01x04 - The Hardest Fight is the Fight Against Status Quo

[bunniefuu]

- How many trans women
have all of y'all taken to lunch,

or to dinner, or invited to that party?

- Arguably, this is where we have,
as a culture, the most work to do.

That makes me emotional.
- Yeah.

- There is a construct that says,
"You are a Blackity Black folk,

so you Black."
- Right.

- And you fit into this construct.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- And anything outside of that box

is also just,
"Mm, sorry, you're not really Black.

You're not really, you're not really us."

Let's raise a glass.

All right, y'all,
we gon' get into the juicy stuff.

- Let's see if I can get this out.
Yeah.

- Isn't it a great sound?
- It's a great sound.

- You wanna do cheers?
Look me in the eyes.

- Definitely eye contact.
- There you go.

- Mm.

- You gon' laugh at this.

I saw Allen Iverson recently.
- Uh-huh.

- And we talked about
how the NBA dress code came...

- Oh. Mm-hm.
- ...in the early 2000s.

And he was like the whippin' boy for it.

Like, for wearing cornrows.
Yes, he was.

- And hip-hop artists followed him.

And copied him.
- Culture followed him.

- And he got beat up.

And then I was like,
"How do you feel about these dudes now?

Like, how they dress
and everybody applauds 'em."

And he's like, "I'm happy for 'em."

- I respect when the basketball players
come in with their style,

with their point of view.

It's another thing
coming in dressing to be seen.

Like, dressing for conversation.
- You thought he was trying too hard?

- Yeah. Dressing for conversation.

- Fashion is
so important right now in culture.

I mean, when you say Iverson,
I think of Dennis Rodman.

But Dennis Rodman challenged gender.

How is--
- But you were a little kid at this time.

- I was a little kid. But I mean, seeing
a Black man with colorful hair,

wearing a gown, it was powerful.

I mean, it was like this Lenny Kravitz

mixed with this, like,
club kid/drag queen.

- You're from Toronto?

- I'm born and raised in Toronto.

- And your family is from?
- They are from the West Indies.

My mom is from Jamaica,

and my dad is
from Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.

No way.
- Yeah.

- My parents are from Jamaica.

- Oh!

- Well, yeah, but I was born in England.
- Okay.

So you know that first-generation

Caribbean upbringing.
- Yeah.

Let's go this way.
Of course.

Let's take some wine with us.
Yeah.

Hi, guys.
Hi.

- How are you?
How are you? How's it going?

- Good.
- Doing good. Hey, cheers.

Where's your glass?
Cheers.

- There you go. Cheers.
- Cheers!

How are you guys?

- Cheers--
Hello, cheers.

- Another cheers for the company.

- I don't hunt,

but I will cook anything
that you bring back.

- Oh, there you go!
- Yeah, I remember

I had a lobster to k*ll.

And, growing up,
you're thinkin', "It's dead."

You know, where I come from,
in the hood in London, it's--

You take the head off, it's dead.

And then the thing
in my hand starts to do this.

Come on, now.

So, there's an island in-in Maine
where lobster is-- Guess how much it is.

- How much?
- You'll never guess.

Seven dollars a pound.

You come to our-our place on that island,

which is considered
the Black neighborhood,

'cause there's only me.

So, uh, you come by.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- You cook for us, huh?
- Oh, not a problem.

- I booked him twice.
- I love that.

- Maine in the summer?
Yeah.

- It's perfect.
There are lobster sandwiches.

Oh, my God.
- I like going out there.

Hey, y'all.
Hi.

What's going on? What's going on?

- Everybody looks so beautiful! Hi.
You too!

- Okay, Chef.
- Hey. Hey. Hey. Cheers.

- This is all cute and stuff,
standin' around talkin', but I'm hungry.

Let's go eat.

Come on, y'all.
Let's go to the dining room.

- The first course I have for you all

is shrimp and grits.
Okay.

Made from my restaurant.

My grits are nice and creamy.

The shrimp are cooked
with Worcestershire sauce.

- How do you spell it?

- Exactly.

Shallots, a little white wine,
and a little cream.

Lovely.

- And a little garlic on top. Enjoy.

And we have a great wine here,

a sauvignon, to go with this.

And I hope you enjoy.
Thank you.

- Thank you. Cheers.

- And don't be humble.
This is one of your signature dishes.

- Ooh.
- This is so good.

- The crispy garlic on it... lovin' it.
- Yes, the garlic on top.

Perfect.
Perfect.

- So, Professor, I'm, like,
super intrigued by, um, your expertise.

Even though I grew up
in this very, like, multicultural city,

all they taught was white history,
white American history.

Like, we heard about Martin Luther King,
and that was about it.

- That's it. And maybe sl*very.
That's about the extent of it.

But I guess my-my question to you is,

you know, there's all
this talk about CRT, CRT,

and takin' this outta schools--
- Yeah. Right.

- but I-I never remember it-it being
in schools to take it out of, like--

- That part. That part.
- That's right.

- So I wanted to ask you about that.
- No, that's a great question.

I mean, to pull back a little bit,

game is gettin' run on us right now.

That's what's happening.

And they know what they're doing.

Why they trying to control the textbooks?

Why they kinda trying to control
the story that we tell about ourselves

and about this country?

'Cause they understand
the importance of it.

- For a lot of parents in this country,
CRT just popped up outta nowhere.

- Right. Mm-hm.

- What does CRT actually mean?

- Critical race theory is
a field of study at law school,

first of all, it is never taught--
- First of all.

- never taught in the high schools,
never taught in elementary schools.

- Wow.
Right?

And what it really means

is that a group of legal scholars
came together and said,

"Okay, we had the civil rights movement,
we got the laws on the books,

"and yet, we still have
oppression, inequality, discrimination.

"So, how do we make sense of the world
where, legally, there's no racism,

but functionally,
we see all these inequalities."

They came together to build out
CRT to make sense of that.

But to use CRT to talk about just
basic American history, that's game.

We're conflating things.
- That's game.

- So what we're fighting
for is our children to be taught--

- Basic American history.
- Mm.

- It makes sense that people are sayin',
"Okay, we wanna talk about

George Washington
and the apple tree," or whatever.

That's the story people really wanna tell.

- It's cherry tree.
Cherry tree. 'Scuse me.

- I-I'm sorry. We just have to--
We have to have a factual--

- You had teachers like me.

Fact checker.
- Fact checker.

- The point is that, the point is that
that's what they wanna talk about, right?

And so, it's to our benefit
and to our destiny to continue to fight.

We need to be in this conversation.

We need to be
at the school board meetings.

- Yeah.

- We need to be at them,
at them textbook discussions,

makin' sure that our story is present.

'Cause that's gonna dictate
the future of this country.

These white parents, let's be clear,
these white parents that are at--

against us are
at the school board meetings, fightin'.

Talkin' 'bout, "My child, my child.
What if they-- They gon' feel guilty."

What about them
Black children in that classroom?

- I just wanna say, every class
I ever took made me feel bad.

Math. Uh, pottery.

- Pottery?

- Home ec.
Made you feel bad.

- Gym.
I'm lookin' at you. I'm lookin' at you.

- But I'm gonna make you feel good.

- But, yeah, I-I feel as though
it's a hollow argument.

It's, like,
"Let's protect my child's fragility."

- Yes.

And their--
the fragility of their whiteness

from a very early age.

- "You can't hear these stories.
It's gon' make you crumble."

- Yeah.

- sl*very and racial inequality
are embedded in our founding document.

It was the Constitution.
Three-Fifths Clause.

- Right.
- Right?

That Black people were
only three-fifths of a person,

so they couldn't vote,

but they can be counted
in the Electoral College.

And these anti-woke folk are saying,

"We don't want none of that.
That's anti-American."

What they don't understand

is that tellin' that story
is actually gonna free us.

- Mm.
Yeah.

- All of us. Not just Black folk.

White-White children, like--

For all the concern about white children,

telling this anti-woke story,
that's just keepin' them in chains too.

- How so?
- It infantilizes 'em.

Makes 'em children forever.

Mm.

- Being in Canada,
is there a CRT deal there?

- We kind of hide in the shadows of,
"Well, this happens in the U.S.!"

Right.
- Right.

- "We're not as bad as the U.S.

The racism isn't as blatant
in-- as the U.S."

But you still experience
the exact same thing.

Maybe when I was in high school,

it was very much, like, dependent on,
like, the actual Black students.

- To do their--

- To do something
about Black History Month.

- What was that like?
The principal, like, called you in

and was like, "Johnson, get in here."
It was li-literally, like--

Yeah. Like, yeah.
Black-Black Students Association.

Now, like, "Okay, what do
you guys wanna do?"

Nobody would really
even give you any rules.

And if you, if you didn't say anything,

nothing would've come.
- Right.

It was on you.
- Yeah.

- To your point,
this is not just about classrooms,

this is about politics.
- Yeah.

- Because history shows us--

I'ma put my history hat
on for a minute, right?

- Yeah.
- So, history shows us that

when Black history
was taught about this country

as a foundational piece of America--

- Yeah.

- it energized and mobilized
Asian Americans,

Latinx folk,

LGBTQ folk,

white women.

That-- Their, their social movements
came from confronting Black history.

And those who are
in power now do not want that.

So that's what's really goin' on.

- 'Cause these marginalized folks
startin' to rally together--

- Right! That's right.

- starting to pass tips to each other--
- And they building.

I teach for a living,
so I can do that for my kids.

But a lotta Black people
don't necessarily have the capacity,

not the ability, but the time--

- You know your parents are tired.

to supplement your children's
education that you're payin' for.

- As a young girl growing up
in Florida, in Miami,

I learned my Blackness
through the lens of religion, right?

Like, my grandfather was a pastor,
we went to church every Sunday,

Baptist family, this is what we do.

So I understood Black history,
while it wasn't taught in school,

through the church in itself.

- Believe it or not, believe it or not,

I went to private school.
- No!

Really?

- Would've never guessed.
No, I'm just kidding.
- I, I just wanna-- I know.

But I will say that my parents
took me to Black church as well.

Uh, we went to the Baptist church.
- Yeah.

- Yeah. That was the way
my parents, my-- Bless their hearts.

That was how they thought we, we--

- Would get Black. Yeah.
We get Black.

- I'm glad that you guys have,

like, this beautiful experience
from the Black church

'cause the, the church really never
was there for me personally.

My family made sure
I was going to church religiously,

every Wednesday, every Sunday.

You gotta dress a certain way,
you gotta look a certain way.

- Act a certain way.
Um, you have to act a certain way.

And I just feel like, when I was there,
I couldn't listen to the Word.

As a child, I was constantly being policed

by my Black brothers,
and peers, and sisters, and cousins,

and other people in the church.

The Black church is a place
that can be a refuge to some,

but for others, it is very problematic.

- I grew up in a Black church as well,
and I had a-a wonderful experience,

but I have a brother who's punk rock.

And we come from an interracial family.

And my brother gravitates towards what...
- That world.

- ...what, what Black America
would deem white culture.

Which all came
from Black culture, by the way.

But he was not accepted
by the Black church in the way that I was

because I played by the rules.

And I remember him and my mom,

every Sunday morning,
having their negotiations

about how he's gonna,
you know, have to present at church.

- The Black church
is important though, man.

- Yeah.

- I actually asked
to go to a Black church.

Even though
I wasn't in a white neighborhood.

I was in a, like, a m-multi-race,

so I actually went
to a "multicultural" church.

- "Non-denominational?"
- The music wasn't good, huh?

- Nah. My mom--
I was forced to speak in tongues...

Oh, they made you.
- ...during Sunday school.

- So, did you make that up?

- I beatboxed.

- Wow! Stop it.
- That was a good way out of it.

- I was being a real hood kid, right?
I beatboxed.

- How'd you beatbox?

- Hey!
- Hey.

- What we have here
in front of you is a roast leg of lamb

with a touch of rosemary inside of it.

And root vegetables that have been roasted
and with a little bit of a cabernet sauce.

And on the side,
I have here, collard greens.

And we're gonna wash it down
with a little bit of the, uh, cabernet.

Have you tried some?

They're very good.

- Amazing.

- I don't, I don't think all Black folks
are accepted at the Black church.

And to your point. And I think,
while I had a-a good experience,

I very much saw that not everybody
was embraced the same way.

- I will say about the Black church,

if you are q*eer, especially q*eer
and identifying a-as male,

then your place in the church
was relegated to the choir.

Like, I remember my mom's
good friend was the choir director

and he was, like, a concert pianist.

And with the A*DS epidemic,
like, h-he passed

and the-- a light in our church
passed, you know, away.

And I, and I always think about that.

- As a heterosexual man,
who as a child or as a young adult,

we said these things like,
"Oh, don't be so g*y."

- Yeah.
- You know, as criticism.

And to now--
- That hurts.

- Yeah. It-It must hurt.

But we said these things to men--

- Right.
- thinking that it was not a problem.

And to the point where I evolved

coming to America,
coming to live in San Francisco,

and understandin'
the struggles that we all have.

To the point where I went back to London
and celebrated a significant birthday,

and I had my birthday
in my friend's nightclub,

The Freedom Lounge.

- Let's go, honey.
It was a g*y nightclub

and I had a ball.

Yes.
- And didn't have a problem with it.

- Do you see how powerful
and how courageous you are

just alone-- just in general--
- But I didn't think I was being

courageous, I just--
I wanted to have fun.
- Imagine if... imagine if--

- Everybody.
- Black men had that same courage.

- Yeah.

- You have a young basketball player,
who I love as a person,

and after a game,
he's trying to be cool.

- Yeah.

- And--
- Uh-huh.

- one of his teammates said,

"Hey, you know, they brought--
They traded for me because

they want the team to be better lookin'."

And his response was, "No h*m*."

And he ended up apologizin' the next day.

But I was glad that it was,
uh, brought to attention real quick

that that won't be accepted.

- Masculinity can be imprisoning.

And sometimes,
when all you have is your masculinity,

I'm not trying to defend it--
- Rational, right.

but I notice it, and it, and it's toxic.

It accounts for things.
Terms like, "No h*m*."

Right? Because you are
so scared of male rejection

within your own community

that you gotta tiptoe around it.

I mean, I know, you look at me
and, like, I'm a beefcakes, like,

like, smokestack, and it's hard to be--

- Did you say-- I'm sorry, "smokestack?"

- Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
5'10" is, 5'10" is the new 6'1".

All I was gonna say was

that I think that it's-it's
that trap, you know?

It's that trap.

And it makes you
have to, like, navigate the world

in such a messed-up way.

Like, such a messed-up way

that you're worried
about everything you say

and how that could be perceived.

- Everybody in this room
knows someone that is trans.

Everybody in here
knows someone that is g*y.

Some of us are blood.
- Mm-hm.

- When you say things like, "No h*m*,"

you are hurting that family member.

And we live in a time
where you pick up your phone,

you see trans women being m*rder*d
every single day by Black men.

- Right.

- Us q*eer folks and trans folks,

we are tired of being the point of a joke.

When is it goin' to stop?

- I know. She was-- That was-- Dropped it.
- I-I feel like we need a cleansing breath

bec-- to just hold space
for everything she just said right now.

- You're droppin' knowledge.

- Well, there's a trans woman who swims
for, for UPenn swimming right now.

- I know.
Right.

And so, what's your take on the women
who are saying, "This is unfair,

she-she has a unfair physical
or genetic advantage."

- Where else can this trans person go?

- Mm.
Where else can we go?

We can't go to the boys' locker room
because we're gonna get beat up,

we're gonna get sexualized or harassed.

We can't go to this-- the females'
washrooms because it's this and that.

- Yeah.
- Where do we go?

- What I'm hearing
from what you're saying i--

I sound like a therapist.

Uh, but what I'm hearing is that,

like, the hardest fight
is the fight against status quo.

- All I know is hard.

All I know is hard work.

It's the beginning stages
of this conversation,

and it's getting better and better.

But imagine what the Black folks
in the 1910s and the 1800s

when they-- when sl*very
was abolished or was not abolished.

- Right. Right.

- This is that time right now for us.
- Yeah.

- So, we're-- It's, it's, it's--

- You got it.

- It's--

I can't imagine what-what our ancestry
and our lineage went through

to just get through that first hurdle.

And that's where we're at
right now as my community.

'Cause even our own g*y, q*eer brothers
and sisters ain't checkin' for us.

- Right.

- I know there was a time, absolutely,

where, as just a cis Black woman,
I absolutely felt like that.

And now, I really do feel like Black women
have, like, incubated themselves

within the Black community.

We redefined our beauty.
- Yes.

- We've redefined
everything about ourselves

because so many people
were not giving us the space.

Do you feel that the community that
is being created for Black trans women

to create these spaces for themselves?

Or do you think that they need
more help from the outside still to come?

- We, obviously, need help.

- Mm-hm.

How many trans women or q*eer people

have all of y'all taken to lunch,

or to dinner, or invited to that party?

- Right.

- The more that we see
people from all different--

Not just trans people,

just p-people from all
different walks of life

being in every single sphere,
in every single space,

that's when we start
having more resources.

That's when we start
having more conversations.

London, New York City, LA,

these are metropolitan areas
where resources-- where we thrive in.

That's where I went to.

I went to these places to find refuge,
to-to-to-to seek opportunity.

Imagine, though, the other
trans folks that didn't.
- Yeah.

- Imagine the youth
that would never get there

because they k*lled themself.

- Mm-hm.

- We are more in body bags
than we are in anywhere in the world.

- Mm.

- So, do you feel
that you owe those people?

I mean, since you--
Absolutely.

They are breathing
through me in every breath.

'Cause they could not be here.

I was born in this body,
I gotta do something with it.

So, I'm sorry for takin' up so much time.

- Don't apologize.
Nope. It's important.

- This is where we, arguably, like--

- Speak.
- Yeah.

- Arguably, this is where we have,
as a culture, the most work to do.

- Yes.

- Which is why you need
to take up all the space, sis.

Because we're all learning--

- And listening.
from you and listening.

And I think that it's so important

to sit back...
- Yes.

...and to listen.
- Thank you.

- That makes me emotional.

And I'm just listening to your experience.
- Yeah.

- We can unite on our common struggles,
but we have so much more work to do

to get our community's ears open
to the struggles of Black trans folks.

- We have told Black men
to suppress their femininity.

We have told women
to suppress their masculinity.

My dad always raised me,

and he is a Black strong man
from the military, Chicago PD man--

- Wow.

- that raised me as a single parent,

that told me to love
every single part of you.

And don't say no
to any atom in your body.

- Amen.
- Your dad told you that?

- My dad told me that since I was a child.

He was just like,
"This world is not checkin' for you, sis.

It's not checkin' for you.
It's not checkin' for you."

- How did your dad get
that perspective as a Black--

- Military.
military--

- We need to hear this.
We need to hear this story.

- Like, we need
to invite him to the table.

Well, we did through you.

But for real, like, what is
his history and backstory?

- He was actually h*m* growing up.

He was very h*m*.

And at first,
he was in disbelief about it.

He didn't understand what to do.

But he was a man
that was raising a child on his own.

And he was like, "This child needs love.

I can't neglect this child.
I can't avoid this child."

So, he just figured it out.
- It was just love.

- He just figured it out.
Changed his heart.

- So, like, I have a son.

So, it's, like, he cries
or he'll get hurt,

and his mom's from Brooklyn,

and she's just like,
"It's fine. You're fine." You know?

But, like, I go in at night--
I'm the better parent.

And, um, what I see is that

at night when, you know, he cries,

it's-it's better to just say like,
"I've cried too. I've been scared too.

And it's-it's okay."

- That's powerful.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

- And growin' up
in the Midwest in-in the '80s,

it could be somethin' as small as
the way you walk down the hallway,

wearin' pink.
- Yep.

- And I got called q*eer,
f*gg*t, different, whatever.

And it was all about
those types of things.

And so, it's not even-- it's, it's, it's
about constraining not just, like,

those who are--
who self-identify as q*eer,

it's about constraining
whole Black, the Black world.

It's constraining all of us about
the, the range of ways in which we can be.

It's a danger to all of us--
- Woo.

- to adopt this framework.

Do you think it's like this monolith?

Like, we were talkin'
about explorin' our Blackness,

but one of the things
that is coming up is, like,

there is a construct that says,
like, "You are a Blackity Black folk,

so you Black."
- Right.

And you fit into this construct.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- And anything outside of that box
is also just, "Mm, sorry, just--

you're not, you're not really Black."
- That's what I experienced.

- "You're not really,
you're not really us."

And it-it's not to say-- shade us,

but it's something
that is broadening the conversation

of, like, we are just
so different on a spectrum.

And the outside world have-- has told us
we're one way, we're one thing.

And we need to be
accepted being that one thing.

And we perpetuate that.
- Yeah.

But we do.

If masculinity is the mantle
for your-your community,

and Black men
don't have so-called "jobs,"

they don't "control" they family.

Right? The dysfunctional Black family

'cause the woman is
the head of the household.

All these things are-are "q*eer."

Right? And so,
in order to respond to that,

your response is,
"Okay, I'ma be extra masculine.

I'm gonna exert extreme authority
in a, in a physical way."

That teaches us to be
ex-explicitly anti-trans, anti-q*eer.

And we have to fight against that

because it's just not who
we are as a, as a community.

- Absolutely.

- How much more healthy and safe
would our Black boys feel

in a world that accepted
Black trans people, Black q*eer people?

And if we broadened that con--

the confining box
that we place Black folks in--

We. Not just them, but we do it.

- Yes.
You know?

And the idea that, like,

it's revolutionary that a Black dad
would hold his son when he's crying

and say, "It's okay, Daddy cries too."

- From your father down to you,

there's a lineage...
of Black men who do it different.

And we need to amplify that.

Yes!
- Absolutely.

- That needs to be the model.

Absolutely.
Absolutely.

To finish off with,

we have this great chocolate-filled
brioche beignet.

Okay? With a little bit of crème anglaise.

And then, on the side, I have
a, a coffee kinda s-- a spritzer sauce.

So, dip it in the anglaise
and a little bit of the coffee.

- Guys, this is an experience.

You might have to show me how to do that.

You might need to demonstrate that.

- You can cut it if you want.

- All right.

- Or you can just, like I did,
just, like, take a little bit.

- I'ma tell you somethin'.
So, me and you 'bout to go deep here--

- Okay. All right.
- Ooh.

- Both of my parents are Black--
- You just from Cali.

Well, my mom's--
- By way of New Orleans or?

There you go.
That's what I thought.

I said, "Creole," right away.
But I don't know.

I'm just-- Again, the stereotypes.
When you said that,

I was like, "Okay, it's New Orleans."

- So, my mother's from New Orleans.
Right.

- My dad's parents are from Mississippi.

My grandfather, like, uh--
See my eyes, right?

- Yes.

- My grandfather was darker than you.
- Right.

- Handsome man, bruh.
Dark-skinned Black man.
- Like me.

- Yeah, yeah.
- A good-lookin' brother.

As a kid, even though
I wasn't biracial, I felt biracial.

- Really?

- In a sense that that was somethin'
I've always, always had to fight with

is, like, all this
light-skinned sh*t all the time.

- In my family, same thing.

My dad, his family's Creole
from New Orleans.

And my mom's family's from Mississippi.

Are you my cousin? What's happening?

- We might be. Might be.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- But, but it-it kind of-- It's insane
'cause when you see my parents together,

in another country, in another culture,
they probably would be interracial.

But in America...
- Black.

- ...these are two Black people together,
you know what I mean?

- Ally, I'm curious because
I come from an interracial family

and so, when I meet somebody--
Yes.

- Which I just found out, Ally Love,
that your dad--

I call it, like, jokingly,
like, The White Dad Club.

'Cause-- And, like, The Black Mom Club,

when I meet somebody
whose mother is Black,

and-and a woman, in particular,

whose mother is Black
and their dad is white,

I feel like we share a kinship.

And it's a min-- it's, like, the minority
within the minority of biraciality.

- No, I-I completely understand it.

I remember growing up praying
for God to send, like, a best friend

who looked just like me.

Like, that's all I wanted growing up.
- Me too.

- Even to this day, finding those folks,
it's not very common.

And so, when I did move to New York,

I knew that there was a layer
of being a Black woman

that I was up against.

And then there is an extra layer.

Not to say, "Woe is me,"

but in all honesty,
of being a biracial woman,

that I'm up against.

Having a seat at the table,
even if it's by privilege,

I still have to prove that I'm articulate.

Then I gotta sit at a table
and let you know that I could talk fast,

and I can hang with you,
and I could say, "Sis, sis, sis," all day.

So, it's almost like
I have to prove my Blackness--
- Yep. Code switch.

- I have to code switch.
Here's the question, though.

Black folks think that when
biracial women or men say,

"I got a extra layer of challenge,"

they're like, "You know,
look at the entertainment world.

Y'all all over the place now."
- Totally.

- Like, how do you feel about that?

Miss me with the idea that you
got a harder or heavier burden

as a light-skinned person in America.

- One: it's not for me to discount.

Two: this is not
the Olympics of oppression.

I'm not, like, trying
to say, "Like, your--"

So, I don't say that
as, like, "Instead of," or--

It's more of a "In tandem with,"

like, "Here's my experience kinda thing."

And however you receive me

'cause sometimes
you don't know who I am or what I am--

- How'd that play out in Miami

where you could be
Dominican, or Cuban, or Creole?

- So, I think growing up in Miami,
if you "mistooken" me for something,

that was a mistake
of what my nationality was,

it wasn't offensive to me.

It was-- I was curious around that.

When I'm like,
"Mom, they think I'm Dominican,

or they think I'm Puerto Rican,"

and it's like,
"Well, what's the issue here?"

I'm like, "None. Should there be?"

"No." "Okay, great."

Like, we-we break it down.
We deconstruct.

And, again, I come from a family where
conversation is a catalyst for change.

Which is why we're sitting at this table.

We know the impact
of the words that we have.

- My first wife was British, was English.

- Meaning white?
- Which is code, code for "white."

- Right. That's tellin',
though, that you said that.

People be like, "Huh?"

- Because the code for Black was "British"
unless you did something wrong,

and then, you were "West Indian youth."

- Right.
Wow.

- We came to America,

and my son was born here.

And my-my wife did not like America.

She gave five years to this country.

She took my son back,

and went back to England with my son.
- Oh.

- And so, I used to see him
at Christmas, in the summer.

So, I didn't have much influence on him.

So, he was brought up
in this very white neighborhood.

Very British neighborhood.
- Wow.

- And, you know, all these years later,

he came back to work
with me in-in America.

And he lives here now.

- Is British Black? Is Black British?
Or how does he see himself?

- Yeah. How does-- What's his--
What's your son's racial identity?

How does he i-- racially identify?
- Yeah. Well, yeah.

- Yeah, he does see himself as biracial.

- A lotta European Black
biracial think like that.

- He doesn't identify
as Black, white, but, but biracial.

- I wanna talk about that.
- Let's talk about that as a category.

- Because there's almost no room--
- I don't understand it.

- in America for, like,
a legitimate biracial identity.

- I have, like, a unique upbringing.

Both my parents are mixed race.

My mom is Black, Indian, and Portuguese.

My dad is Black and Portuguese.
Both of 'em.

- Do you have a 23andMe, uh, receipt?

- I do, um.

So, I grew up in a household
where my parents were very much like,

"You are Black,
but you're also these things."

And that-- It was a--
- Black and.

Yeah. And it was a s--
- Yeah.

- It's a very common
West Indian girl experience.

But in my day-to-day existence,

I was also-also the Black girl.

That was just my general experience

that I was very aware
that depending on the group...

- Yes.
Yeah.

- ...their eye would see you
a specific way.

Some people would only see you as Black.
- Interesting.

- And to hear that you were other things,

they'd be like, "Girl, no way.
Bring out your 23andMe."

They, they wanna-- They need proof
because they're seeing it as "anti-Black"

to hear you just be able
to comfortably say--

- "I'm more than Black."
- "I'm not against being Black,"

but I just am aware if somebody's
asking me about my hair type

or about certain things, you're like--

I'm not just gonna be that girl
that's like, "I have no idea!

I don't know!"

- My best friends growin' up

were Black and Filipino.
- Yeah.

- I was eatin' lumpia when I was five.

Wow.
I love lumpia.

I don't speak Tagalog.

- Mm-hm.
- Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

- But we often hear about what it's like

to be Black and white.
- And white.

- But what about Black--
And somethin' else?

- Asian, or Black, and another ethnicity?

- Majority of my life,

I was on the Red Line going
uptown to downtown,

living in mostly Black and brown areas.

And instinctively, I was okay.

And I loved being Black. I loved it.

I loved-- I-I surrendered to it.
- Black was enough.

- Even when it's jotting down,
like, "What are you?"

I always distinctly put Black
because at the end of the day,

that's who I am.
- Right.

And I love that.
- Yeah.

- Well, let's toast to that.
Yes.

Cheers.

- You guys, this was
an amazing conversation.
- Yes, it was.

- We are about to play Tipsy Black Trivia.

- Okay.
- Oh, Lord.

Are y'all ready?
- No.

- Th-There is two options.

You either know the answer
or you have to sip.

- Oh!
Okay?

- Okay.

- All good parties end in the kitchen.

- Don't they?

- Has that been your experience
as a culinary expert?

- As a chef, it's all about the kitchen.

- Can I ask you a question?
- Yeah.

- If your guests don't help clean,

even if you pump fake and you're like,
"Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'll get these dishes for you."

Do you, do you tell 'em,
"No! We'll get 'em in the morn--

Hey! Don't do that."

- I-I do not expect my guests to clean.

I don't want them to.

I want 'em to have a good time.
- You're a good man.

- And also, I like
to organize the plates in a certain way.

I like to wash 'em a certain way.

And they get in my way.

Yeah. As much as they try to be helpful,
it's not how I do things.

There's a rinse, there's wash,
and then there's into the machine.

That's how I do it.

- A rinse and a wash,
and then into the machine?

- Sterilization.

- Okay.

- You can eat
on both sides of the plates.

No, sure, sure.
- You can flip it over and do the salad--

- You wash both sides of the plates?
- Oh, don't you?

- Sure.
- Okay.

Remind me not to eat
on the other side of your plate.

- Absolutely--
Don't eat on the other side of my plate.

We get one side to eat from. That's it!

- Who was the first African American woman
to be elected to U.S. Congress?

- Don't be cheatin'.
Not Barbara Jordan.

- Shirley something.

- Shirley Chisholm.
- Shirley Chisholm.

Shirley Chisholm.

- Not "Shirley something."
- Brooklyn-Brooklyn's finest.

Unbought and unbossed.

Cheers.

- Th-That's pressure, though,

to have Barack Obama watching you
while you, while you play golf.

- I hit the best shot of my life,

and I'm ecstatic.

And he's walking towards me.

And he looks at me,
and he goes, "Good shot."

I went, "Thank you, sir."

That's a good shot.

- Who was the first
African American to win an Emmy?

Oprah?

- An Emmy? Ooh, that's a hard one.

I wanna say Hattie McDaniel,
but she won the first Oscar.

- Harry Belafonte.

- My man!

- Oh, my God!
Wow!

- I bet on the wrong--
Against the wrong one.

Cheers.
- Cheers, kid.

- Harry Belafonte, 1960,

for "The Revlon Revue"
Tonight With Belafonte.

That is amazing.
- I'm tryin' to tell y'all.

- Did you drink, sis?

I did. I did. I drank too.

But, like, that was a good one.

I'm a renaissance n*gro, okay?

A writer, a scholar, a lover, a fighter.

I got a master's degree,
I got a doctorate.

He could do it all, okay?