepting their children’s interracial relationships for a number of reasons: they might have more traditional/prejudiced values, or it might just be something they have never had experience with and as a result feel uncomfortable. Have you seen a movie with an interracial couple where race issues are not at the focal point of the film? And if there is an interracial relationship, is it between a minority and a white person or between two minorities? My experience has been that it’s much more common to see a black person dating a Hispanic than a black person dating a white person in a film, or even a Hispanic dating a white person in a film. But because of my parents’ interracial relationship and the values they instilled in me and a growing sense of personal freedom, in college I felt that I could pursue a relationship with anyone regardless of her race.
Adjusting to my next phase in life, adulthood, I can’t help but wonder about the next generation of multiracial individuals, more specifically my future multiracial children. Depending on whom I marry, the physical characteristics of my kids can be uniquely different. Given my parents’ genes, I could possibly have kids with blue eyes, straight hair, and light, maybe even white, skin. Or I could have kids with darker skin and a different hair texture from my own. My kids might look nothing like me in terms of phenotype. Regardless of what my kids look like, however, I have decided that I will take the time to explain their racial heritage. I would like my kids to be more aware of race and race sensibilities than I was as a child. But, like my parents did, I want to allow them to choose how they identify themselves, both racially and culturally. Having gone through the process myself, I know how difficult it can be at times to be comfortable in your own skin. My hope for them would be that they would be proud of their mixed racial heritage and choose not to pass for whatever race they most resemble physically. Ultimately it will be their journey, but I will give my insights if they ask. My broader hope for our society is that with the population of multiracial children growing, we will be able to accept people as belonging in more than one category. After all, the U.S. Census form has been changed to allow people to check many different races. I notice the same thing on some job applications I’ve seen. I’m hopeful that my kids will be able to embrace their mixed racial background fully, should they choose to do so, and that others will be able to recognize the fact that they are mixed too.
My experience of constructing a racial identity was largely a social prescription in the sense that the way I chose to identify myself was largely based on my understanding of race and my environment. When I was young and living in a more diverse community, race was nothing but a color out of the crayon box. In my classroom there were children of different colors, and there wasn’t any value placed on differences between myself and my peers. As I got older, the concept of race carried more weight. Living in a much more homogenous community, I was quick to recognize how I was different. Even when I started to understand my racial and cultural background, I assumed the racial identity that was projected on me by my peers. Although this identity was based largely on racialized misconceptions and stereotypes, I still found myself willing to play the part because it was just easier to fit in. After attending college, however, and learning about how many biracial individuals have dealt with the same issues I have, I became much more accepting of my biracial and bicultural identity. In fact, I developed a certain level of pride for my mixed racial heritage and cultural background. My experiences growing up conveyed to me that trying to develop a racial identity is a very difficult process for biracial individuals because of the traditional categorization of race within American society based on the race you most resemble in the eyes of others.
With the rise in multiracial and multicultural children, questions about racial background as well as issues of social recognition, cultural conflict, and racial identity construction have become more relevant. The people of the United States elected as president Barack Obama, who shares a mixed racial and cultural background. At the same time, President Obama is commonly viewed and praised as being the first “black” American president, proof that society is still apt to essentialize multiracial people and to “box” them into one racial identity. Viewing President Obama as simply “the first black president” ignores his white mother and the fact that he was raised by a predominantly white family—that he is, in fact, our first multiracial and multicultural president! I, too, have struggled with trying to break out of the “what are you” box because, when I’m faced with the opportunity, my background necessitates that I check several boxes, something I have grown both comfortable with and proud to do.
Chris graduated from Dartmouth College, where he majored in sociology and was a member of the varsity football team. He and his wife currently reside in Arlington, Virginia, where he works in marketing for an international law firm.