How Life Colored A Comic Artist

One of the Improvisational Repertory Theatre Ensemble’s founders has a story to tell. No, it’s not a funny one. Robert Baumgardner thought he was just like everyone else … until he attended school.

“I do consider myself POC out of those BIPOC letters, although it was never always that way. My mother’s side of the family is Filipino, and my father’s side is German. The first time I realized there were people who saw me as ethnically different was in the first or second grade. While sitting in the library with a classmate, he asked where I was from. I said, “Maryland.” Wheels turned in his head for a few seconds trying to put things together until he finally asked incredulously, “isn’t that in the United States?” So, to him I looked like I was from somewhere other than the United States, which meant I didn’t look white. It had never occurred to me that I was “the other;” somehow outside the community I lived in.

“Later came the chink expletive, and grasshopper, since one of my classmates saw the TV show Kung-Fu. That persisted through high school. Once I hit college, the name calling pretty much disappeared.”