Raised white, mixed-race actor/author tells story of discovery

By Karen DeGroot Carter — At age 34, Michael Fosberg discovered his father was black. Raised in a town outside Chicago in a white, middle-class family by his mother and step-father, Michael had always felt an affinity with black people and culture, but never suspected he might actually be part African-American.

He replays the scene in which he learned he is mixed-race while speaking with his father over the phone for the first time in his one-man play, INCOGNITO, and writes about it in his just-released memoir, INCOGNITO: An American Odyssey of Race and Self-Discovery.

“First discovering my dad and speaking to him and then learning he was African-American was shocking but it also made me feel so complete,” Michael says. “It was like ‘Oh my God, of course.’”

Michael remembers gripping the dresser in his room by one hand, holding the phone in the other while his father talked, and catching a glimpse of himself in a mirror across the room. “I had to stop and think, ‘Wait, did my complexion just change?’”

Questions raised by his new perception of his identity led Michael not only to meet with his father (whom Michael described as his “mirror image”: “I look exactly like him. Same smile, same hair, same way with his hands, same tilt of his head, same resonance in his voice.”) and grandparents in Virginia, but to eventually begin writing his memoir focused on his life-changing experience. When he read from the memoir to a group of people, he was told immediately he should also tell his story on stage.

A theatre student since high school and an experienced actor, director, producer and workshop teacher who’d also performed in theatre, television and film productions for many years, Michael began to develop his one-man play, designing it—and the question-and-answer period that follows each performance—to confront issues of stereotypes and race as well as identity. Since 2000, he’s performed INCOGNITO for public, corporate and school audiences across the country and in the Bahamas. He says since President Obama was elected, the show’s post-performance discussions have become a bit more open. “People’s willingness has changed,” he explains. “People have the desire to have the dialogue about race. The problem is, we don’t know how.”

Michael explains that in mixed-race company, most white people approach such discussions “from a place of caution” because they don’t want to be accused of saying anything—or being—racist. “An advocate is needed to create an open space in which we can make mistakes, fall on our face, and not have our head bitten off,” Michael says. “I try to do that.”

And he does it well. After a recent production in a school in a primarily white Connecticut town, a teacher told Michael his story especially resonated with the school’s few Hispanic students, and an African-American student spoke about feeling lost and confused as one of the school’s only students of color.

In one YouTube video of a post-INCOGNITO discussion, a woman thanks Michael for telling his story and discussing the importance of identity issues not only for people of mixed-race heritage, but for adopted children. One 15-year-old girl adopted from Russia when she was very young wrote to Michael recently after seeing his play at her school outside Milwaukee. She said his story resonated with her because she’ll always wonder why her parents, whom she’ll never meet, gave her up.

“We’re all human beings looking for the same things,” Michael says. “I’m here to help people figure out what makes them who they are. I’m a guide, I open doors in any ways I can.”

Michael adds that he never gets tired of these sometimes difficult dialogues. “I want to continue to help make a better country and a better society and this is the way I can do it,” he says. “There’s so much I can’t do about things that are wrong with politics or on Wall Street, but I can talk about resentment in this country and the Islamophobia and the racism and discrimination and help raise the dialogue to a national level.”

His book includes copies of letters his mother wrote to his father long ago, including the one in which she explained why she had to leave him and return home to her parents with their 2-year-old mixed-race grandson. “She said she couldn’t raise me in a Black community because that would mean never seeing her family again,” Michael says, explaining that his mother’s parents were Armenian immigrants who were unable to see past the typical prejudices of the early 1960s.

“There was no biracial community back then,” he says. “My mom was always very open-minded and accepting of other people. If there had been a biracial community back then, maybe she could’ve brought me up to understand I was both white and black.” Though his journey’s been difficult, Michael says since discovering his entire family’s history he feels “much more—a tremendous amount more—whole as an individual.”

For tour dates and more information about the play INCOGNITO and how you can schedule a performance in your community, visit www.IncognitoThePlay.com. DVDs of the play are also sold on the INCOGNITO website, as are signed copies of Michael’s memoir, INCOGNITO: An American Odyssey of Race and Self-Discovery, which is also sold on Amazon. PS — Like the FB fan page here!

Karen DeGroot Carter, a native of Syracuse NY and a graduate of Syracuse University, lives with her mixed-race family in Denver. Her novel, ONE SISTER’S SONG, explores challenges faced by people of mixed-race heritage and her blog, BEYOND Understanding, highlights resources that promote tolerance and celebrate diversity. Contact Karen at karen@mixedandhappy.com.