At high school, he was friends with composer Lin-Manuel Miranda, who he rode the bus with. Miranda said Hayes was the only friend who visited and spoke Spanish to his grandmother.
While attending the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia, he was caught with marijuana by security. What was eye-opening for him was that security let him off. It showed him the difference between his treatment as a privileged white male, and what could have happened had he been African-American.
“I can tell you as sure as I am sitting here before you that if I was a black kid with cornrows instead of a white kid with glasses, my ass would’ve been in a squad car faster than you can say George W. Bush,” Hayes told Huff Post.
Maybe they can give him the Nobel Prize for visiting.