“I grew up a black boy who looked white. This was in a black neighborhood, during the height of the Black Power Movement. Even though I didn’t ‘look black,’ even though my father was white (and a pasty Irish white at that), I was definitely black. Because my mother was black. I was black and yet lacking apparent blackness, and as a result I failed my own definition, but never so much that the definition would be suspended. That’s what it felt like racially for me growing up 1970s and ’80s Philadelphia: You were black or you were white. There was a Racial Cold War, a delicate ceasefire called at the end of the Civil Rights Movement, and you had to know which side you stood on.”