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parents, Cuban émigrés, arrived on these shores in 1967 with two young sons and the clothes on their backs—literally. Mima had sold her wedding ring to pay for their boat ride to Miami. Four years later I was born. My father, who is bronze-skinned, drove a Coca-Cola delivery truck. My mother, quite fair-skinned and with long, dark hair, peeled shrimp and cleaned fish in a seafood factory. In Cuba their relationship was no big deal. Here, they were a mixed-race couple, which they found bemusing. In 1979 our predominantly Black neighborhood erupted in race riots after an all-White, male jury acquitted five White police officers of the beating death of a Black motorcyclist. Everyone wanted to know: Are you Black or Cuban? Translation: Are you one of them or one of us?
    Incensed by the racism toward Blacks from Cubans, my parents sided with the Blacks. Soon they were explaining to us that we were Black too. “Don’t let people tell you you’re Cuban or you’re Latino,” my dad would say in broken English. “You’re Black. You hear me? You’re from Africa. Be proud that your race is Black.”
    My mother reinforced that message on our walks to school. She’d say that being from Cuba did not make us any less Black than my friends in Liberty City or those in Jackson, Mississippi. Mima always taught me that Black is beautiful, that I was from Africa—just like other Black people here—and that we spoke Spanish because our ancestors’ slave ship dropped them off at a different stop in the triangular slave trade.
    This shift in my heritage was curious and, some might argue, arbitrary, but one I embraced without question.
    Mima and Papa were deeply invested in all three of their children, and it paid dividends. I became the first Black child to make it to the state spelling bee and was bused to one of the best high schools in the
area, where I became president of the honor society, editor of the school paper, and prom queen. I ended up at Emory University in Atlanta, studied political science, dreamed of becoming a US senator, and immediately got involved in political campaigns.
    But in my pursuit of all that, I drifted away from Liberty City, physically and psychologically.
    John’s story was similar to mine in that respect. Raised in Detroit, he attended a Jesuit-run, all-boys college prep school and ended up at Harvard. On his application he refused to mention his basketball prowess to ensure he was accepted based purely on his academic record.
    John and I would often discuss how we had gotten away from the masses in our choices of food, places we liked to visit, books we read, and TV shows and movies we watched. Nobody enjoyed Seinfeld more than we did, and I’m guessing that it’s not a huge hit on the West Side. We would notice that disconnect as we spent more time in our suburb, at the office, or when we were the only “chocolate chips” at a four-star restaurant and everyone treated us so nicely. We’d joke about whether they’d act that way if we looked like Lil Wayne.
    For the most part the examination of the “class clash” in the Black community is, among members of the Black upper class, limited conveniently and comfortably to a rather benign discussion. Our educational and professional accomplishments have taken us to the higher echelons of American society. We can sample what John and I as well as some of our Black friends call “White Life,” a phrase we soften to “The American Dream” when we’re in mixed-race company.
    We spend more and more time with educated, professional Whites, middle- and upper-middle-class folks who tend to be more progressive and less bigoted, but sometimes they are still very clueless. We are the affable, token Blacks at the dinner party, barbecue, or office party that just fifteen years ago was all White. That status can make us almost celebrities at these gatherings. People