Aiming for the low hanging fruit here I'm going to explain my username.

I am an African American male that lived in a neighborhood dominated largely by other African Americans in my formative years (8-13ish) but when a local golf course was built right behind my house (literally, if I hopped my backyard fence I was less than 100 meters from the fairway) the demographics changed drastically. Taxes went up, Af-Ams (short for African Americans) moved out and everyone else moved in, mostly Caucasians and Asians.

As far as family dynamics I'm the younger (but not "little") of two. I have an older brother. My parents are divorced but I wouldn't describe my childhood as "broken" because my parents were both accomplished (mom is a retired pharmacist and dad is an attorney) so I was taken care of from a financial stand point. Though emotions were all over the place I feel like my childhood stood little to no discontinuities as a result of my parents actions.

Stay with me there is a method to my madness (I hope).

I attended predominately "white" schools from elementary through middle school and even into high school (classmates were kids of judges, attorneys , blah, blah, blah. John Elway's son attended a school in our district/school system just to put it into perspective). Yet one of the local "hood bars" (that's what schools in the ghetto were called) closed my junior year and borders were redrawn such that the percent of Af-Am students went from around 20% to about 55% by my senior year. And take my word for it, it makes a WORLD of difference. I learned a lot from both types of schooling though. My friends in high school were as diverse the United Nations. Seriously, one friend was from Nepal, another Egypt, Russia, Nigeria, Eritrea, China, the list goes on. I do not discriminate nor show preference (if anything some times I'm more critical of my own race than other, I feel like that is only fair...kind of).

On a brief side note you will eventually notice I make several sly remarks that have a hint of racism in them, understand that I am not racist but I'm not the type of person that shies away from color. It's there, no way around it, but we should celebrate it rather than judge it. I like that there are people in the world that do not share my same experiences it is fun to learn more about them, their culture and development. Diversity, to me, is the demonstration of how resilient human interaction is, how people having no common history can share in an intellectual conversation, a story or even a simple joke. How one action can remind all of us of a happy memory or time in our life no matter how different they are.

So, bringing it back into focus, I am currently in college (and almost done WOOHOO!) studying chemistry with the hope of continuing onto graduate school. Finally, we arrive at the summation of all this rambling I call myself the "ExpertBlackGuy" because I am both an expert of being "black" (I try to avoid labeling actions as black or white because truly it isn't a matter of color but efficiency) but also a black man that is an expert. I lived in a neighborhood that went from black to white, a school that went from white to black, while being educated as a white in a black body. I have literally been immersed in both cultures (the similarities are interesting, ask me about it sometime) so I have been on both sides of the fence, so to speak. Ergo the name TheExpertBlackGuy.

Hopefully there are no spelling slaughters, punctuation potholes or grammar genocides in this, for lack of a better word, essay. I have literally written more here than most of my college essays.

I am an open book, ask me anything and I'll do my best to answer, especially about chemistry, chemistry is my shit. But even life in general, I enjoy debating and discussing just about everything.

Hope you enjoyed reading.

P.S. I have some odd quarks and idiosyncrasies for example I count my steps in between sidewalk squares.