For 15 years, businesses, education institutions and federal government agencies have hired author Michael Fosberg to conduct interactive training sessions on diversity, equity and inclusion. His presentations include performing a one-man play, "Incognito," that he wrote and developed from an autobiographical book he wrote in 2011.
Fosberg, a Chicago native, was in Charlotte this week for a training session for the Canopy Realtor Association’s Fair Housing Month celebration. He talks to WFAE’s Gwendolyn Glenn about his work and the revelation of a family secret that helped shape his perspective on DEI.
Michael Fosberg: The major focus is the work that I do is to help people understand that we have more in common than we have differences. It's an absolute fact, and we are forgetting that because we are at each other's throats or we have politicized everything. DEI is not a political topic. It's a human topic. It's about human beings. I have a set of tools that I use, and the first tool is tell your story — and the second tool is don't judge the differences.
Gwendolyn Glenn: I believe people are aware that we have differences, but the equity and inclusion part of DEI is what kind of makes people feel threatened. What are your thoughts on that?
Fosberg: Well, I definitely think that this whole politicalization of DEI is about people feeling threatened. It's about creating a sense of fear in people.
Inclusion is really about including everyone so that everyone's voices are heard in a workplace or in a community. Equity is about helping mothers who have children, and getting child care at work, helping veterans who have difficulties with maybe PTSD issues. It's about helping everybody feel as if they fit in — and this includes white people, all kinds of people.
And diversity, it's about bringing everyone to the table. I often equate it to — if you went to a financial adviser to talk about, you know, investing. Their advice — and every financial adviser will say the same thing: ‘Diversify your portfolio.’ That's how you make the most gains.
Glenn: Well, now you have lots of diverse clients. UNC Charlotte has been a client and Fortune 500 companies. So, have you lost clients as DEI has come under attack? Have you lost any federal government clients or higher education clients that are under pressure of losing funds if they don't end their DEI programs?
Fosberg: Oh, absolutely. Prepandemic, I was doing about 50-60 presentations a year. Now, I'm lucky if I do a half a dozen, maybe a dozen. And I will not be doing anything for the federal government at all. And I did quite a bit for them — the Federal Reserve Board. I worked for the Department of Treasury. I worked for ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement). I did presentations for ICE. Those things are gone.
Glenn: Well, let's shift gears a bit. You wrote a play, "Incognito," and it's about your life. At one point in this one-man show, you make a very important phone call. Tell us about that.
Fosberg: Oh my gosh. To lead up to that, I grew up in a working-class white family in the northern suburbs of Chicago with my biological mother and an adoptive stepfather. And when I was in my early 30s, they announced they were getting a divorce.
And I realized in that moment that I did not know who my biological father was. My mother had never told me anything about him. She left him when I was 2 and remarried when I was 5.
And when they divorced, my girlfriend at the time encouraged me to ask my mom some questions. She told me his name was John Sidney Woods, and she thought he lived in the Detroit area.
Glenn: Fosberg found five listings in the phone book that had his father’s name. And the first call he made from the top of his list turned out to be his father. In that telephone conversation, his father told him two things that he said his mother probably never told him.
One was that he always thought about him and loved him, which made Fosberg feel elated that for the first time he heard those words from his real father. The second thing he told Fosberg was that he was African American.
“I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t formulate words, let along sentences. I went from growing up in a white middle-class family to being a Black man in the blink of an eye,” Fosberg said in the play.
Glenn: Fosberg’s mother never told him that her strict Armenian family ostracized her when she married his father. The family struggled financially. And his mother’s family said they could move in with them only if his father, a very light-skinned Black man, would pass for white. His father refused.
Fosberg says the family could not live with his father’s family in Virginia because it was illegal for a Black and white couple to be married there at the time. Fosberg found out all of this when he was in his 30s, which led to an identity crisis for him.
“In the end, I was not raised Black. I did not live through the Black experience. I was not a target of racism, was not singled out because of the color of my skin, was not turned away because of the color of my skin. Does that make me any less a Black man? Did you have to have that experience to be Black?” he asks in the play.
Glenn: Well, finding out that you have an African American father, do you consider yourself African American?
Fosberg: I guess it depends on the day, you know. I'm biracial, but I walk around and most people think I'm white. Although I will say, in some Black communities or rooms or whatever, Black people will look over at me and go, ‘Uh-huh, yeah, you look like my cousin,’ or whatever it might be. They can tell who's Black in the room.
Glenn: Finding that out, what did it change for you?
Fosberg: Well, I guess, I would say for me, the biggest change was that my life became fuller in that instant — a broadening of my perspectives, a bigger family, more rich background. My great-great grandfather was a member of the 54th Regiment of the Colored Infantry unit in the Civil War. I have his induction papers dated 1864 on my wall in my office.
My great-grandfather was an All-Star pitcher in the Negro (Baseball) League. He pitched for the St. Louis Stars. I have his contract.
My grandfather was a genius. The science building at Norfolk State University is named after my grandfather, Roy A. Woods.
I have a legacy and it’s really enriched the way that I move through the world today.
Michael Fosberg is the author of "Incognito: An American Odyssey of Race and Self Discovery" and "Nobody Wants to Talk About It: Race, Identity, and the Difficulty in Forging Meaningful Conversations."
