My mother was the biggest influence in my life and this wonderful woman, but I am raised without a dad. An African-American, but not grounded in a place with a lot of African-American culture, and so I’m trying to figure out how I’m seen and viewed and understood as a black man in America.
What does that mean? I’m absorbing all kinds of stereotypes and ideas from society. Like Richard Pryor or Shaft. I’m trying on a whole bunch of outfits. Here’s how I should act. Here’s what it means to be cool. Here’s what it means to be manly. You know, you start smoking. You start drinking coffee. You’ve got a leather jacket.
Then at a certain point right around twenty, right around my sophomore year, I started figuring out that a lot of the ideas that I had taken on about being a rebel, or being a tough guy, or being cool, were really not me. They were just things that I was trying on because I was insecure or I was a kid. That’s an important moment in my life, although also a scary one, because then you start realizing, “Well, I actually have to figure out what I really do believe and what is important and who am I really.”
A lot of that revolved around issues of race and being able to say that I don’t have to be one way to be both an African-American but also somebody who affirms the white side of my family. I don’t have to push back from the love and values that my mom instilled in me. She instilled in me these core values that for a while I thought were corny. Then right around twenty you start realizing honesty, kindness, hard work, responsibility, looking after other people—they’re actually pretty good values. They’re homespun. They come out of my Kansas roots, but they’re the things that ultimately ended up being most important to me and how I tried to build my life.
W. KAMAU BELL
There’s a lot of racism in the alt-comedy scene.
DWAYNE KENNEDY—COMEDIAN, WRITER, ACTOR
A whole lot of nigger going on.
Kamau
Exactly. “I think he just wanted to say ‘nigger.’ I don’t think there was a joke there.” There have been many occasions, we’ve been at alt-comedy shows with comedians who are known and unknown and suddenly be like, “I think I got to leave,” and it happens from comics you never expect it to happen with. It’s weird, it’s like I can’t talk to white comics about it because then they think I’m crazy, because I think a lot of people think because they stand on a comedy stage and they’re a good guy it can never be racist, no matter what I say.
CHELSEA PERETTI—COMEDIAN, WRITER, ACTOR
After I graduated from school, my brother and I did a Web site, Black People Love Us, which was these two white people bragging about their black friends and how well liked they are by them and testimonials from their black friends that are sarcastic implications of annoying white people. We wound up on Good Morning America facing off with Diane Sawyer mediating with two black people. She had one of them be pro and one be con. It was six in the morning. I was so tired I couldn’t think. In general, I think I learned from it never to try to have a serious intellectual discussion about a joke. I would much rather just be like, “I thought it was funny. Bye.”
DWAYNE KENNEDY
In the scheme of things, just in society, black folks are expendable. I can say “nigger” all day long without any consequence to my show business career. If I went on stage talking about “kike,” that would last about one show. Not that I aspire to do that. I don’t even want to do that.
W. KAMAU BELL
Racism is defined as a hate crime and I think that’s not always true. It doesn’t always end up in death. I feel like there’s levels of racism.
Marc
I think fundamentally, racism is, “We are not the same because you are black.” It’s not necessarily “You are black, you should die.”
Kamau
No, no, no. After you decide we’re not the same, what is your next thing? I’m not going to hang out with you or I’m going to kill you?
Dwayne
I’m not going to hire you.
Marc
That’s racism.
Dwayne
Which does impact your life fundamentally, eventually, in waves and ripples. “I don’t mean you any harm, but I don’t mean to help you in any way.” When a large group of people feel like that and it becomes consensual, then it does begin to marginalize you and that does begin to impact your life. Less goods and services in your community, and less health care, and going on on on on on. Now the quality of your life is diminished a little bit, but it wasn’t anybody directly doing anything, but it’s this consensual thinking that pushes you away.
Kamau
It’s also just the feeling of being otherized too. We were talking about this today. I was like, “I don’t think white people realize how many white people there are out there.” I don’t think white people look around like, “There are a lot of white people out there.” In that sense, I think white people take it for granted how safe that feels.
RUSSELL PETERS
The whole world speaks English. That’s the funny thing, the world is smarter than we are. Because in America, we think that everybody else is stupid. Actually, no. They speak their shit and ours, and then, not only that, they speak ours better than we speak it.
W. KAMAU BELL
People think that white is the absence of culture in race. They think that, well, I’m not anything, I’m just an American, or I don’t really know what I am. I feel like what it comes down to is if white people thought about their whiteness more, it would change the way in which they interact with other people. I don’t think white people think about their whiteness enough in this country. When the news says “White people blah blah blah,” every white person says, “That’s not me, I’m not White People.” Whereas when the news says, “Black people blah blah blah,” even if I don’t relate to that, I know that’s me. I have to accept some responsibility for that, or I have to choose not to, but I can’t act like I’m not involved in it. I feel like a lot of times white people act like they’re not involved in the race discussion in any way.
There’s people in this country who are filled with fear, and they’re raising kids. Yes, if I’m in Brooklyn, there’s a bunch of black kids on skateboards with tattoos, with their hair sprayed up, in goth bands who are like, “Yeah, I just sort of do whatever I do.” You go outside of San Francisco, forty miles outside of San Francisco, there are white people who feel like they’re in Texas.
Those of us in urban environments overshoot that a lot, because we think in my neighborhood it’s not that way, but there’s a lot more of America that’s the other way.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA
I always tell young people, in particular, do not say that nothing’s changed when it comes to race in America unless you lived through being a black man in the 1950s or 1960s. It is incontrovertible that race relations have improved significantly during my lifetime and yours, and that opportunities have opened up, and that attitudes have changed. That is a fact.
What is also true is that the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination in almost every institution of our lives; that casts a long shadow and that’s still part of our DNA that’s passed on.