Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central. Wow. Hey, it's Roy Wood Jr.
Speaker 1: Up Next is a special presentation of the original Daily
Speaker 1: Show podcast Beyond the Scenes, hosted by yours truly. In
Speaker 1: this podcast, we take you further into topics and segments
Speaker 1: covered on the Daily Show, and we talk with the
Speaker 1: producers from the show, writers, correspondents, and expert guests who
Speaker 1: can give us a little bit more insight and context
Speaker 1: on the topics at hand. Have a listen. I know
Speaker 1: you're gonna like it. Hey, what's up? Welcome to Beyond
Speaker 1: the Scenes, the Daily Show podcast that goes a little
Speaker 1: deeper into segments and topics that originally aired on the show.
Speaker 1: If the Daily Show is your uber, this is that
Speaker 1: tiny little water bottle you get for free during the ride.
Speaker 1: You're Adam Drivers having a little peppermints and stuff, a
Speaker 1: little free extra stuff that's right there, and I'm the
Speaker 1: relentless chatty driver. Okay, that's maybe not the best analogy,
Speaker 1: but you get what I'm trying to say to you.
Speaker 1: Let's dive right in before you cancel this ride. Today,
Speaker 1: we're discussing a topic that Trevor covered back in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty when Kamala Harris became the first ever black woman
Speaker 1: to be nominated for vice president. Now Fox News journalists
Speaker 1: didn't skip a beat to claim she wouldn't black enough.
Speaker 1: The segment illustrates how white people have tried to define
Speaker 1: blackness for centuries. Roll to clip. What's especially ironic about
Speaker 1: these people trying to exclude Kamala from blackness is that
Speaker 1: it's the reverse of what white America did for centuries,
Speaker 1: defining as many people as black as possible, whether they
Speaker 1: wanted it or not. Color and who qualifies as black,
Speaker 1: who qualifies as white has historically been policed not by
Speaker 1: those who were the targets of oppression, but by those
Speaker 1: who set up the system of oppression in America. Blackness
Speaker 1: who's defined by that auction block. You were black if
Speaker 1: you could be put on that auction block and sold
Speaker 1: as property. Following the abolition of slavery, some Americans feared
Speaker 1: to rise in interracial relationships, so states began passing laws
Speaker 1: to make sure that any child with even one drop
Speaker 1: of Negro blood would be classified as Negro and deny
Speaker 1: the rights of white people. This became known as the
Speaker 1: one drop rule. The one drop rule was an attempt
Speaker 1: to save the so called purity of the white race.
Speaker 1: By nineteen twenty five, nearly every state had a form
Speaker 1: of the one drop rule on their books. All you
Speaker 1: need is one person five generations back, who is black,
Speaker 1: and that is enough to make you black. Seriously, one
Speaker 1: black person in your family has the power to make
Speaker 1: you black, but all the white people in your family
Speaker 1: can make you whites. If anything, I feel like this
Speaker 1: was also racist to white people. I mean imagine that
Speaker 1: they were basically saying ten white sperm is not as
Speaker 1: powerful as one black sperm. That is an insult to
Speaker 1: white sperm. And I'm offended on behalf of all my
Speaker 1: white brothers and sisters. Today, I'm joined by Emmy nominated
Speaker 1: Daily show writer Ashton Womack and author of the book
Speaker 1: One Drop, Shifting the Lens on Race, Doctor Yaba Blay.
Speaker 1: They're gonna both help us answer the question can you
Speaker 1: define blackness? Ashton? How are you doing today? Brother? I'm good, brother,
Speaker 1: Always a pleasure being which man. Doctor Blair, thank you
Speaker 1: for gracing us with your presence and also embarrassing us
Speaker 1: with all of them wonderful books in the background and
Speaker 1: people listening can't see it, but you got them books,
Speaker 1: and I know you read them books because they ain't
Speaker 1: color coded. Of course, that's kind of like the given
Speaker 1: background for academics. You gotta show you books. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: I don't respect people who color code that books. That
Speaker 1: just mean you put them books up there for the style,
Speaker 1: Yeah to it. It might be a phone book, you know,
Speaker 1: but that's legit books up there. So let's get right
Speaker 1: into it. White people have used many tactics to keep
Speaker 1: black people in line. We saw that with the history
Speaker 1: of the one drop rule, and we see it in
Speaker 1: policing today. How have methods that white people have used
Speaker 1: to police and categorize us affected the we operate within
Speaker 1: this society as I started with you, in many many
Speaker 1: ways it's affected us. I mean, first off, we don't
Speaker 1: even get to control our image in the media. You know,
Speaker 1: we we're finally us. This existence is us taking reins
Speaker 1: of our media image. But before I was white people
Speaker 1: who controlled our images. So they it was what we
Speaker 1: would look at. We were like, oh is that us?
Speaker 1: And that created that creates an image of yourself. They
Speaker 1: were creating the images of ourselves that we ingested, and
Speaker 1: then we in turn emulated those images. The best example
Speaker 1: I can use for that is like, um, I remember,
Speaker 1: I went to schools all over across America. I went
Speaker 1: to bad schools, I went to good schools. I went
Speaker 1: to the bad schools in bad neighborhoods and ghetto neighborhoods
Speaker 1: or whatever you wanna call it. Kids they just acted
Speaker 1: like how they were. They acted how they were. But
Speaker 1: then when I went to like the middle class schools
Speaker 1: with the middle class black kids, instead of acting like
Speaker 1: they're the class they come from, the social class they
Speaker 1: come from, they just emulated the black blackness that they
Speaker 1: saw on TV. So they'd be like well off, but
Speaker 1: then acting super hood or act in ways that images
Speaker 1: that were given to them on the television. And that
Speaker 1: wasn't I feel like that it was one of the
Speaker 1: ways that how whiteness affects our own image of ourselves,
Speaker 1: then putting out imagery that we then emulate and even
Speaker 1: if it's not true to yourself. And Sam itching over here,
Speaker 1: so let me jump in real question. It's the word acting.
Speaker 1: So I feel like we're going to cover a lot,
Speaker 1: but like this whole conversation, there's so many things we're
Speaker 1: going to cover. Hopefully there's the history of how race
Speaker 1: is defined. Um, it's the problematics even a projecting race
Speaker 1: as an identity to an entire group of people and
Speaker 1: expecting us to act a uniform way. But even that
Speaker 1: question of you know, asking, you said acting, uh, their
Speaker 1: their their class, I think something to the extent that
Speaker 1: you said right, And so for me that's an immediate
Speaker 1: us that mean right for black people? Especially what does
Speaker 1: it mean to act hood versus active middle class, versus
Speaker 1: act upity versus act bougie. Like all of those categories
Speaker 1: weren't necessarily created by us to begin with. So then
Speaker 1: when you have the intersection of race and class, these
Speaker 1: are different things happening. Right. Some could argue that whatever
Speaker 1: we define as hood is black culture, regardless of where
Speaker 1: you fall on an economic hierarchy. Like you like potato
Speaker 1: salad at the cookout, I don't care how much money
Speaker 1: you make, right, and you don't eat everybody's potato salad?
Speaker 1: You notice, speak to black people when you walk into
Speaker 1: a room. It doesn't matter what you know, how much
Speaker 1: money your mama makes, so how much money you make,
Speaker 1: or what college you went through. There's certain cultural mores
Speaker 1: that we all, I think globally right agree to and
Speaker 1: so I think what ends up happening is the intersection
Speaker 1: of race and economic status and all the intersectional axis
Speaker 1: of our identity has us confused and has us even
Speaker 1: having these conversations, right, Okay, So then on the other
Speaker 1: end of the stick, you know, I was a child
Speaker 1: that was raised by two college educators between my two parents,
Speaker 1: or five college degrees in the home, so I wasn't
Speaker 1: allowed to go used to could, so there was always
Speaker 1: a stress on verbiage and vernacular. But then the moment
Speaker 1: I came from the white middle school back to the
Speaker 1: black middle school in seven grade, you talk light, white volte,
Speaker 1: Why are you talking a whole proper? How much have
Speaker 1: we've been bamboos with ourselves into restricting what we even
Speaker 1: know blackness to be because it is defined by white
Speaker 1: don't I say white people? I'm talking the media. I'm
Speaker 1: talking like even something as simple as who they choose
Speaker 1: to interview for the eye witness. I've seen what happened
Speaker 1: they were over there, and then the things in the
Speaker 1: car flipped up, like how much does media play a
Speaker 1: role in influencing how black people define blackness? I mean,
Speaker 1: I would open our arms wider and say, you know,
Speaker 1: I was talking about white people. We're talking about white
Speaker 1: supremac societyology, right, You're talking about historical way of thinking
Speaker 1: about ourselves that is very much informed by the power
Speaker 1: and privilege that has been I was going to say bestowed,
Speaker 1: but I really want to say taken by white folks. Right.
Speaker 1: So they've come to define what white is, what good is,
Speaker 1: what black is, what bad is, what ghetto is, what
Speaker 1: they've come to give us all of these categories of behavior,
Speaker 1: and so us wanting to be free, right, wanting to
Speaker 1: have access to all of the better places, like and
Speaker 1: I'm all over the place, but stay well, no, no,
Speaker 1: keep going, keep going. I am very black capital be
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways politically for my political kind
Speaker 1: of views on the world we live in, especially the
Speaker 1: country that we live in. And so and my family
Speaker 1: folks might call me, you know, the radical one, right,
Speaker 1: And so let's just say my community of folks, my friends,
Speaker 1: we all tend to have similar kind of ideas and
Speaker 1: see ourselves connected similarly, particularly in our relationship to this kind.
Speaker 1: But one thing that fascinates me is for all my radical,
Speaker 1: natural haired fist bumping folk, how many of us, and
Speaker 1: by us, I mean them send their schools, send their
Speaker 1: children to predominantly white schools, right, And so on the weekends,
Speaker 1: you might be with auntie and uncle and we're talking
Speaker 1: about RBG and you know, we're talking about all manner
Speaker 1: of things and trying to situation in your blackness. But
Speaker 1: on a day to day you are one of three,
Speaker 1: one of ten, one of however, in the school because
Speaker 1: your parents, even your radical black parents, believe that in
Speaker 1: order for you to get a good education, I can't
Speaker 1: send you to Philadelphia public schools. I gotta send you
Speaker 1: to Germantown friends, or I gotta pay tuition at another space,
Speaker 1: and I hopefully will supplement your blackness when you come home.
Speaker 1: But we and you know, in fairness, it is a
Speaker 1: fact that our public school systems are not equally yoked. Right,
Speaker 1: So then what do you do as a black parent
Speaker 1: If you want your child to be quote unquote well
Speaker 1: educated or to have the opportunity to go on to
Speaker 1: college or higher ed, you want them to be grounded
Speaker 1: as best as possible. And so we're constantly putting these
Speaker 1: spaces of like how do we make these decisions? And
Speaker 1: some of us end up feeling like we quote unquote
Speaker 1: have sold out right and in order to take advantage
Speaker 1: of the quote unquote best opportunities. If that makes sense.
Speaker 1: This is why I'm gonna send my kids to doctor
Speaker 1: Umar school. Right there, that's a whole separate conversation I
Speaker 1: have to explain to people. But doctor Blake, when we
Speaker 1: see people like now VP Kamala Harris and former President
Speaker 1: Barack Obama, they run for office, they win, and it's
Speaker 1: you know, they win some of the highest seats in
Speaker 1: the country. They always get a little extra pressure put
Speaker 1: on their shoulders from the Black community. They always have
Speaker 1: to carry the burden of hope, you know, we hope
Speaker 1: that this means our issues and finally be taking care.
Speaker 1: One of us is in there, one of us is it?
Speaker 1: Finally it is about time. But doctor Blake, why is
Speaker 1: it harmful for people to assume that every black person
Speaker 1: that makes it to power is a political seat for
Speaker 1: all black people or do you even think that's harmful?
Speaker 1: I would just say that all the views expressed here
Speaker 1: are on my own, and I know that the blacks
Speaker 1: might not agree. It's hard because we have to also
Speaker 1: understand the danger of talking about the black community all
Speaker 1: skin folk and can folk. Right, So for me, the
Speaker 1: fact that no judgment love them. The fact that Barack
Speaker 1: Obama and Kamala Harris aspire to be in those positions
Speaker 1: says something to me about their relationship to a white
Speaker 1: supremacist ideology. That might not be fair. But the fact
Speaker 1: that you want to be in power of this country,
Speaker 1: the fact that you want a suppledge a lagtion to
Speaker 1: this flag, the fact that you want to uphold the
Speaker 1: articles in this constitution, we're not the same right now.
Speaker 1: In fairness, Should we have black folks in these positions, sure,
Speaker 1: but we shouldn't we and by I mean us looking
Speaker 1: through the screens, we should not assume that that means
Speaker 1: that they'll now be able to bring us with them,
Speaker 1: because they're also. Let me use your friend Clarence Thomas
Speaker 1: as an example. In my opinion, part of the ways
Speaker 1: in which he's been able to stay in the position
Speaker 1: and have the positions that he's ad it's almost like
Speaker 1: he's had to perform more disdain for black people to
Speaker 1: somehow prove to white folks that he's like them. Right, So,
Speaker 1: just because you're in a position of power doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that I'm bringing y'all with us. I'm going to be
Speaker 1: bringing our whoever hour is right, our needs to the table.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I think they even have to perform a particular
Speaker 1: level of anti blackness just the white folks will trust them.
Speaker 1: I can't remember who said the quote, but I remember
Speaker 1: you kind of shift gave me perspective. Not in a
Speaker 1: good way, it just gave me more perspective of why
Speaker 1: I kept asking, Brock, don't do nothing. What's my Brother's
Speaker 1: Keeper program? You know those programs, the things we did get.
Speaker 1: When I look at it as a whole, I was like,
Speaker 1: that's not a lot for you know, the first black president.
Speaker 1: But that's when someone I heard someone I think it was,
Speaker 1: I don't know if it was Corner it was. I
Speaker 1: don't want to attribute to the wrong quote, but it
Speaker 1: was basically, Barack Obama is not the president of Black America.
Speaker 1: Barack Obama is the president of America, and America is
Speaker 1: you know, it's a white country, guys, and so you
Speaker 1: gotta it's the same when we see like democrats who
Speaker 1: we think like, you're a Democrat, but then they shift
Speaker 1: towards the center. You gotta sift towards, shift towards the
Speaker 1: right to get that to even be president, you gotta
Speaker 1: appeal to some white people white people, and again, I
Speaker 1: want to just I'm going to reiterate this throughout our
Speaker 1: conversation because I don't want us to focus on people
Speaker 1: as much as I want us remember ideology. As uncomfortable
Speaker 1: as it might say be to say the words out
Speaker 1: of your mouth, we are talking about white supremacist ideology.
Speaker 1: This is not about white people. Because you said America
Speaker 1: as a white country is going to be somebody in
Speaker 1: the comments that says, well, it's this percentage of this
Speaker 1: and this percentage of that, and people of color. Okay, fine,
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about the color right of the people physically.
Speaker 1: How are we thinking? What is that constitution built upon?
Speaker 1: How do we think about those quote unquote people of color.
Speaker 1: The fact that we even have to have the language
Speaker 1: people of color normalizes and centers whiteness. The fact that
Speaker 1: we have diversity, equity and inclusion leaves whiteness over here.
Speaker 1: We're gonna national geographic Look at all y'all other people.
Speaker 1: Whiteness is the norm. Whiteness is the center, and everything
Speaker 1: else has to make do. It's your perspective, rooted in
Speaker 1: the belief that this is a system that cannot be
Speaker 1: fixed or infiltrated or in some degree bit by bit repaired.
Speaker 1: Is the system in which this white supremacist system and
Speaker 1: under which we all agree we exist unders black people?
Speaker 1: Is it irreparable? And if not, how do you fix
Speaker 1: it from the political side using their rules? Thank you
Speaker 1: for saying that it makes me uncomfortable. I always crenzel.
Speaker 1: I have to answer that question because I want to
Speaker 1: be able to say, yes, let's burn it down, we
Speaker 1: can fix it, right. I don't want to feel as
Speaker 1: it's a defeating and deflating experience. You know, the more
Speaker 1: we are faced with particular realities every single day, the
Speaker 1: ways in which white folks get off the hook, you know,
Speaker 1: it can be defeating and deflating. Howsoever, I do want
Speaker 1: to believe, and I do believe, bit by bit, chip
Speaker 1: by chip, every generation we are all making a difference, right,
Speaker 1: But we have to temper our expectations. Are we going
Speaker 1: to fix it in dismantle white supremacy in our lifetime?
Speaker 1: Likely not. It doesn't mean we don't stop shipping away
Speaker 1: at it, doctor Blake, Respectfully, I just think it being
Speaker 1: very pessimistic. We pass body camera laws and grant that
Speaker 1: the cops haven't turned them own yet, but eventually they'll
Speaker 1: turn them onto. In the meantime, we record the police,
Speaker 1: and I know they passing lost out to make it
Speaker 1: a league to record the police, and they got Jerry Mandrilla. Damn.
Speaker 1: When you can when you can get away with storm
Speaker 1: in the capital and we come to find out who
Speaker 1: the leaders are and they'll be free, and you can
Speaker 1: get away with shooting one black man ninety times? Yes, Oh,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't even get I can tell just a
Speaker 1: personal anecdotal story that just happened on July fourth at
Speaker 1: the New York going to see fireworks, and my mom
Speaker 1: and sister, Uh, it's all these beautiful people of color,
Speaker 1: July fourth, American Independence Day. There's literally fireworks in the
Speaker 1: air blowing up, and this lady is she looks like
Speaker 1: Clarence Thomas's wife. Literally just look like Clarence Thomas's wife.
Speaker 1: She's getting kicked out, She's getting escorted out by the
Speaker 1: cops because she's like calling people slur She did not
Speaker 1: like seeing all this beau the beautiful. It was beautiful.
Speaker 1: It was all kinds of diverse people out there celebrating America.
Speaker 1: You know, as hard as that is, you know, I
Speaker 1: love I love everybody. But you know, as a person
Speaker 1: of color minority in this country, you know, you're like,
Speaker 1: all right, all right, I'm gonna do it. And so
Speaker 1: when she saw all these beautiful people celebrating looking different shades,
Speaker 1: she lost her stuff started calling everybody slurs. And in
Speaker 1: fourth of July, this this fourth of July, with fireworks
Speaker 1: in the air, I had a white woman let me
Speaker 1: dead in my eyes and called me a nigger and uh,
Speaker 1: and it felt like America condoned it. There were fireworks
Speaker 1: in the area. It was like yeah, uh. And what
Speaker 1: happened was there was a black cop right next to it.
Speaker 1: And then the whole crowd was like, oh, oh, this
Speaker 1: is how, this is how nothing. It feels like nothing
Speaker 1: can be done by racism. The black cop when they go, oh,
Speaker 1: she called him an N word. To come, she said
Speaker 1: in word, She called him an inn word. The black
Speaker 1: cop goes, who she called an inn word? I don't know,
Speaker 1: she didn't called me an inn word. And he goes, no, no,
Speaker 1: she called him and he was like, oh cool. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then because he got to keep his job though,
Speaker 1: don't he Because he's he's protecting this country, he gotta
Speaker 1: go to the locker room with them cops. He got
Speaker 1: a ride with them boys, right, And I feel this
Speaker 1: is the frustration, right. But also I know you're gonna
Speaker 1: be tired of talking around me. Asson. I'm coming back
Speaker 1: to language because again it connects to white supremacist ideology.
Speaker 1: I refuse to call myself a minority. I don't care
Speaker 1: what's your statistics. Show what you say out of your
Speaker 1: mouth impacts how you feel in your body and vice versa. Right,
Speaker 1: and so if you see yourself as a minority, you
Speaker 1: might have your head down acting like a minority in
Speaker 1: this country. You might concede that this is y'all's country,
Speaker 1: and that is a complete revisionist idea of how things
Speaker 1: have gone down. You know, language, people of color, I
Speaker 1: get it. This is what I'm saying. It's no judgment,
Speaker 1: for real, for real, we are trying. But I'm also
Speaker 1: here to ask us to think critically about what we
Speaker 1: say and how we do things. For black folks, our
Speaker 1: particular relationship to this country, we can't afford to be
Speaker 1: piled in with people of color. We need our own
Speaker 1: black folks. Okay, to that point of not being and
Speaker 1: powered in with people of color and black people needing
Speaker 1: to be their own, separate, operated entity. How much pressure
Speaker 1: do you think it's put on black people that are
Speaker 1: in positions of political power to portray blackness to the
Speaker 1: public while remaining, you know, on the level with the
Speaker 1: white politicians that are in office, who they got to
Speaker 1: make the deals with. Much like that black cop where
Speaker 1: all right, you need the trust of the black community.
Speaker 1: You want the love of the black community. So you
Speaker 1: gotta make sure that you're doing something. You gotta show
Speaker 1: up and eat the chicken. You gotta come to essence
Speaker 1: Fest and wave to the people. But I hosted essence
Speaker 1: Fest two years in a row, and I can't tell
Speaker 1: you the number of politicians, not just at the national level,
Speaker 1: but at the state and Senate level who was coming
Speaker 1: and going, hey, y'all, I got y'all back. But also
Speaker 1: I gotta go deal because you know, you look at
Speaker 1: Stacy Abrams is a great example. It ain't black people
Speaker 1: alone who put her in office, but it is black
Speaker 1: people who put her in office, if you get what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. So how much pressure is on the backs
Speaker 1: of those politicians? And is that a fair pressure for
Speaker 1: the black community to put at their feet? It's an
Speaker 1: enormous amount. I can't even imagine the amount of pressure.
Speaker 1: Um is it fair? Maybe not? But I think what
Speaker 1: black folks are responding to is y'all come to the church.
Speaker 1: Y'all come to the sorority and fraternity meetings, y'all come
Speaker 1: to home. Come, and y'all come. When y'all are campaigning,
Speaker 1: and you are man, you are a woman, you're gonna do.
Speaker 1: You're gonna be all right, cool. We're gonna rally up
Speaker 1: like how we do. We're gonna organize because you know
Speaker 1: how we do. We're gonna organize like how we do.
Speaker 1: And we're gonna show up and we're gonna vote for you, sister.
Speaker 1: How to the polls. Let's go right, We're gonna get
Speaker 1: all our people ain't never voted before. Come on out,
Speaker 1: we gotta one of us. We're driving. We don't care
Speaker 1: if they gerrymanded half of the state and it's only
Speaker 1: one Poland station in the next two hundred miles. We're
Speaker 1: gonna get you there. We can get the entire time.
Speaker 1: We standing in line, but we're gonna be We're gonna
Speaker 1: be there to vote. Right. I remember the night President
Speaker 1: Obama was elected in and it was it felt like
Speaker 1: it was late. We were out at a bar. I mean,
Speaker 1: people were crying, people were overwhelmed. I felt like it
Speaker 1: was an out of body experience. The next day, at
Speaker 1: the time, I was working at a predominantly white institution.
Speaker 1: White folks didn't know how to behave They didn't know
Speaker 1: how they should be responding. Some of them overdid it,
Speaker 1: some of them felt like they were in mourning, and
Speaker 1: black folks were just like, don't talk to me today
Speaker 1: because no I remember absolutely right. And so I think,
Speaker 1: coming back to that question, is it fair. I think
Speaker 1: black folks are trying to cash in on the work
Speaker 1: that we did to get you in office. Now you
Speaker 1: in office, and all of a sudden, we gotta understand
Speaker 1: all these things. Be honest when your campaign, let us
Speaker 1: know that you can only do so much because at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, it's still their house. But
Speaker 1: you're gonna do what you can. Don't come telling us
Speaker 1: what you're about to do, knowing good and well you
Speaker 1: can't do it by yourself. Is this country after the
Speaker 1: break of doctor Blay and Ashton? I want to get
Speaker 1: into how we as a community sometimes like try to
Speaker 1: police each other's blackness and see what are the things
Speaker 1: that led us to this place, the causes that have
Speaker 1: led to this effect? Is that effect with an E
Speaker 1: or A. I don't know it's talking. I'm talking. You
Speaker 1: can't tell. Let's be on the scenes. We'll be right back,
Speaker 1: doctor Blay. How can I what's the safest way to
Speaker 1: enter this part of the conversation? How do we as
Speaker 1: a community? I don't like blackness being policed. All right,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna just start right there if I'm just using
Speaker 1: my own personal experiences. Okay, I'm a black kid that
Speaker 1: loves baseball. I was in chess club, but I also
Speaker 1: played at the park shout out to Powdery Park and
Speaker 1: West Side of Birmingham with Gangster Disciples and Vice Lord.
Speaker 1: So I grew up seeing a spectrum. I know how
Speaker 1: to swim. So there are all these things that I
Speaker 1: saw growing up that to me, we're just black people
Speaker 1: doing a thing. So I never saw something as being
Speaker 1: a black or white thing until I went to visit
Speaker 1: relatives in more rural parts of Mississippi. And now I'm
Speaker 1: talking proper and now you're using them big words. You
Speaker 1: think you know everything, Like, in what ways do we
Speaker 1: divide ourselves as a people? And does that self policing
Speaker 1: of our own blackness. Is that a hindrance or does
Speaker 1: that help us define ourselves so that we don't drift
Speaker 1: into losing our sense of culture. Sure, my first responses
Speaker 1: are going to it feels like a hindrance right in
Speaker 1: the ways that you've explained it, because we are holding
Speaker 1: onto very narrow ideas of what blackness is, and I
Speaker 1: think we have to take it back. Historically, I feel
Speaker 1: like as black folks, and again I'm using be capital black.
Speaker 1: There are some folks that are still lowercase B. Now
Speaker 1: when I say capital be black, I'm recognized as Blackness
Speaker 1: as a larger umbrella identity under which everyone of African
Speaker 1: descent falls. Right. So I'm first generation gunn In born
Speaker 1: in New Orleans. My folks in Ghana might not identify
Speaker 1: as black because they've never had to. Right. It's not
Speaker 1: until you were forced to be in mixed company that
Speaker 1: you are now black or white, or Asian or Latino,
Speaker 1: these conglomerate types of identities. But when you're in Ghana,
Speaker 1: you're a Khan, You're gone, You're you know, all these
Speaker 1: other ethnic groups. The blackness happens when you leave that space.
Speaker 1: And now you're in company with other people. Right. That
Speaker 1: being said, how could we if we're talking about this
Speaker 1: large umbrella of blackness right holding people of African descent
Speaker 1: all over the world, We couldn't even begin to say
Speaker 1: that's black behavior, that's not. I mean, whether as we
Speaker 1: wash our legs, I can tell you that we all
Speaker 1: use soap and wash cloths or some other coutrement to
Speaker 1: scrub skins. Do we do that? You know what I mean?
Speaker 1: We got a hot sauce. There are certain things that
Speaker 1: we do all over the world, but playing chests and
Speaker 1: playing baseball, in those things, that's a part of being
Speaker 1: a black American, I would say. But I think what happens,
Speaker 1: particularly when we start doing that North South divide, because
Speaker 1: I grew up in the South and then moved up north,
Speaker 1: and I think that is really that feels like a
Speaker 1: historical kind of we's free up here and y'all enslaved
Speaker 1: down there on both ends in terms of how we
Speaker 1: think of ourselves, right, And so y'all uppity up there,
Speaker 1: y'all speak different, y'all got different accents, y'all do things differently.
Speaker 1: In the South, who we're looking at them as if
Speaker 1: they're backwards, you know, are closer to the cotton fields.
Speaker 1: You know. Side note, it might not make it in
Speaker 1: Everybody Loves pe Valley. I just got on the Pea
Speaker 1: Valley p Valley where I'm into it now second season,
Speaker 1: but there seeing of this show starts with a trigger
Speaker 1: for me because it was scenes of a hurricane, assumingly
Speaker 1: Katrina right. So I was already annoyed. But then as
Speaker 1: I continue to watch the show, I'm like, y'all got
Speaker 1: every Southern accent in this show. You know the difference
Speaker 1: between a New Orleans accent and a Houston, Texas accent,
Speaker 1: and an Alabama accent and an Atlanta y'all got. So
Speaker 1: it's almost like this would It felt like I could
Speaker 1: be wrong. I didn't do my research on the show.
Speaker 1: It almost felt like somebody said, we gotta do the South.
Speaker 1: Y'all go at it because you don't respect the space
Speaker 1: culturally enough to know that there are distinctions. These are
Speaker 1: right New Orleans. We say about to We don't say Finna.
Speaker 1: Who says Finna? Certain people say Finna. I don't say
Speaker 1: finda right these are and I think because it is
Speaker 1: aligned with blackness, all of us negated. It's not that important.
Speaker 1: It's crucial if we really respect blackness as a culture.
Speaker 1: It's crue show that some people put sugar in spaghetti
Speaker 1: and some people mix the spaghetti altogether, Like black spaghetti
Speaker 1: is a thing right a town. I just don't make spaghetti,
Speaker 1: like how we make spaghetti just lesson. I don't where
Speaker 1: where you look? Where are your people from? Y'all with spaghetti?
Speaker 1: But it's just the same for me, And this is
Speaker 1: kind of I'm somebody. My work is on blackness, My
Speaker 1: PhD is in black studies. Right, this is my joy,
Speaker 1: and I get really excited about seeing how we're connected
Speaker 1: all over the world. And so for me, these cultural
Speaker 1: things that we don't give credit to and we don't
Speaker 1: see the power in that. That saddens me because if
Speaker 1: we don't see the power in our own culture, we've
Speaker 1: allowed ourselves to believe off that this white supremacist ideology
Speaker 1: has projected onto us that we have no culture yet
Speaker 1: and still historically y'all went around the world stealing everybody's
Speaker 1: culture who didn't have culture. Well, doctor actually actually about
Speaker 1: like I remember the first question or a point ahead
Speaker 1: or a point I had was about I made a
Speaker 1: class issue saying poor people act like this middle class,
Speaker 1: did you, and which I was just poorly phrase the
Speaker 1: way you describe it is like blackness can be there's
Speaker 1: a whole spectrum of blackness, which is what I was
Speaker 1: which is how I was trying to describe it using
Speaker 1: like you said, language is important, and but that My
Speaker 1: question is you do you think the media in media
Speaker 1: in general shows the lowest essence of blackness? And then
Speaker 1: people no matter what where you are amongstad spectrum, because
Speaker 1: that's the main, that's the main, that's what we emulate,
Speaker 1: that's what we copy. And be clear when we think
Speaker 1: about it from a production standpoint, creative standpoint, it would
Speaker 1: be so easy to say, look at how white people
Speaker 1: putting black people on TV a lot of times that
Speaker 1: I spolk a lot of times is a black directors
Speaker 1: and producers and EPs because you know why, though, again
Speaker 1: think capitalism. What's gonna sell? If the large majority of
Speaker 1: your audience is a white audience, which blackness do they
Speaker 1: want to see? How do they maintain their delusion of
Speaker 1: supremacy right If not by being entertained by the lowest
Speaker 1: of us, by the ghettoest of us. They have to
Speaker 1: maintain the idea that they are superior to us. So
Speaker 1: let us continue to project these notions of black people
Speaker 1: being hood, not being able to speak, killing each other,
Speaker 1: sliding up and down the pole. And I don't have
Speaker 1: shame about that. What's so interesting I'm thinking of system Monique.
Speaker 1: She came out and it was a whole rally around
Speaker 1: sisters wearing bonnets in public. I was so annoyed by that, right,
Speaker 1: not because I myself want to walk outside with a bonnet,
Speaker 1: but like, I just don't think we can afford to
Speaker 1: be out here doing these public kind of Let's get
Speaker 1: us folk together, because ultimately, what you're saying is we
Speaker 1: got to act right in front of these white folks.
Speaker 1: It doesn't change anything. It doesn't change anything. You think
Speaker 1: they're looking at what you were wearing before they shoot
Speaker 1: you ninety times, It doesn't change anything. And so we
Speaker 1: get so caught up in the surface of things. We
Speaker 1: do the codes switching. We want to live in a
Speaker 1: certain neighborhoods, we drive certain cars. If we got Gucci,
Speaker 1: we want it right here on our chest. I want
Speaker 1: to make sure you see that as Gucci, right, because
Speaker 1: we know that there's value afforded right to the performance.
Speaker 1: I think of value and to me that that's what
Speaker 1: we can't afford to be doing that, because ultimately, when
Speaker 1: we're not thinking critically about it, we're not recognizing how
Speaker 1: we are supporting a white supremacist ideology. We're not dismantling it,
Speaker 1: we're not pushing back against it. We're saying, you're right,
Speaker 1: let's act right, y'all, instead of saying this whole way
Speaker 1: of thinking is out of order. I think Ashton and
Speaker 1: I are going to have the same answer to this question,
Speaker 1: but I'm asking it to you first, Doctor Blake. When
Speaker 1: we think about our upbringing and how that affects how
Speaker 1: we view blackness and what is blackness, was there ever
Speaker 1: a time in your life where you didn't feel black enough,
Speaker 1: where you felt disassociated from the black mainstream, however you
Speaker 1: define it. Yeah, I would say in that regard, there
Speaker 1: were times where I didn't feel black American right because
Speaker 1: I grew up in a Ghanaian home, right, and so
Speaker 1: though I saw myself connected at home, we eat with
Speaker 1: our hands, you know, we listened to a different type
Speaker 1: of music, and I feel like I've always been just
Speaker 1: interested and let me connect the dots. So I don't feel,
Speaker 1: you know, so out of place, you know, And so
Speaker 1: there were things in New Orleans culture. I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: we do that too. It's okra and gumbo. We eat
Speaker 1: okra stew, you know what I mean. I was always
Speaker 1: trying to show people we're more like than we are different.
Speaker 1: Everybody doesn't necessarily see things those ways, but yeah, I
Speaker 1: definitely spent a lot of time. My name, my name
Speaker 1: is not Yabba. My name is Yabba, but I'm not
Speaker 1: walking around with a Ghanaian accent. So whatever makes it
Speaker 1: easy to your turnue, it's Yaba when I go to
Speaker 1: Ghana's the only place I hear people singing my song
Speaker 1: to the right toomb. And so there's so many ways
Speaker 1: that I've had to Americanize, I should say black americanize
Speaker 1: myself because of your cultural route. How did you deal
Speaker 1: with the Black American divide between Black Americans and Africans
Speaker 1: If I'm would just be one hundred about it, where
Speaker 1: you know, we would call your slurs and you talk
Speaker 1: funny and why you wearing that? And you like the
Speaker 1: African booty scratcher Ashton, I'm sure you're familiar with that
Speaker 1: Southern attack phrase. Yeah, yeah, And it was like it
Speaker 1: was such common place, you know, as a black American
Speaker 1: to view people like yourself as other and not part
Speaker 1: of the diaspora. Like that was never taught. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: just be real with you, Like it was never introduced.
Speaker 1: It definitely wasn't introduced in the school system. And unless
Speaker 1: you had parents that interacted with immigrants, they didn't know
Speaker 1: what the hell they was to be telling you. You
Speaker 1: got them. I march for you, boy. You going to
Speaker 1: school and you're gonna go to college because then white
Speaker 1: folks was beating on me in the sixties. That's and
Speaker 1: also it's not even it's not just that, it's the
Speaker 1: fact that we've othered ourselves from Africa so much as
Speaker 1: black people when we see Africans comeing over here, it's like, oh, no,
Speaker 1: you like the commercial, I see you, oh buddy, right,
Speaker 1: or even I've I've I've gotten the sense that for
Speaker 1: many black Americans there is a resentment, right because a
Speaker 1: lot of and I can speak for West Africans specifically,
Speaker 1: a lot of West Africans coming to the US and
Speaker 1: getting quote unquote better jobs. They're going straight to doctor,
Speaker 1: they're going straight to lawyer, they're going to certain you know,
Speaker 1: and economic status and being able to live in certain areas,
Speaker 1: this idea that they are coming to take something from you. Right,
Speaker 1: I've definitely gotten that sense and it's true, Like in
Speaker 1: our West African community in New Orleans, very middle class,
Speaker 1: upper middle class at that And so for me, my
Speaker 1: code switching wasn't even about white people. It was about
Speaker 1: going from Africa to Black America. It was about switching
Speaker 1: my behavior in that cultural zone to wanting folks to know, like,
Speaker 1: I'm down like you. So, No, I might not have
Speaker 1: a grandmama in the project, but the minute I had
Speaker 1: the ability to go to the project, I was going
Speaker 1: to hang out in the project. Like it was almost
Speaker 1: like I was trying to make sure that I knew
Speaker 1: what the experiences were about so that you couldn't keep
Speaker 1: me from them. That makes me, I want to know, then,
Speaker 1: what is blackness? Because it seems like everybody has a
Speaker 1: relationship with blackness, no matter how whether you like some
Speaker 1: hood super hood person, you got your own person relationship
Speaker 1: with blackness, unless you're some some girl who somebody who's like,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm too white for the black people, too
Speaker 1: black for the white people. Like it seems like there's
Speaker 1: a relationship too blackness that every single black person, dark
Speaker 1: skinned person, melinated person has to deal with. So what
Speaker 1: is that? Is there an essence we're all trying to achieve.
Speaker 1: I'm curious. So for me, again, I think that's somebody's
Speaker 1: work to do long term work. But I think our confusion,
Speaker 1: the conundrum is that we're thinking about blackness as a
Speaker 1: race and not a culture. And so we would have
Speaker 1: able to take the time to understand what a culture
Speaker 1: is and what cultural mores are, we would again be
Speaker 1: able to recognize. I hear it all the time when
Speaker 1: folks go to Ghana, when they go to Jamaica, they're like,
Speaker 1: we do that, we do that. It's like this, you know,
Speaker 1: And I say, there's a hashtag that I've used everywhere
Speaker 1: we go. There we are. But you have to be
Speaker 1: open to seeing yourself in that way, right, And I
Speaker 1: think that's the critical thinking in the consciousnesship. You have
Speaker 1: to be open to making the connections as opposed to
Speaker 1: drawing the distinctions. We're better seated, right again, not minorities.
Speaker 1: We are a global majority. So it's in our best
Speaker 1: interest then to see all the ways that we are
Speaker 1: connected to one another as opposed to distinct I would say.
Speaker 1: For me, if there was a time where I knew
Speaker 1: I didn't necessarily feel black enough, was when I first
Speaker 1: started doing stand up comedy, because in ninety eight, you know,
Speaker 1: off the heels of the deaf jam movement in the
Speaker 1: rise of BT's comment view, a lot of black comedy
Speaker 1: thrived in stereotypes, not necessarily not just about the world,
Speaker 1: but also about blackness. So blackness was defined by whatever
Speaker 1: they collective shared experience was in that particular night or
Speaker 1: that group of people. So there would be nights where
Speaker 1: I get on stage, you know, And I started when
Speaker 1: I was a nineteen So my early jokes were just
Speaker 1: a nineteen year old black college student had them folks
Speaker 1: in the room is over the age of fifty and
Speaker 1: never went to college. So this book buy back joke,
Speaker 1: it ain't gonna connect with you. You had to work.
Speaker 1: And so the one thing I did gradually learn over
Speaker 1: time though with black people and we were just talking
Speaker 1: about the diasporas. My comedy changed, My comedy evolved is
Speaker 1: that the one thing we all share is pain and
Speaker 1: a struggle and figuring out a way to make it.
Speaker 1: Whether you still live in the Caribbean or you still
Speaker 1: live overseas or if you're a black brit whatever it is,
Speaker 1: you're dealing with some form of struggle. So when I
Speaker 1: learned how to coach whatever it was I want to
Speaker 1: talk about in the form of here's what I'm dealing with,
Speaker 1: and made it about my form of blackness, people were
Speaker 1: more it was the jokes were more well received versus
Speaker 1: have y'all ever, don't y'all all hate it when you
Speaker 1: be swimming and no, I don't get in a pool
Speaker 1: or in a pool put you know. So that's kind
Speaker 1: of where I fell out of place aston I don't know,
Speaker 1: you know, coming up in the black clubs and Houston
Speaker 1: and Memphis and stuff. If you dealt with that, but
Speaker 1: for me, that was like the first smack in the
Speaker 1: face of like, oh I'm different. Black absolutely had the
Speaker 1: exact same experience. You know. One of my mentors is
Speaker 1: Alisa Diek. If you know anything about him, he who
Speaker 1: thrives in He thinks pressure makes diamonds and he loves
Speaker 1: going to hood rooms because that pressure make diamonds. And
Speaker 1: I would go in there, same exact thing. I'm a
Speaker 1: college kid being like Mike cars Uh, it's pushed the start.
Speaker 1: It just takes three people my right guys maybe like boy,
Speaker 1: if you don't get that, boy, and so it was.
Speaker 1: It was. It definitely was a struggle. It maybe looking
Speaker 1: myself like damn, it's my comedy for white people, but no,
Speaker 1: actually wanted to finding myself and just being able to
Speaker 1: speak from a you one. It's two things. I know.
Speaker 1: It's black people just like speak, be real, be real,
Speaker 1: and now they can connect. It's a connection. You can
Speaker 1: find it to be entertaining. That's it. I got in
Speaker 1: my head a lot thinking it was me and my
Speaker 1: two whiteness. No, once I started, I'm being myself more,
Speaker 1: I started connecting more with audiences. But there was a
Speaker 1: complex in my head for a while with my blackness
Speaker 1: and relationship with my comedy. And now they're also going
Speaker 1: to be other black folks like you who have similar experiences,
Speaker 1: you know, so maybe there are your audience. But one
Speaker 1: thing I also want to come back to something you said,
Speaker 1: roy Um, because I hear this a lot when folks
Speaker 1: think about blackness and they think about the things that
Speaker 1: are common amongst us. So idea that we all have
Speaker 1: a common struggle, right like, no matter where we are
Speaker 1: across the world, and that is real because white supremacist
Speaker 1: delusion is global. For me, though, I also want us
Speaker 1: to balance that out and recognize. You know, people say
Speaker 1: black girls are magic. That's not to take away from
Speaker 1: our humanity, but that magical piece because I also love comedy, right,
Speaker 1: the fact that even through all of these things, that
Speaker 1: y'all have the ability to make people laugh. Even while
Speaker 1: these things are happening, we find a way to come
Speaker 1: up with all the TikTok dances. Right, We've got the
Speaker 1: best music, We've got the best We're still cooking, we're
Speaker 1: still eating good, We're still having a good time. We're
Speaker 1: still hugging and kissing and speaking to people on the
Speaker 1: street that you don't even know, wishing your baby well,
Speaker 1: like graduation. We're still doing all these things. And I
Speaker 1: think that's what they don't understand, why we're still smiling
Speaker 1: and laughing and dancing after all that they couldn't, after
Speaker 1: all that our ancestors have been through, and we still here.
Speaker 1: We're not supposed to be here, We're still here. Not
Speaker 1: only are we still here, we can have a good time.
Speaker 1: At the same time. There are times where things happen
Speaker 1: in the world and I'm like, let me log off
Speaker 1: a social media because I'm too sensitive. Y'all ought to
Speaker 1: get all my nerves. And then there are times where
Speaker 1: I'm like, there's so much going on, let me log in,
Speaker 1: let me look at all of the wackest ratchetness means
Speaker 1: and videos, let me last It's always We're always going
Speaker 1: to have the space to laugh and find joy. So
Speaker 1: with that, with all of that being said, and everything
Speaker 1: we have unpacked up into this point, how did you
Speaker 1: decide to write a book on all of this, doctor Blake?
Speaker 1: This is stressful, by your own admission just now, it's
Speaker 1: sometimes stressful. So I can only imagine the process of
Speaker 1: unpacking everything to decide where to focus your book, because like, because,
Speaker 1: because your work focuses on like colorism and beauty and
Speaker 1: gender and politics, and so with this book, you figured
Speaker 1: out a way to go beyond that and explore blackness
Speaker 1: as a whole globally, like how we're all connected. Like
Speaker 1: so when you wrote One Drop Shifting the lands Own Race,
Speaker 1: did you know this was going to be a big
Speaker 1: gass mountain that you was going to have to climb?
Speaker 1: And why did you still decide to climb the mountain?
Speaker 1: And this book? I didn't know, but step by step
Speaker 1: one thing that is a blessing for me. I was
Speaker 1: trained at Temple University, home of afrocentricity and African centered ideology,
Speaker 1: and we talked about a place so we're not talking
Speaker 1: about black and white, were talking about African and European, right,
Speaker 1: and so it's a very black space. And one of
Speaker 1: the greatest blessings in my training was that I should
Speaker 1: center myself right in research. So many times folks are
Speaker 1: encouraged to be objective whatever that means that you should
Speaker 1: separate yourself from the work that you're doing. And this
Speaker 1: is why you can have black folks doing research about
Speaker 1: their own communities and using language like them and they
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say me and us right, And so that
Speaker 1: there there's literally a shift in my thinking in my
Speaker 1: movement when I connect to the work right. So I
Speaker 1: grew up in New Orleans, and which you should know
Speaker 1: about New Orleans is that they're a long history of
Speaker 1: color coded racial ideology, right. And so whereas in other
Speaker 1: places in the world are in the country white and black,
Speaker 1: in New Orleans it was white, creole black right, and
Speaker 1: creole as a larger umbrellas just to say not fully
Speaker 1: black so you could be quadroon, oct rooms, quinta roon,
Speaker 1: all these terms, right. Historically, historically literally one quarter black,
Speaker 1: three quarters white, you know, like that kind of equations.
Speaker 1: All that to say that, historically that meant that blackness
Speaker 1: seemed to be a punishment, right, so that if you
Speaker 1: had any bit of mixing and listen to the language,
Speaker 1: you got to be something else. You didn't have to
Speaker 1: be black. So blackness was a punishment of source. I
Speaker 1: say that just to preface me. Growing up, I probably
Speaker 1: knew that I was dark skinned before I knew how
Speaker 1: to spell my name, because everybody made it a point. Oh,
Speaker 1: you're so black, You're so black, You're so black, You're
Speaker 1: so black. She black, the black one black black black black?
Speaker 1: Are you real? Black? Black? Black? Black? Black? Like constantly
Speaker 1: I knew that I was dark skinned, right, And what
Speaker 1: I also knew just on a child's observation, my father
Speaker 1: taught a Xavier right, and so here's an HBCU. And
Speaker 1: many of the students who were sent to Xavier, they
Speaker 1: were brown skin folks. For a large majority of them
Speaker 1: were very very light skinned. Some of them may have
Speaker 1: identified as Creole, some could have passed for a variety
Speaker 1: of things. But it's to say, just even as a child,
Speaker 1: I saw what's the mayor looked like? Right, what city
Speaker 1: council looked like? Well, the students at Xavier looked like.
Speaker 1: I could see the power and privilege that was assigned
Speaker 1: to lighter skin. I could also see how lighter skin
Speaker 1: folks treated me like I couldn't. I wasn't invited to
Speaker 1: someone who I thought was one of my best friends
Speaker 1: in elementary school. I wasn't invited to her birthday party
Speaker 1: because my mom and said I was too black. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a black girl, or another black child, or
Speaker 1: a white child. I'm gonna call a creole. Creole I
Speaker 1: see right now. To me, creole is black. But who
Speaker 1: am I to tell you who you are? Right? Y'all?
Speaker 1: Rolling with it? Rolled with it? But it is to
Speaker 1: say it was a different experience, and I felt that
Speaker 1: we moved from New Orleans to Delaware because my dad
Speaker 1: went from Xavier to del State, and I had a
Speaker 1: whole different experience coming up north. Now, did I know
Speaker 1: I was dark skinned? Yes, But then I got away
Speaker 1: pretty for a dark skinned girl. Then I had my
Speaker 1: foxy brown era, you know, like it was a different
Speaker 1: situation up here, and then of course the nineties hip hop.
Speaker 1: You know we read black and green. I'm wearing head
Speaker 1: rats like my stock is real high because I'm an
Speaker 1: original African, you know. So you know. So that was
Speaker 1: my experience. All of that to say, by the time
Speaker 1: I got to grad school, moved back to New Orleans,
Speaker 1: and then came back up to go to grad school
Speaker 1: a temple, I had an experience with a sister who
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have called a sister at the time, who
Speaker 1: was a grad student at the program super super super
Speaker 1: super light. I didn't know anything about her, but what
Speaker 1: I knew is she would come up to the eighth
Speaker 1: floor glad Felt A Hall, which it was our common area,
Speaker 1: and she wouldn't speak to people. How you come up here,
Speaker 1: room full of black people and you just don't speak.
Speaker 1: How did that work? So in my mind, I'm connecting dots.
Speaker 1: This is how the girls act in New Orleans. This
Speaker 1: is how you act. You one of them. You one
Speaker 1: of those people who thinks that light skin is a
Speaker 1: skill set. You one of those people who think that
Speaker 1: you have privilege because you light skins. Check. I don't
Speaker 1: fool with you, and I did not fool with her.
Speaker 1: Right before she graduated. She got her master's. One of
Speaker 1: our common professors like, you gotta read Danielle's paper, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm not reading shit. You gotta read Danyelle's paper.
Speaker 1: I read her paper. I come to find out that
Speaker 1: she her father's black, mother's white Mennonite from Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: She grew up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where she was the
Speaker 1: blackest thing there. She was really clear that she was
Speaker 1: black and Lancaster because they told herself, and it got
Speaker 1: so bad to the point where she dropped out of
Speaker 1: high school and finished at home homeschool gd Right. She
Speaker 1: came to Temple because she wanted to be around black folks.
Speaker 1: She wanted to be in Philly with black folks. She
Speaker 1: wanted to connect with the blackest space. She got a
Speaker 1: masters in Black Studies because she wanted to right. And
Speaker 1: she came up there not speaking because she thought we
Speaker 1: didn't like her. She thought she wasn't black enough, so
Speaker 1: she was reserving her peace. And I'm like, wow. You
Speaker 1: know then I had another experience being on a panel
Speaker 1: with a sister Rosa Clemente, and you know, we're talking
Speaker 1: about colorism. A diaspora, and she introduces herself, I'm Rosa
Speaker 1: Clemente and I'm a black Puerto Rican woman from the
Speaker 1: South Bronx. And I'm looking at her, like, black Puerto Rican,
Speaker 1: what's that? I just know Puerto Ricans and she doesn't
Speaker 1: look black for what I thought I knew blackests who
Speaker 1: was at the time, but she was adamant to continue
Speaker 1: say black Puerto Rican, black Puerto Rican, black Puerto Rican.
Speaker 1: And so it just had me thinking, like, Yo, blackness
Speaker 1: looks a whole lot of ways in this world. But
Speaker 1: I'm also very interested in and again listen to my
Speaker 1: own how I've been impacted for folks who don't have
Speaker 1: to be black, Why are you choosing blackness? And so
Speaker 1: the book is about me talking to them, but yeah, like,
Speaker 1: if you don't have to be black, why are you
Speaker 1: choosing blackness? And so in the book, I interview them
Speaker 1: about their blackness. And though many of them use different languages,
Speaker 1: like Danielle identifies as black and Mennonite, there are people
Speaker 1: who identifies by racial multi racial, just you know, different terms,
Speaker 1: even the again the language that we use. Wanting to
Speaker 1: know what does that mean to you? To identify as
Speaker 1: black and mentonite or by racial or mixed race, because
Speaker 1: in fairness, I've always judged those terms because again historically
Speaker 1: and in my experience, or you're just saying you by
Speaker 1: racial so you don't have to say you black. You're
Speaker 1: trying to take the out. I've never had an out. Now,
Speaker 1: see that brings up a question after the break, I
Speaker 1: want to get into about how can we fix those
Speaker 1: moments that you had on the eighth floor. How what
Speaker 1: can we do as fella black folks capital b to
Speaker 1: make better choices when we see a quiet Negro across
Speaker 1: the room and figure out whether or not they hate,
Speaker 1: or whether or not All this is beyond the scenes.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back beyond the scenes. We're bringing at
Speaker 1: home talking blackness, what it means to be black, and
Speaker 1: whether or not you can place all of that blackness
Speaker 1: at the foot of black politicians and expect them to
Speaker 1: honor all different quadrants of blackness, Doctor Blade. Before the break,
Speaker 1: you were telling a very very wonderful story about a
Speaker 1: woman who I would assume now as a colleague, and
Speaker 1: how we can sometimes as black people, tend to misread
Speaker 1: one another initially if we think that your blackness is
Speaker 1: something that is different. What can we do now to
Speaker 1: better understand each other's Black experiences? Because I will say
Speaker 1: that I feel like artistically we're in a better space
Speaker 1: now because like I would argue that a like Donald
Speaker 1: Glover or Isa Ray would not have gotten shows or
Speaker 1: would not have gotten the same looks twenty five years
Speaker 1: ago versus today. I do think that young Black people
Speaker 1: that are different, who did not come up necessarily in
Speaker 1: the hood, you know, even Jabuki who was on with
Speaker 1: us for a long time, Ashton, I would argue that
Speaker 1: them taking their identity and owning that yes I am
Speaker 1: black and accept me as I am. Yeah, I like
Speaker 1: anime and what is I think part of it? But
Speaker 1: what can we do as layman to better understand each
Speaker 1: other's Black experiences? Doctor? I mean, that's a great question.
Speaker 1: I want to honor our feelings though, right, And so
Speaker 1: the reason why I tell that story is I don't
Speaker 1: want to throw away the fact that I had a
Speaker 1: certain upbringing in certain certin certain painful experiences, and so
Speaker 1: that Danielle's presence was a trigger for me. I have
Speaker 1: to own that, so right, So that's that's my job
Speaker 1: and my work to work through that. The question is
Speaker 1: always how you know, is it only through therapy. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I have to work through that what could
Speaker 1: have happened different in that situation. It's also then on
Speaker 1: Danielle to know, Okay, you want to understand blackness. There
Speaker 1: are certain things that we do as black people, right
Speaker 1: we speak, We're not saying, have a whole conversation, good morning,
Speaker 1: good afternoon, Hey, how y'all doing a not even but
Speaker 1: just to walk with your head up and not acknowledge us,
Speaker 1: We're going to think about you funnily right right there,
Speaker 1: I am. I'm in my head all the time. And
Speaker 1: if me looking down at the ground means like I'm
Speaker 1: not participating in blackness, and I'm like, oh, well, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I'm insecure. I guess I'm not black? Are Now that's
Speaker 1: a good point too, because you know, at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, it's not always all about us, right,
Speaker 1: we project our stuff on the people all the time.
Speaker 1: You never know what somebody is dealing with ut how
Speaker 1: they're thinking about. So that's that's absolutely fair. I guess
Speaker 1: what I'm struggling with as I'm struggling to answer the question, right,
Speaker 1: what can we do? I think these conversations are helpful.
Speaker 1: I think honesty, you know, about who we were. I
Speaker 1: know so many people all the course of my life
Speaker 1: who's just straight up light about where they've been and
Speaker 1: what they did trying to get their black card check.
Speaker 1: Like you ain't never hung out in the projects? Why
Speaker 1: are you saying that? I mean even rappers, even rappers,
Speaker 1: what you're rapping about? So that's because I was going
Speaker 1: to ask you. That's from my perspective. I mean, it
Speaker 1: seems like just because it seems like we have all
Speaker 1: so much baggage with it. That's like gatekeeping blackness is
Speaker 1: it's under you're black. You're black in my in my head,
Speaker 1: since there is such a big spectrum of blackness, you
Speaker 1: can't really define it if you're black. It seems like
Speaker 1: something that you just can't gate keep being black. But
Speaker 1: that being said, like I have one hand that feels
Speaker 1: like you shouldn't get keep blackness because we'll create complexes
Speaker 1: and insecurities and people. And then on the other hand,
Speaker 1: I don't want Jack Harlow to being rapped, so I
Speaker 1: have to find a way. Okay, I know, Okay, So
Speaker 1: then so then let's get to the ship. Then, so
Speaker 1: then let's get to it. So the last question, can
Speaker 1: you define blackness? Because now, if you're going to introduce
Speaker 1: Jack Harlow into the conversation and go, okay, you have
Speaker 1: somebody who we think is a culture vulture and it's
Speaker 1: just coming in and co opting and experience, that speaks
Speaker 1: to that it is rooted in something spiritual that we
Speaker 1: know you cannot relate to because of your upbringing. Dog,
Speaker 1: where do you put black conservatives when we're trying to
Speaker 1: define blackness and we're not just talking about the Clarence
Speaker 1: Thomas Says and everybody else who stumped for Trump. And
Speaker 1: I'm not naming name you know the names. We don't
Speaker 1: have to name the names. But where do you put
Speaker 1: give me a stacy dash, give me, give me a
Speaker 1: stacy dash in like, where does that fall on the
Speaker 1: blackness spectrum? Is that should that also be respected as
Speaker 1: some form of black ideology even though it's not necessarily traditional?
Speaker 1: And is that also defined as part of blackness? Or
Speaker 1: is that like a weird boil that we got to
Speaker 1: burn off? And how you remove a bowl? Asking what
Speaker 1: you do you freeze that thing? I think I think
Speaker 1: we have to we have to continually put our celves
Speaker 1: in these in these situdes. This is uncomfortable. I don't
Speaker 1: have an answer right because nothing fits cleanly in here.
Speaker 1: Um again, blackness as a culture, do we feel some
Speaker 1: type of way then that the Kardashians got to insert
Speaker 1: things when it was convenient to make a shitload of money,
Speaker 1: and then when it's not convenient you can go back
Speaker 1: to your original factory settings and date white boys. The
Speaker 1: booties out, they like, they straight went back to which
Speaker 1: does another They did another black thing, and they went
Speaker 1: back to their roots. They cannot stop standing the black people.
Speaker 1: It's hard to say, you know. In regards to Stacy Dash, yes,
Speaker 1: Stacy Dash, you are a black woman. I will not
Speaker 1: take that from you. You are not in a position
Speaker 1: to represent black Alma Rosa is probably a better example
Speaker 1: because she had more of a political platform and influence,
Speaker 1: would be a more fair black conservative because some of
Speaker 1: what Stacy was doing, I could say was opportunistic in
Speaker 1: it for exposure to build your career in portfolio, whereas
Speaker 1: I feel like Alma Rosa had more calculated motives. Now
Speaker 1: in fairness, though, it's interesting, as you name these names,
Speaker 1: we wouldn't question these people's blackness. You're black. I don't
Speaker 1: think they ever positioned themselves to say I'm a representative.
Speaker 1: They don't want to be a representative of the black community.
Speaker 1: They just want you to take them as they are.
Speaker 1: We might have a better conversation if it's somebody who's
Speaker 1: who's touting themselves as a representative the black community. Now
Speaker 1: we got questions. So to be a representative of the
Speaker 1: black community, you have to follow those certain ideologies and
Speaker 1: certain there's me being myself without no a communication with
Speaker 1: the black community. I couldn't be part of the black
Speaker 1: COMMU why would you have communication with the black community.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying, if I was born in a vacuum,
Speaker 1: if I was born in a vacuum, why would you
Speaker 1: represent us? Just because I don't. I don't think skin
Speaker 1: is enough qualification. So if and again this this conversation
Speaker 1: around representing black folks, what is your investment in black
Speaker 1: people's lived experiences? I think that is an important question
Speaker 1: and you got to keep your word once you're elected.
Speaker 1: This is a conversation that we could go on and
Speaker 1: on and on about. Doctor Blair. I cannot thank you
Speaker 1: enough for coming in here. The book is one drop
Speaker 1: shifting the lens on race. Ashton will Mac has not
Speaker 1: yet written a book because he is too busy going
Speaker 1: out to New York City comedy club slinging jokes. Ashton,
Speaker 1: you need to get your life together. That's why you
Speaker 1: ain't got no books in your background. I want to
Speaker 1: read a book. Thank you, doctor, Java Blair and Ashton
Speaker 1: for taking us beyond the scenes. See you next time.
Speaker 1: Catch you guys. Listen to The Daily Show Beyond the
Speaker 1: Scenes on Apple Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts. This has been a Comedy Central podcast.