Brandon's Story

So, I was recently hired as a writer for the North Texas Daily, and tomorrow morning my first story is going to run in the paper! Lauren's boyfriend Brandon is really awesome and he's biracial, so the story is about him and his experiences as someone of mixed race.
Here it is:

When music education senior Brandon Nase smiles, his eyes grin also, revealing his gentle disposition. He possesses a stunning voice and passion for music. Less evident, however, is the fact that Brandon is biracial and has faced challenges in his life that most will never experience.
Brandon, whose mother is white and father is African-American, grew up in Amarillo, Texas. “I’ve never met my dad, because he left before I was born. He found out my mom was pregnant and he told her she needed to get an abortion,” Nase said. His mother had been living in Houston with her father and stepmother at the time, though, when she was pressed to get an abortion by Nase’s father as well as her own father, she moved away to Amarillo to be with her grandmother. When Nase was a few months old his mom married his stepfather Tony, who is also African-American. “Things growing up were rough,” says Nase, “My mom and stepdad had a lot of problems and there was a lot of emotional and verbal, and sometimes physical, abuse and so therefore my stepdad and I didn’t really have a relationship. I didn’t like him because he was mean to my mom.”
During his childhood Nase often felt discrimination. He said, “When I was little and my mom went to the gym, she would take us to the nursery and then were numerous occasions when she came back to get us and the other kids would say, ‘You can’t go with her! She’s white and you’re black!’” Nase was also marginalized at the local swimming pool. “One time I was at a swimming pool and I was holding on to the ladder and one of the guys in the pool told me to move and get out of the way and said, ‘Ugh. You people.’” Nase said, “I was like ‘What do you mean, you people?’”
Dr. George Yancey, of the sociology faculty said, “Biracial individuals face pressure from both of their parent’s racial groups. They often have to prove their loyalty to the minority group while still facing discrimination from the majority group. When asked whether he relates to one group more than the other, Brandon said, “I think that I probably am more, well, I grew up with my mom’s family and they’re all white so that culture is more familiar to me than the typical African American culture. And it’s obvious that I dress like a white boy.” Brandon’s girlfriend, music education sophomore Lauren Weldin, snickered and said, “When we’re driving and he gets really bad road rage and that’s when his ‘black’ comes out. We’ll be driving and someone will cut him off and he’ll be like ‘Oh no they didn’t!’”
Weldin, who is white, said she was shocked when she found out Nase was biracial. “He sent me a picture of his family,” Weldin said, “and I was like, ‘Your mom’s white!” Both Nase and Weldin agree that his white upbringing gives them some common ground in the relationship.
Nase said, “All of my friends assume she’s white before I even tell them, because that’s how I come off to them, as a white person.”
Nase said though he was raised among and relates to the white culture, his brown skin causes him to stand out. “I would have friends whose parents would be like, ‘I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s not acceptable,” he said, “’He’s black and you’re white.’” His freshman year, a girl asked Nase to attend her sorority’s date party with her. A few days before the event, however, she called and claimed one of her good friends had come to town and she felt obligated to attend with him. Later, Nase found out the girl’s father told her that were she to attend the date party with Brandon, he would stop paying for her education.
“It has nothing to do with me being biracial,” he said, “It all comes down to the color of my skin.”
Nase said, however, "This is who I am and I'm proud of that. Plus, I have great hair."