My father is black and my mother is white. Therefore, I could answer to either, which kind of makes me a racial Lone Ranger, caught between two communities.
My encounters with racism are sort of second-hand situations where I might be standing around with a group of white friends and someone makes a comment that they wouldn't make at my family reunion.
It was just expected that I would go to college. Both my parents are teachers and they tolerated acting, but I was going to go to a school of quality or bust. Which made my downshifting back to acting afterward a little difficult.
My definition of cool is finding your own definition of cool and not necessarily taking your lead from what other people tell you or from what you might read from magazines or see on TV.