I was born on December 20th, 1996, in Vienna, Virginia. My incredible parents, Kevin and Melissa, are black and white respectively. They both grew up without a lot, but worked tirelessly, just as their parents had done before them, to ensure that my brother and I had everything that we needed, and most of what we wanted. Although we were well above middle class on a national scale, at our predominantly white all-boys private school filled with multi-millionaire families, we were outliers. That didn’t bother me until my freshman year of high school, when I noticed that the “cool” older kids, especially the black ones, all wore basketball shoes. Seeing as I was a naïve adolescent, I was constantly concerned that I would be ostracized if I didn’t have as many pairs as everyone else. Since my parents saw through the superficial nature of my dilemma, they didn’t indulge me and I only had a few pairs of basketball shoes.
