The 'Conversation'

So, I was in the gym at my Sports Club one day, getting dressed next to my locker mate, nice guy named Jay. Jay is head of technology at a large hospital chain in our town. I know he’s got two boys just entering middle teens. I know this because he talks about them on a regular basis. Jay happens to be African-American although his family goes back over a hundred years in America.

My family has not been in this country for more than three generations. We came in the late 1890s. We came from what is now the Ukraine. I was born in Brooklyn, New York. But I have never been called a Ukrainian-Amer...