Deval Patrick

71st and current Governor of Massachusetts. A member of the Democratic Party, Patrick served as an Assistant United States Attorney General under President Bill Clinton. He is the state's first African American governor and the second African American to be elected governor of any US state.

“Educated Boy” - 11/16/2011

Transcript

I told her the story, which I write about n the book, of coming home on the first visit back at Christmas vacation. I'd been away for three months at that point. And my grandparents and my sister were in the apartment, all excited and so on, and everybody talking at once. And my sister–Rhonda are you here? Where is she? She was going to come tonight. She's so sick of me telling this story. [Laughter]

My sister said, "Ooh, he talks like a white boy." [Laughter] I was devastated. And my

grandmother shot back, "He speaks like an educated boy," and sort of saved the day. But as you see, I've been carrying that around for the longest time.

I think what I realized about that experience, and as I was saying to the young woman who asked me the question, is that you feel that each of these worlds requires you to reject the other world as the price of acceptance in that world. And for me, what I had to figure out is what it meant to be authentically me and to carry that consistently to whatever setting I wanted to be in. And that was the only way to navigate because I knew then, even at Milton, that I wanted to live in the whole world. I wanted to be and experience different kinds of settings. And I can tell you about why I wanted that. And I had to figure out how to be at ease and comfortable and complete in these different settings.

So what I was saying to the young woman who asked me the question, she said, "Well, what about maintaining your friends?" I said, "Figure out who you are and the people who love you will love you for that, and the ones who don't are not your friends.