"Incognito" Comes to The Hill

A performing artist and diversity practitioner, Fosberg presented the journey of discovering his racial identity – raised in a working-class white family in Chicago, Fosberg, at age thirty, discovered that his biological father was black.

Demonstrating his varied emotions and the development of his thoughts on racial identity, the play was designed to help students ponder the power and importance of racial identity through Fosberg’s personal experience. “In contrast to the first program of Conversations of Race, the documentary “I’m Not Racist… Am I?,” I found Fosberg’s play to be a less controversial and more comfortable starting point to think about a personal and possibly difficult subject,” said Devika Das ’16. Das emphasized how the emotional aspect of the play stimulated her thinking about the influences of race and stereotyping on  individuals: “I liked how his play focused on his happiness on the discovery. He was upset at his mother for keeping it a secret, but that did not engulf the play. We were able to enjoy the warm moments he had with his father’s side of the family and get a personal story to a complex and broad discussion.”

After the play, Hopkins students divided by class to engage in workshops and group discussion facilitated by Fosberg. Students discussed the contents of the play and its manifestation of racial identity, white privilege, and stereotyping in society.

During the workshop, students partnered up with a classmate whom they did not know many things about, and listed five assumptions of what their partner liked based on their outward appearance. Additionally, Fosberg shared various genres of songs and asked students what type of person they thought would listen to that genre. While students found out that some assumptions were true and others were not, many students understood the goal of the exercise.