More and more these days Jeff finds himself thinking about race as he’s confronted with the question, “What are you?”

“When I was younger – you know my father’s black, my mother’s white – that’s the way it was supposed to be. Father meant black person; mother meant white person. Race had no bearing on anything. To me, two Asian people could just have a black kid. It made perfect sense when I was younger.” This story was originally broadcast on NPR’s All Things Considered.