8533: Suddenly Black Like Me.

From The Chicago Sun-Times…

Actor who didn’t know he was black tells story of discovery

By Maudlyne Ihejirika

In 1992, the impending divorce of Michael Fosberg’s mother — a brunette of Armenian descent — and his stepfather — a blonde of Swedish descent — threw the 32-year-old Chicago actor into an emotional tailspin.

“I was deeply saddened and I guess I got really angry with my mother,” says the author of a stunning new memoir released just in time for Black History Month, “Incognito, An American Odyssey of Race and Self-Discovery.”

The story about the jarring discovery by Fosberg, then living as a white man, of his black history — he had no idea his father was a light-skinned black man — is currently stirring vibrant debate about race and identity, white privilege, and the sensitivity of blacks about light vs. dark skin.

Making its way across syndicated black radio and cable TV, it’s a dialogue Fosberg has devoted his life to since 2000, when he began telling his story in a one-man play, Incognito, which continues to tour theaters, schools, colleges and other venues nationwide.

“The woman I was living with at the time said that much anger wasn’t really about my mother. It was misplaced anger that probably had more to do with the fact I never knew my biological father, and felt like now I was losing my Dad, the man who raised me,” Fosberg says of the event that triggered a search for his biological father. “She was absolutely right.”

Fosberg’s mother, whose parents emigrated from Armenia, was 20 when she met his biological father at Boston University in 1957. She got pregnant, and was immediately disowned by her parents. The couple married, struggled for two years, the Fosberg’s mother told her to come home with the child.

She did. When Fosberg was five, she married his stepfather, never telling her son her secret. And raised in a then all white, working-class north suburb, Fosberg never had reason to question his heritage.

But he always felt different. His two siblings had straight hair. His, coarse and kinky. Teenage queries about his biological father had elicited from his mother little information beyond a name and a lie.

“After bugging my mother many times about it, she told me he was of Cherokee Indian descent,” he said.

But in 1992, he knew it was time. Recalling his mother had said his biological father lived somewhere in the Detroit area, he found six listings for John Sidney Woods, called the first one and bingo.

“When I asked, ‘Did you live in the Boston area in 1957?’‚ he said he did. I said, ‘Were you married to an Adrienne Pilbosian?’ He paused for what seemed an hour, then said, ‘Yes, I was,’” Fosberg says.

“My God, son, how are you?’ ” he said. “‘Where are you?’ When he said the word son, I just melted. We talked. Then he said, ‘There’s a couple of things you should know which I’m sure your mother never told you…I’ve always loved you, always thought of you…I’m African-American.’”

Fosberg describes having to reach out and steady himself, unable to respond, and “catching my reflection in the mirror across the room as if looking to see if I had just changed from white to black.”

“‘Are you alright?’” the voice on the other end asked. “I said, ‘Yeah. You’re right. She never mentioned that.’” Thus began his odyssey.

Read the full story here.