[cheering and applauding]
What’s up? Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. I appreciate all that applause, but also be careful. We have parents in the audience. There’s a lot of energy to put out this late at night for them. I appreciate you parents coming out ’cause you did the hard work to come here, yes. You had to get, like, babysitters and aunties, or that weird neighbor, like, it’ll probably be fine. Oh, yeah.
[crowd laughing]
[Bell laughs]
Yeah, that’s how it is when you’re a parent. When you’re a parent, you have to do things sometimes for your kids… whether you want to or not. That’s the joy of parenting. Like, my kids like to go camping. It’s not their fault. Their mom is white, all right? [crowd laughing] It’s how she was raised. I got to be honest, as a black man, I just don’t feel like it’s in my DNA to want to sleep outside on purpose, you see what I’m saying? You see what I’m saying? “Let’s go sleep outside for fun.” Why would we do that?
[crowd laughing]
[chuckles] We have too much camping in our history. You know what I’m talking about? -[crowd laughing] -[chuckles] Thank you that section, yeah! -[crowd laughing] -[chuckles] Why would I want to sleep outside? We slept outside the big house for years. Now I have a mortgage on the big house. -[crowd laughing] -[chuckles]
How come… wherever you go camping, it’s always a feature that your cellphone reception gets much worse? Why would you put those two things together? Let’s go out into the forest… in the middle of nowhere, and my cellphone doesn’t work. Nah, nah, nah. Again, as a black man, that makes me real uncomfortable, all right? I got places at home, where my phone goes to three bars, I go, I’m getting the fuck out of here! No.
[crowd laughing]
Unh-unh. ”Sorry, I can’t do the laundry, honey. No, no, no.” I don’t know what might happen while I’m in there, trying to reach you. Text message comes through tomorrow. -[crowd laughing] -[chuckles] Unh-unh, I’m not that kind of person. “I want to live off the grid.” I don’t want to live off the grid. I want the grid on my goddamn forehead! -[crowd laughing] -[chuckles] I want my phone all charged up, all the bars, all the apps ready to go, all the news apps. You know, I need to know everything, at all times. I got an app on my phone that just says, “Run, n i g g a, run!” Oh, shit! [crowd laughing] Oh, shit! It doesn’t even say why. It doesn’t wanna scare me. It just says, “Run, n i g g a, run!” -[crowd laughing] -[chuckles] It doesn’t want to get me nervous. I got high blood pressure. I said I’m black! What have I got to say? -[crowd laughing] -[chuckles] Eventually, it just says, “Stop, n i g g a, stop.” Oh, good… “You good, n i g g a, you good.” Okay. Happens about three times a week. It’s how I got here tonight. “Run, n i g g a, run!” Oh, shit! Hey, I’m shooting a special right there! All right. -[crowd laughing] -[chuckles]
And I can tell… there’s some tension in the audience. Why does your phone have to call you… a n i g g a? [crowd laughing] Why would your phone… have to… call… you… a… Because “Run, black man, run!” doesn’t sound that serious, you know? [crowd laughing] Sounds like it’s encouraging me. [crowd laughing] ”Run, black man, run. You can do it, black man. You can do it. Believe in yourself, black man. Believe in yourself.” Sounds like Oprah started the app, or something. [crowd laughing] Like, it’s encouraging me to seek local office. “Black man, we need more men of color running at all levels of politics. Not just president. We need controllers…” Nah. Then I’m like, “You’re right, app, you make a good point.” [makes thudding sound] Oh, shit! I wish my phone had just called me a n i g g a. [crowd laughing] Which is the name of a book of poetry I’m writing right now.
You gotta do what you can for your kids. That’s the whole thing. Whether I like it or not. And I got two daughters. Actually, currently my wife’s pregnant with our third daughter. That’s right. Yeah, yeah, that’s true. Yeah. -[crowd cheering and applauding] -That’s right. I only make girls, that’s right. That’s right. That’s all that’s coming out of here. If anybody wants a girl, I’ll finish this off and put some in here for you, and then you can… -[crowd laughing] -[chuckles] The interesting thing about having daughters, right now, or kids, even, is that… they are also understanding that the country is in a hectic place. Like, my daughters don’t watch the news, but they can tell that things are not right. They remember when their mom cried on the election night. You know, they know things aren’t happening the way they should. I don’t know how my six-year-old gets the information, but she knows. I was watching the news, and she came in and goes… [deap breath] “Dada, are they still trying to figure out why Donald Trump is the president?” [crowd laughing] ”Yes, how did you know that? What? You watch two seconds of news and you figure– That’s the entire hour of Don Lemon, tonight. ‘Why is Donald Trump the president?’ You just synthesized an hour of CNN into one question. Fuck my show! I’m getting you a show on CNN! Tonight on Sami Bell Live, two questions. One, why is Donald Trump still President? And two, how come my Js are backwards when I write them. I don’t understand! We’re gonna solve these two questions tonight on Sami Bell Live!” Don Lemon tonight The backward Js are actually harder to figure out. She’s like, ”Trump is president because of Russia and the electoral college. Anyway, on to the Js. I try to write ’em…” -[crowd laughing] -[chuckles] -[crowd cheering and applauding] -[chuckles]
Yeah… And you know, the thing is, as bad as things are… as parents, we have to try to give our kids hope, right? Sometimes it’s hard to give them hope. You know. One time, Sami walked in and goes, “Dada… is there anything we like about Donald Trump? I mean, like, anything?” I was, like, “Uh… His haircuts are remarkably consistent.” [crowd laughing] ”He’s gotta take a lot of product. He travels a lot. He must have a big kit of… products.” I’m struggling to give my daughter something to feel hopeful about, with President Trump. Right then my wife walked in the room and went, “Move. No, no, no! Nothing! Nothing! Not a goddamn thing. I’m not mad at you, I’m just tense. No, no. What the fuck is wrong with you?” -[crowd laughing] -[chuckles] That’s right. That’s right. I got a #woke white wife. -[crowd laughing] -[chuckles] Like, why are you entertaining this discussion? [chuckles] But it’s hard. I try to watch a lot of news and stay informed, but the news is not always appropriate for kids these days. Lot of parents, in here, had to explain to their kids what a shithole was. Like, ten years before they’d have to, you know? Like, my wife sometimes gets frustrated. She says, “The news is not important for children.” I’m like, “What shall I turn on?” “I don’t know. Game of Thrones. I don’t give a shit!” [crowd laughing] ”Put on the Red Wedding, you know what I’m saying? I’d prefer the Red Wedding to this. This is not appropriate.”
That’s the thing. You have to, like… you know… The bigger part about being a parent is you got to control the media your kids take in. You can’t just let them watch anything on TV. And we’re really lucky in my household ’cause my oldest daughter is six, and right around the time my daughter Sami started wanting to watch TV, the show Doc McStuffins premiered. Some of you know what I’m talking about. The rest, come along for the journey. Doc McStuffins is one of the greatest TV shows in the history of television. Not one of the greatest kids TV shows. One of the greatest television shows. I’ll put it up against The Wire and The Sopranos any day. [crowd laughing] I watch that show. I’m excited for new episodes. Let me explain. Doc McStuffins is about a little black girl, who’s six years old, and she’s a doctor for her stuffed animals and toys. She wears a stethoscope, and it’s magical, and when it makes a sound, all the toys come to life. They don’t explain how it works. Voodoo? I don’t know what it is. But when her toys have problems, like when they break their arm or feeling tired, she tells them what to do. “You need to take a nap. Here’s a cast.” And so she’s actively being a doctor… on the show, as a six-year-old black girl. -Have I blown your mind, yet? -[crowd] Yeah! There’s more. So it gets kids ready to go to the doctor, not afraid of the doctor. It also teaches kids how to speak up for themselves in general. There was an episode about inappropriate touching. In one episode, one of the stuffed animals was like, “Of course storms are getting worse. That’s global warming.” Holy shit! -[crowd laughing] -[chuckles] Doc is more woke than our president! [crowd laughing] Wait. There’s more. On the show. Doc’s mom, who’s a black woman, is also a doctor of real patients. [deep breath] And we’ve been to her practice in the show. She’s got her own private practice, so we know she’s balliiiiiiiiiing! [crowd laughing] And Doc’s dad… Black man. I don’t know what he does. He’s always in the kitchen cutting vegetables. I don’t know. I don’t know if he gets paid, but he’s like, “Would you like a carrot?” Which is, like, “Oh, my God, black man on TV offering vegetables! What is this?” That’s never been done before. No, it hasn’t, so, yeah, that’s true. [crowd laughing] But there’s more. During the commercial breaks on Doc McStuffins, they actually have real black women, who are real doctors, in real life, and they show you their office, and talk about their practice, and how they became a doctor.
So, my daughters are watching Doc McStuffins, and watching Doc be a black woman doctor, and watch Doc’s mom be a black woman doctor. And then they watch real black women being doctors, so my daughters are, like, “Yeah. Black women are doctors.” -Yeah. -[crowd applauding] Yeah. It’s not even worth clapping about. Yeah. -[crowd applauding] -Black women are doctors. It’s just how the world works. Black women are doctors. And… we got to see how deep the effect was on Sami. She’d watched Doc for about a year, and it was time to go back to the doctor. And she was excited. Kids aren’t excited to go to the doctor. But she was excited. “We need to go to the doctor.” She got there. She sat up on the table, like, “When’s the doctor coming in? Can I touch the sphygmomanometer?” And I was like, “Which one is that?” [crowd laughing] And then… the doctor walked in the room… and it was a white man… and she was, like, “What the fuck is this?” [crowd laughing] ”Nah. Nah, nah, nah. Mnh-mnh, mnh-mnh, mnh-mnh, mnh-mnh. Nope. That’s not a doctor. That’s not a doctor.” [crowd laughing] ”That’s not a doctor.
Frankly, I don’t know if white men are ready to be doctors. I’ve never seen a white man doctor. How do we know if they even know how to become doctors?” -[crowd laughing] -[laughs] But Sami’s also smart. So, she knew, she had to let us know that she wasn’t cool with the situation. But she also knew, she had to do so in a way that let me and her mom know, but didn’t alert the doctor to anything being wrong, ’cause as we’ve taught her, you don’t want to spook a white man. You know what I mean? All the people of color here know that. You don’t want to spook a strange white man. -[crowd laughing] -[chuckles] Keep him in front of you. Make sure… Right. We all teach our kids that. You know what I’m talking about, yeah. -You know what I’m talking about. -[crowd laughing] So, she said something to let us know that she was ready to go. But what she said, was something kids never say. So, I knew she was lying. She turned to my wife and goes, “I’m sleepy.” [crowd laughing] “Oh my, God, I’m just so sleepy! I’d like to stay with this white man touching me, but I just feel like… we should probably go and come back when… [shouting] there’s a black female doctor here!” [crowd cheering and applauding]
[chuckles] What is wrong with you people? -[crowd laughing] -[chuckles] Luckily, we live in Berkeley, California, where you can find black women doctors. Yeah, Berkeley. Yeah. Is that for Berkeley or for black women doctors? [crowd applauding] Yeah, yeah. Berkeley is like a sleepy college town. I like living there ’cause it’s a college town, but it’s also a place to relax. At least, it was that, until the election kicked up into high gear, and then it became this place that… every few weeks the alt-right would show up and start fights in the streets. If there’s anybody here who doesn’t know about the alt-right, let me explain. The alt-right is a bunch of white dudes… How do I explain? They wish there were a little bit taller. [crowd laughing] They wish they were ballers. If they had a girl, they would call her. Yeah. That’s the best way to explain it. It’s what it boils down to, if I had to bottom line it.
[crowd applauding]
So, every few weeks, the alt-right would show up in Berkeley and start fights. People in the media, which is hard for me ’cause I work in the media, would go, “Berkeley is fighting the alt-right in the streets. Look at Berkeley fighting…” I was like, “I live in Berkeley. Berkeley is not fighting the alt-right in the streets.” Now, here’s how it works. The alt-right puts out flyers, they get online, they create graphics, and tweet, and Facebook that they’re going to have a fight in Berkeley… on, like, a Saturday. Then what happens is that, in the surrounding area of Berkeley, people who like to fight are, like, “Wanna fight in Berkeley this weekend?” “Sure, I’d like to. What’s it about? I don’t give a shit. I just wanna hit somebody, yeah.” They show up, and they fight in the streets. The media goes, “Berkeley versus the alt-right. The alt-right is fighting in the streets.” No, it’s not Berkeley. Do you know how it affected the residents when the alt-right showed up first time? This is how the residents were affected. It canceled the farmers market. That’s how Berkeley was affected. There was white women in yoga pants at the fight, going, “This is bullshit!” [crowd laughing] ”How the fuck am I supposed to get my kale, all right? Am I supposed to get it from Whole Foods, like I’m a goddamn refugee? [shouts] Is that what I’m supposed to do? Is that what I’m supposed to do? Like I’m Somali, is that what you want me to do? Carrying yoga mats wrapped in plastic, never been used.” So yeah, the media is like, “It’s Berkeley versus the alt-right.” Then what happens is all these D-list, right-wing celebrities showed up in Berkeley to take advantage of the moment, so they could get some press. So, then you’ve got Ann Coulter and Milo Yiannopoulos showing up, and they had speeches at Berkeley, but they didn’t give the speeches ’cause then the alt-right showed up and there were fights. The police said, “This is not safe for our students,” who are like, “I gotta get to class!” So, their speeches were canceled, and then Coulter and Yiannopoulos and all the people on the right are, like, “Berkeley is anti-free speech. Berkeley doesn’t like free speech.” Nah, I live in Berkeley. Berkeley is fine with free speech. We love freedom of expression. We’re anti-bullshit, all right? We’re not down with bullshit. [crowd applauding] We’re fans of free speech. We don’t have to agree with what you say or do. There’s a naked guy who, for years, just walked around Berkeley. Everybody’s like, “There’s the naked guy. Anyway…” And different people from different sides of the political aisle were fine with it. There’d be women in burqas with their kids going to school. “Honey, the naked guy needs to get to work. We have to get out of his way.” They’re not mad. He’s like, “I got to be naked in the park by 10:30!” Berkeley’s like, “As long as you don’t get any nakedness on me, have at it.” It’s kind of Berkeley’s thing.
We’re not anti-free speech. We’re anti-bullshit, man, you know? And that’s why I hate the whole fake argument about free speech. No. You have the freedom of speech, but you don’t have the freedom of consequences from that speech. You understand what I’m saying? Yeah. -You can say whatever you want to say. -[crowd applauding] But if your free speech causes riots, you have to deal with the consequences. If everywhere you go, people riot after you speak, you gotta deal with that. If everywhere I did comedy, a riot broke out, we wouldn’t be here right now. [chuckles] We’d be on YouTube with this. [crowd laughing] There’d be less people here ’cause they wouldn’t want to get caught up in a riot! Yeah, it’s just ridiculous.
I’ll give you an example, of being responsible for your free speech. For years, the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan used to travel the country giving speeches. Many people thought it was hate speech. What did the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan do? He traveled with security! So, when he gave a speech, the Fruit of Islam would be outside, warning people on the way in. They’d line the walls and be behind him on stage, so Minister Farrakhan felt safe, the audience felt safe, the surrounding community felt safe. He knew he had to deal with the consequences of his free speech. So, what I’m saying is, Ann Coulter and Milo Yiannopoulos, if you want to walk around spewing hate speech, then hire the Nation of Islam, that’s all I’m saying! [crowd laughing and applauding] That’s all I’m saying. That’s all I’m saying. [applaud continues] That’s all I’m saying. And if you do, then please let me film it for my next TV shooooooow! I wouldn’t have to be in it. I would just put Ann Coulter and Milo Yiannopoulos in a 15-passenger van with the Nation of Islam. Just driving around the country. The sexual tension would be amaziiiiiiing! [crowd laughing] Every now and then I’d do a cameo and walk in, like, “Hey, Milo. Here’s some bacon. The Nation loves bacon. All right.” [crowd laughing] [Bell chuckles] [Bell sighs]
Anyway, so, while we’re on the subject of white supremacy… Um… I mean, you brought it up, so let’s talk about it. -[crowd laughing] -[chuckles] [sighs] President Donald Trump. Yeah. No– Yeah. Yeah, I get it. I get it. You’re not down. I get it. Yes, I understand. I mean, some of you are down. You got dragged here by somebody who’s, like, “You need to see Kamau.” There’re some uncles here, “Why do we have to go to this?” “You’ll see. You’ll see.” [crowd laughing] But, man… Don– The President Trump. There’s so many moments we could discuss. We don’t have time. I’m not doing four Dave Chappelle specials. -Um–
[crowd laughing]
I just have to do the highlights for me. Like, there’s moments where it’s like… Some of it is so crazy. It’s just washed under by the tidal wave of more things, so we don’t even focus on it, and we go, “Wait, what’s he saying here?” He did an interview a few months ago, and we all missed it. I caught it. He actually said to a newspaper, “Being president is harder than I thought it was going to be.”
Yeah, no shit, man!
[crowd laughing]
You should see it from this angle, all right? It’s a disaster over here. It’s way harder to watch you be President than it is for you to be president.
[crowd applauding]
And he’s so competitive about nonsense. After the State of the Union, he tweeted that it was the most watched State of the Union, ever. And first of all, it wasn’t. There was one during the George W. Bush era that was more watched. Which makes sense ’cause, back then, TV wasn’t as good, you know? Guess we’ve got to watch this… It’s on every channel. There’s only three channels.
[crowd laughing]
[chuckles] It wasn’t the most watched State of Union, and on top of that… just ’cause people watch it doesn’t mean they like you. We watch it ’cause we need to know what you’re gonna say and how it affects our lives! ‘Cause maybe your big closure was “And that’s why I’m nuking North Korea, now.” Boom! Shit, I’d better get under the table. I think the nukes are coming in. Maybe you’re gonna hate a new group we didn’t know you were gonna hate. We have to go after the cantaloupe farmers. Er, what? Okay… [laughs] That’s why we watched it. Haven’t you heard of hate-watching? That’s what we’re doing as a nation.
[crowd laughing]
[chuckles] What are you talking about? And then, I mean, there’s so many tweets. I can’t go through all the tweets. But one of my favorites was in the wake of Charlottesville, and all the Nazi stuff that was going around America, he actually tweeted, [deep breath] “Our great country has been divided… for decades.” Yeah. All the decades. Like every single one. Ever since we started counting decades, it’s been divided for decades. At year ten, it was, like, “It’s been divided for one decade.” That’s how it works. -[crowd laughing] -[chuckles] The moment, like, the fucking pilgrims landed and saw native people, they’re like, “This is so great. Kill all these people, bring in free labor, let’s make America great agaaaaaaain!” It’s been divided, yes. All the decades. But I think the worst thing about Trump… it’s not even just him, it’s the people who surround him. If there’s an argument against white supremacy, it’s that greasy sack of day-old white men who surround Donald Trump. [crowd laughing] A bunch of day-old white men. Not even the new fresh white men. Like a greasy sack of day-old white men. [crowd laughing] Every white man in the administration… It’s like a pile of mildewed driftwood, you understand? Can’t do shit with it. Can’t whittle it, can’t set it on fire. [crowd laughing] -[crowd laughing] -[Bell laughs loud] [crowd applauding] I love that you’re all, like, “That’s not that funny.” But it was really… quite a picture you painted there.” The administration is just a disaster, from any measure. Some of those white dudes don’t even stay round long enough for me to finish reading their Wikipedia pages. I was like, “Sebastian Gork– Oh, he’s gone. Okay, all right. Oh, Scaramucci, you’re gonna be– No, okay. All right, all right.” Let me close a couple of these windows. -[crowd laughing] -[chuckles] And the people who defend him on television are, like, ”Is this the best you could do? These are the defenders? You couldn’t get better defenders than this?”
One of my favorites. He’s not even on TV now. CNN had a guy named Jeffrey Lord. Yeah. I don’t even think his last name was Lord. I just think that’s what people say, after he talks. [shouts] ”Jeffrey– Lord! Oh… Jeffrey– Lord! Lord, Jeffrey, Lord. What are you saying, Jeffrey Lord? Lord, help me, Jeffrey Lord.” -[crowd laughing] -[chuckles] I think he lives next door to my mom. ”Jeffrey– Lord! Lord… Jeffrey, Lord.” Jeffrey Lord, one time, said, Donald Trump is the Martin Luther King Jr. of health care. [crowd laughing] I was like, “Jeffrey Lord, you are the Sean Spicer of Kellyanne Conways. [crowd laughing and applauding] That’s just math. That’s just math. He was like, “That’s true, I am the Sean Spicer of Kellyanne Conways.”
And I mean, you know, I miss Spicey. Wasn’t he adorable? -[crowd laughing] -[chuckles] It’s like… that’s how white supremacy works. White men get jobs they don’t want or ain’t qualified for, and get to keep them for a long time. He was like, “Sean, we have a job for you as press secretary.” “That’s great, I won’t have to talk in front of people, or there aren’t cameras around, and I’m not good at lying.” “Well, you get the job, anyway.” [crowd laughing] Just seeing him at the press conferences, like a cockroach on his back. -[crowd laughing] -[chuckles] Somebody pick him up and turn him over, so he can leave. [crowd laughing] Sean Spicer seems like he’s composed of the bare minimum amount of semen that it takes to make a human being. That’s all I’m saying. That’s all I’m saying. You know what I mean? Like, the bare minimum amount. Like the little… the egg was there and the sperm was just, like… [moans] [crowd laughing] And they were like, “Technically, that’s enough to make a human being. I don’t know that it’s going to amount to much, but we can try.” -[crowd laughing] -[chuckles] Just like a weak high-five that’s all fingers. Just… [crowd laughing] I guess this deal is sealed? We technically high-fived? [crowd laughing]
Donald Trump Jr. seems like the sequel to the movie that shouldn’t have been made at all. He’s the Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo of humanity is all I’m saying. -[crowd laughing] -[chuckles] Somebody said, “Jesus!” Isn’t it accurate, though? Isn’t it accurate? Yeah, exactly I got two thumbs up. And even when things are clearly egregious, like, clearly, this is not how things should work at the highest levels of the presidency. This is not how we should be around this, this is clearly wrong. They still try to… defend him. And… they don’t actually take anything with the information and make it do anything. The whole thing with when he called Africa and, I think, El Salvador, and… [mutters] Haiti, and said they’re shithole countries. Shithole countries. And it happened. We all know it happened. It was immediately reported. It wasn’t like weeks or months later. And even Senator Dick Durbin, who’s a Democrat, was, like, “Where’s the cameras? He said ‘shithole countries’. He said ‘shithole countries.’ Yes. Is TMZ here? I’ll say it. He said ‘shithole countries’! Anybody on Instagram Live? I wanna tell them.” -[crowd laughing] -[chuckles] ”Anybody still got Vine? I’ll do a five-second Vine. He said ‘shithole countries’. Was that five seconds? Okay, good.” You know… And even Lindsey Graham, who’s a Republican, even he admitted it. He ran out of a meeting to senator Tim Scott, his only black friend. “Tim! Tim! Tim! Tim! Donald Trump just said ‘shithole countries’ in a meeting! Go tell the other blacks, Tim! You have to tell the other blacks.” -[crowd laughing] -[chuckles] ”What do you mean you’re not Tim? I don’t understand.” [crowd laughing and applauding] ”You have to be Tim. Tim, stop playing with me. Tim… Come on, Tim!” [crowd laughing and applauding] He’s like, “Dude, my name is Clarence. I’m on the Supreme Court. We’ve met many times. You do this every day.”
The only… the only… the only…. person I like in the administration is Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Oh, no, come on, everybody. No, she’s– Everybody in this room needs a friend like Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Who will lie to your family’s [shouts] faces… and never blink. Just looking. ”Is he here?” [harsh voice] ”He’s not here.” [crowd laughing] -”I can see him behind you.” -”That’s not him.” [crowd laughing] -”Are we good?” -”Yeah, I guess so.” ”No, she says– I know he’s there, waving at us. But she…” And the frustrating thing… the most frustrating thing, for me, about the Trump era, or error, depending upon your pronunciation… is that… I still find myself in discussions with people who will still say they don’t think he’s a racist. White people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She’s like, “Okay.” She’s like, “People? Oh, white people. Oh, yeah. For a second…” It’s not just white people on the right. It’s white people across the spectrum. You go, “I think Donald Trump’s a racist.” They go, “I mean… [crowd laughing] ”He’s a bad guy, [changes voice] but I don’t know if you can call him a racist, I mean… I wouldn’t make him the head of BET, but I don’t know if you can call him a racist.” -[crowd laughing] -[chuckles] ”I wouldn’t let him do the commencement at Morehouse, but I don’t know if you can call… [drunk voice] can call him a racist. I mean, it’s just… so many things… I wouldn’t have him host the NAACP Image Awards, but I wouldn’t call him a…” White people, when someone brings up Trump’s racism, why do you turn into that thing outside used car lots? [crowd laughing] [drunk voice] ”Oh, I don’t know… I wouldn’t have him make the collard greens for the family reunion, but I wouldn’t call him a racist. I wouldn’t put him in charge of rebuilding Puerto Rico, but I wouldn’t call him a racist. Oops. I wouldn’t cast him in the reboot of Living Single as Overton, but I wouldn’t call him a racist. I wouldn’t have him run the shea butter booth at Afropunk, but I wouldn’t call him a racist.” -[crowd laughing] -[chuckles] ”I wouldn’t have him do the bake sale at the Mumia Abu-Jamal fundraiser, but I wouldn’t call him a racist.” I have hundreds of these… -[crowd laughing] -[chuckles] Play along at home. It’s a fun game. [crowd applauding] ”I wouldn’t buy him a pair of Stacy Adams shoes, but I wouldn’t…” I have so many. ”I wouldn’t cast him as Madea, but I don’t know.” I can’t stop. I can’t stop doing it, I can’t stop. I hope some black people are like, “I can come up with some, too!” This is a fun way to go through the next… three years. -[crowd laughing]
[chuckles] So, white people, let’s be clear. Yes! He’s a racist. 100%. It’s provable. [crowd applauding] It’s provable. You can google it right now. [continuous applauding] If you google “Is Donald Trump a racist?” Google’s, like, “How much time you got?” That’s how it works. He’s a racist. I mean, you don’t have to even go… [exhales] Like, the first time he ever appeared, in print, it was in The New York Times in 1973. And it was ’cause he was a landlord who would not rent his apartments to people of color. That’s the first time, in 1973. And he was investigated by the Department of Justice. Let’s be clear about this. In 1973, the Department of Justice was run by the Nixon Administration! The Nixon Administration started the War on Drugs that targeted people of color, yet they were, like, “This is racist… This is… Nah, this is like extra racist. Give it a fun name like the War on Black People Living Indoors, but this…” -[crowd laughing] -[chuckles] There’s other examples. Central Park Five! Yeah, you know about that, yeah. He took out full-page newspaper ads saying, “Bring back the death penalty… to… to…” ‘Cause he wanted to kill these five men of color… who were accused of sexually assaulting a white woman, and they didn’t do it! They all went to prison. They all spent a lot of time there. They didn’t do it. He took out full-page ads calling for the death penalty. And he never apologized for it. Nobody pushes him about it. Nobody brings it up. Yes, he’s a racist. Yeah! [crowd applauding]
What’s that other thing? Birtherism! ”I don’t know if this black guy was born in America. I think he’s from Kenya. He was born in Hawaii. Like I said, he wasn’t born in America.” Oh, God… And, like I said, white people go, “I don’t know.” After all that, [drunk voice] “I don’t know if you can call him a racist…” I don’t know. Some white man, on Twitter, tweeted this out. He had a blue check mark, so he was an actual white man. [crowd laughing] Not a Russian bot man, an actual white man. He tweeted out a picture of Donald Trump talking to a black man. And he goes, “Look how close Donald is standing to this black man. A racist would never do that.” [shouts] That’s not how racism wooooorks! It’s never been about proximity. Literally never! [crowd laughing] How would they have gotten black people on the boats in Africa? [shouts] ”Get on the boooooat!” [crowd laughing] ”I can’t be close to you because I want you to know I’m definitely a racist.” [shouts] ”Get on the boooooat!” [crowd laughing] It’s not about how close you are to a black person. Thomas Jefferson was real close to black people, you know? [crowd laughing] You know what I’m saying, sister. You know it. -[crowd laughing] -[chuckles] What are you talking about? You gotta get real close to black people to lynch them. Is this thing on? Is this thing on? [drunk voice] ”I don’t know, I mean, that all sounds bad… But I don’t know if you can call him a racist, I mean…” [pants] ”I wouldn’t have him make an album of Grace Jones covers, but I don’t know if you could call him a racist.” That was way funnier than everybody else gave credit for. ”With the hi-top? Donald Trump? Yeah.” [grunts] We’ll meet afterwards at the black people meeting. [crowd laughing]
Fine, I can prove he’s a racist much easier than all that stuff. Donald Trump appointed as the attorney general for the United States of America a man named Jeff Sessions. Yes, yes, we’re all in agreement there. Jeff Sessions was once found to be too racist… to be a judge… [shouts hard] in Alabama! [crowd laughing] Alabama! Alabama! Alabama! And this wasn’t in the ’50s or ’60s, it was in the 1980s! There’s black people on TV getting adopted by white people every day! Diff’rent Strokes. Webster. [crowd laughing] He’s like, “Turn on The Dukes of Hazzard.” That’s how he is! And look, I’m not even trying to make fun of Alabama when I say that. My dad lives in Alabama. I go to Alabama two, three times a year with my family. I love Alabama. But I also know that Alabama is still, in large part… Alabama, you know what I mean? There’s black people walking around, going, “Are we free? I heard we’re free. Somebody said we’re free. I got an alert on my phone that says black people are free. We’re not free? Okay.
♪ Swing low, sweet chariot ♪
♪ Coming for to carry me home ♪
You’re sure? Okay.”
♪ Swing low, sweet chariot ♪
Clearly I don’t know anything about slavery. I’m shoveling the cotton, I guess. [crowd laughing] I want to thank my ancestors who fought hard for me not to know shit about how to pick cotton. Thank you, dead black people. Thank you. -[crowd applauding]
I don’t know. The thing that hits me when I think about all the stuff that Trump is doing, it’s not just racism. It’s sexism, and transphobia, and homophobia, and ableism. You know what? It’s that it just makes me miss Barack Obama. [sobs] I just… [crowd cheering and applauding] [sobs] I just, like… Oh, give me a minute. Like a lot of people, I didn’t agree with everything Barack Obama did. There’s things he did I didn’t agree with. But he was, what’s called… a grown-up? [crowd laughing] I always feel sorry for Barack Obama. On the one hand, he was the president, which means, automatically, he sucked. Yeah. Thank you, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, and of course you know, yeah. Every president sucks. Some presidents just suck worse than others. Our job in a democracy is to push every president to be better than they even think they can be. That’s our job. We’re like parents where the kid’s, like, “I got an ‘A-plus.'” And you’re like, “Is that all you got? You couldn’t do better?” -“No, it’s impossible!” -“I’m still disappointed.”
That’s how it works in a democracy. Now, admittedly, not every president is bringing us “A-pluses.” We got a guy, right now, who’s bringing us “U-minuses.” You know what I’m saying? [crowd laughing] He’s got the paper upside down, going, “I got a lowercase ‘N.'” He’s excited about a lowercase N. But, yeah, our job is to push presidents to be better, no matter how good we already think they are, you know? The problem with the presidency is the way we even talk about the presidency. The way we let the white men, who traditionally win, talk about it. They talk about it like you win the presidency. Then when they win the presidency, they want to be treated like pageant winners. They want us to be like, “Yay, you won!” [sobs] No! [crowd laughing]
No, you don’t win the presidency. We all know how it works. We’re smart people. You buy the presidency. You put a bid on the presidency, and you wait to see if your bid gets taken. You don’t even have to put much money in. They take your bid. And buying the presidency is like buying anything. It’s like… it’s not new. It’s new to you. It’s like buying a used car off the internet. Whatever was wrong with the car before, it’s your problem now. And as we all know, Barack Obama bought the American car, from George W. Bush, who left the American car stuck on the highway… facing the wrong direction… in the fast lane… with bald tires and no steering wheel… and for the first three years, Dick Cheney wouldn’t get out of the back seat. [crowd laughing] ”Go to the right! Go to the right! Go to the right!” ”That’s a circle.” ”I’ll waterboard youuuuuuuuu!” ”That’s illegal.” ”I’ll shoot you in the face and make you apologize to meeeee!” And he did that shit.
Barack was in a unique position ’cause normally in that moment, when the president is having a problem, they’re supposed to get help from co-workers. And he turned to his co-workers, “Hey, senators, can you help me push the car out of the lane?” [shouts] ”Show us your birth certificate!” ”Okay. Congress, can you help?” ”Show us your long-form birth certificate!” Barack Obama was like, “Shoot. I’m sorry, Michelle. Can you help me push this car?” “I got you, boo. Arghhhhhhhhhh!” [crowd cheering and applauding] Yeah. Yeah. You’ve seen those guns. [crowd continues to applaud] Yeah.
If I’m honest, I miss Michelle most of all [sobs].
[Crowd wowing and applauding]
Every day, #BlackGirlMagic just spilling out of the White House.
[crowd laughing]
[chuckles] It’s so amazing. I kind of wish Michelle still had a job in the White House. Every day, when Trump came home from his two hours of hard work… she would stand in the doorway, going…
[tut-tuts]
[crowd laughing]
Look at this motherfucker over here. [tut-tuts] Really?
[crowd laughing]
Part of the job description of president is that you suck. But then, on the other hand, Barack Obama got all that criticism that no one else got in the history of the American presidency. Yeah, you know what I’m talking about. You’d see those squirrelly white people on TV. [shouts] Barack Obama’s a leftist, socialist, militant Muslim! Every time I heard that shit, I was like, “Man, I wish! Okay?” Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah! Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah! I wish! That would have been amaziiiiiing! I don’t know if you can be all those things together, but I would have loved to see the Negro tryyyyy! I think some cancel each other out, but go, Negro, go!
[crowd laughing]
[chuckles] I’m getting so excited, I’m getting a bit of an erection thinking about it now. Mm. Shake it off. Shake it off. Oh, my God, that’d be so exciting! The press conferences, alone, would be pay-per-view! All he wears is baby-blue turtle necks and dashikiiiiiiiiis. Long black leather jackets. Bullet belts like you see from the movies. Got a rifle on his back at all times. Big nappy afro, black beret tilted off to the side. Never wears pants. Oh, he does lean to the left, yeah. There’s a wicker chair in the Oval Office. He’s always standing between a Black Panther and an actual black panther… [snarls]
[crowd laughing]
…while they play the movie The Black Panther on a loop in the background. [laughs] Press conferences are as short as shit. Walks up to the microphone, looks round angry, Black power fist, walks away. And they play the blackest song in the history of all time. The theme from Sanford and Son. [humming]
[crowd laughing]
[continues humming] Can’t get blacker than Redd Foxx and Quincy Jones. Unless Beyoncé wants to jump on. You know what I’m talking about. [chuckles] That’s a black president even black people could be afraid of, yes. Even the ghost of Malcolm X would be, like, “Not by those means. That is completely unnecessary.” That’s not the Negro we had.
[crowd laughing]
And the truth is that… when Trump won, I wasn’t that surprised. I know it caught people off guard, but I travel around this country a lot. I see a lot of different parts of this country. I can see that one of the problems of this country, or one of the challenges, is that we all live in our communities. Some of us love our communities so much, we start to think that everybody else should live like we live and if they’re not, they’re doing America wrong. The great thing about traveling is I get to hear things, and meet people, and experience things I never would have, that to me sound weird, and I don’t know where to classify them. But then I realize it’s not really about me. It’s fine. But it opens up my ideas of what this country is. We have to expand our idea of what an American is so we don’t think other people are doing America wrong when they’re just doing it differently than us. All right? Yeah. It’s true of people on the left, too. Not just the right. [crowd applauding] And I learned that lesson specifically. You got to expand your ideas. You don’t know what you might hear.
I had a gig in Garden City, Kansas. Yeah. Somebody’s like, “Oh.” [chuckles] Somebody’s like, “Uh-oh. This won’t end well.” So, Garden City, Kansas, is one of those places that you can’t fly directly there. It’s, like, two or three planes, then you go to the airport and there’s another plane, but on a different airline that you didn’t sign up for. You been to those places? I got to St. Louis airport, I’m like, “I’m here for my flight to Garden City, Kansas.” They’re like, “It’s down there.” I start walking to a part of the airport… where there’s, like, dark… The overhead lights are, like… [imitates electricity crackling] And I get to the counter and it’s like… Joe’s Air Conditioners and Flights. You’re like, “Whoa! Did you start out selling air conditioners then add flights to sell more of them?”
There was, like, an old-school hotel bell. Ding! The guy walks out of the back, like, “Hey, what’s up, man?” I’m, like, “I’m going to Garden City, Kansas.” He’s like, “Okay.” He’s doing my ticket, and he goes, “Oh, before we get any further, I need to ask you question. How much do you weigh?” [crowd laughing] Like, why are you asking me that? He’s like, “‘We need to know how much so we can figure out the weight distribution on the plane.” I was like, “How much do I weigh?” [crowd laughing] ”Not enough to go to Garden City, Kansas.” How much do I weigh? Here’s the thing. I’m a man. A heterosexual… cisgender… Dad man. Nobody gives a shit how much I weigh, all right? It never comes up. No, I have no fucking idea how much I weigh. [crowd laughing] I’m a heterosexual, cisgendered, Dad man. I weigh perfect, okay? You know what I’m saying?
[crowd laughing]
[chuckles] I look beautiful, no matter what you say. Words can’t bring me down. [chuckles] I’m like, I’ve no idea how much I weigh. I was standing at the counter, like, “Um… Let’s see, I was, like…” [deep breaths] ”170 in high school? Maybe I’m like 175 now? I mean, I like a midnight burrito, every now and again, so 176. Let’s just round up to 180, just for the sake of argument.” [chuckles] I didn’t say that… ’cause I wanted to survive the flight, so… I was like, “I got to pick an amount that I think at least covers me?” I was, like, “750 pounds.”
[crowd laughing]
[chuckles] ”Why are we bringing math into this anyway? Shouldn’t you have figured it out before I got to the airport? What are you doing? Just fill her up, okay? Just put all the gas you can into the gas tank, until it spills out, then put the cap on real quick. I’ll carry gas in my lap if that helps. I’d rather crawl out on the fucking airplane and put a thing back in the…”
[crowd laughing]
[chuckles] I had my backpack, and I’m about to get on the plane. He goes, “You can’t take your backpack on the plane, ’cause that’ll screw up the weight distribution, too.” I was like, “Okay. Let me just take my laptop out so I can watch a movie before I die.” And the guy goes, “No, that’ll screw up the weight distribution, too.” I’m like, “It’s a MacBook Air…” ”Can’t do it.” So I give him my laptop. And I get on the plane, singing to myself.
♪ Long long time ago ♪
♪ I can still remember ♪
♪ How that comic used to make me smile ♪
♪ But February made me shiver ♪
♪ With every punchline he delivered ♪
♪ Bad news on the doorstep ♪
♪ I couldn’t take one more step ♪
♪ I can’t remember if I cried when I read about his widowed white bride ♪
♪ But something touched me ♪
♪ Deep inside ♪
♪ The day ♪
♪ The NAACP Image Award-nominated comedian ♪
♪ Died ♪
[crowd wowing] ♪ And we were singing… ♪
[crowd singing] ♪ Bye-bye, Miss American Pie ♪
♪ Drove my Chevy to the levee But the levee was dry ♪
♪ Them good ole boys were drinking whiskey and rye ♪
♪ Singin’ this’ll be the day that I die ♪
♪ This’ll be the day that I die… ♪
[shouts] Yeeeeeaaaaaah! No one knew that was gonna happen. No one knew that shit was going down. Some of you are like, “I haven’t felt this good since the election!” Who knew we just needed an “American Pie” sing-along? The white people are, like, “My spine is back! My spine is back! [shouts] Donald Trump’s a raciiiiiiist!” [crowd laughing] Felt good, huh? Meanwhile, all the black people are like, “What the fuck is this?” ”Nah, Negro. Nah. Nah. I knew this was one of those private school Negroes. I knew this shit.”
[crowd laughing]
[chuckles] So I get to Garden City, Kansas. Yeah, we’re still there. It’s like… This is gonna go for a while. This is like R. Kelly’s Trapped in the Closet… -[crowd laughing] -[chuckles] I get to Garden City, Kansas. I do the gig. It goes fine. After the gig, I’m in, like, a school cafeteria… and I get some tea… and I’m looking for some sugar to put in my tea. But I couldn’t find any sugar. And all of a sudden, I see the oatmeal station. I see there’s brown sugar, so I go, “I’ll put brown sugar in my tea.” I walk over to the oatmeal station, and I put some brown sugar in my tea, and at that moment, this little old white lady sees me doing it. And she walks over to me. You hear things, in small towns, I don’t even know how to react. She walks over, and she goes, “Excuse me. Are you putting brown sugar in your coffee?” I was like, “No, my tea.” She goes, “Whoo! ‘Cause if you had been, then I’d think to myself, ‘Now I’ve seen everything!'” [crowd laughing] [shouts] Nooooooooooo!
Here’s the thing about that. If that’s your response to me putting brown sugar in my coffee, I know one of two things is true. Either you’ve seen everything. Or, more likely, you’ve seen… [shouts] nothing! Not a goddamn thing. You are living Groundhog Day every day of your life… You wake up, go to work, come home and watch that Wheel of Fortune/Jeopardy back-to-back that’s been on for 30 years. Then you immediately go, “Night, night.” [snores] You’ve never seen primetime television. Now I’ve seen everything? From me putting… I was like… I was a little sad I wasn’t actually putting brown sugar in my coffee. What would her reaction have been like then? Like, maybe she’s seen everything… and this is the last thing she needs to see before she dies. Like she’s got a bucket list, and it’s all filled out, and she’s ready to die, but she needs to see one more thing. Maybe she’s like, [harsh voice] “I’ve been everywhere. I’ve seen everything. I was at Stonewall with my LGBTQ brothers and sisters fighting the cops. I was organizing with the migrant farm workers in Mexico. I was with Che Guevara when I said, ‘Keep wearing the hat. It looks cute.”’ [crowd laughing] ”I was in Silicon Valley with Steve Jobs. I said, ‘I don’t give a shit what you call it. Call it Apple. I’m hungry, Steve.’ I’ve been everywhere. I’ve seen everything. But the one thing I’ve never seen… is a random black guy… putting brown sugar… in his coffeeeee! I just want to diiiiiiie. I can’t wait much longer. But I was cursed as a young girl. I’m 172 years old.” [gasps] ”I see a black guy! With a coffee cup. He’s putting brown sugar in it. Lord Jesus, thank you! I’ve been a faithful servant. Excuse me, black man. Are you putting brown sugar…” [deep breath] ”in your coffee?” ”Nah, it’s my tea.” [shouts] Damn it! I want to shuffle off this mortal coil! Disappointeeeeeeed! The next day in Garden City, Kansas– No, I’m just kidding! -[crowd laughing] -[chuckles] It just keeps going!
So, yeah… There’s a lot of different people in this country with different ideas. Some of those ideas we need to fight back against when they’re wrong or hurting people, but some are just different. You know. And the amazing thing about having my kids, my daughters, is I’m starting to see the world through their eyes, which is different to mine, ’cause they’re people living a different experience as mixed-race/black kids. Thank you, white people, for that. They have this two-identity thing, so I don’t have all the answers for them, and my wife who’s white doesn’t have answers so we learn through their eyes. You know? And it’s sort of interesting, because Sami is darker than Juno… and I didn’t realize how that was affecting them. Until one day I was talking to my daughters, I was like, “Hey, we’re all black people.” That’s how we talk in my house. “We’re all black people.” Their mom wasn’t in the room at the time. I was like, “Hold on a second. We’re all black people.” And my daughter Sami… at that moment, looks at me and goes… and points at her sister…
[crowd laughing]
She was like, “Don’t hurt her feelings! She’s going to find out she’s white some day!” I realized we’ve totally flipped the whole white supremacy thing in my house! In my house, black is good, and white’s the bad thing to be! She was like, “Don’t hurt her feelings. She’s gonna find out she’s white.” And as much as I knew that that was not correct… I was also too busy laughing. [crowd laughing] And looking for a pen to write it down, you know? In that space when I was laughing and looking for a pen, suddenly Sami brightened up and goes, “Wait, I just realized something. In our house, we have two blacks and two whites.” Are you thinking about a potential race riot? What are you doing? Yes, Donald Trump might bring around the actual race riot, but it’s not gonna affect our house! Think we’re going to split up into teams at our house? ”Blacks on that side. Whites on this side. Let’s do this!” Like we would also? I gotta be honest, if we did have to have that kind of fight in the house, I love Sami. She’s tough, but I want my three-year-old daughter Juno. If you’re in a fight, you want a three-year-old with you ’cause they don’t play fair, and Juno… Three-year-olds have that thing where they have all their physical capabilities, but the brain hasn’t caught up with their bodies, so they can’t get the words out. They’re kind of like teeny-tiny Hulks, you know? [roars] So that’s who I want on my side if we’re breaking into fight teams in the house. Juno, she’s adorable and sweet, but sometimes she just gets mad. Like, she actually takes swings at people! You know what I mean? Like, she regularly will take a swing at me. Again, I’d like to parent them over it, but it’s also kind of adorable and hilarious! One time, she took a swing at me, I go, “Okay, wait a minute, Juno. What’s your best-case scenario for this? What’s your best case? Let’s say you hit me in my thigh. Somehow that hits a fresh point and you knock me the fuck out. I’m just out. Then what happens? You eat all the bananas you can reach, then what happens?” She looked me in the eye and said, “I figure out.” [crowd laughing and applauding]
[chuckles] Yeah. It’s tough. And so now the thing is, we’ve had to teach her that she’s got to be careful. ‘Cause we actually got our first note home from her school. Apparently, there was a disturbance over a toy. Her and a little boy fought over the toy. The note said she hit the boy, and she actually scratched him with her fingernails. It’s moments like that, you find out a lot about who you are as a parent. ‘Cause in that moment, I turned to Juno and I said, “Juno, we gotta cut your fingernails ’cause… Don’t do the crime and the time, Juno! That’s…” I think that’s how that expression goes. Yeah, I wasn’t really mad at her for hitting a kid. I learned from my mom. You don’t take the state’s side against your child. [crowd laughing] So now we have a rule that Juno is not allowed to hit anybody… but me. The point being, I don’t want her walking round hitting people, but also, as a future lady, I want her to know how to throw a punch. You see what I’m saying? I don’t want the first time she needs to throw a punch to be the first time she throws a punch. At some point, she’ll be like, “I know I’m not supposed to hit people, but… wallaaaaaa” [shouts] The great thing is, because she’s hitting me, she’s really getting her core strength up, ’cause I’m huge, like 180, 182 pounds. [crowd laughing] Yeah, so she’s really working her core! You know? Like some What’s Love Got To Do With It Angela Bassett-era, you know? [chuckles] I think that’s great. One time she’ll have to hit a dude. “What did you say? Wallaaaaaa” [shouts] Like Flawless Victory. Finish him! So, I realized that… Juno being lighter, the world does not always see us as being connected. ‘Cause she looks white to white people. Not to black people. They’re like, “I see that hair and that nose, that’s one of us there.” -[crowd laughing] -[chuckles] It’s got a little extra kink to it. But when we walk around the world together, just the two of us, the world doesn’t always see us as being connected, you know? The thing with Juno, like I said, she’s a little… [grunts] But she also likes to run. Sometimes she’ll be like, “Dada, can I run?” Yeah, so she goes… [grunts] Like LeBron on the fast break. I let her run, especially when we go to airports ’cause I want her to get the wiggles out before the flight. So, she’ll take off running, and she’ll run full-on. She doesn’t get out of people’s way. You get out of her way, and I love it. As a young woman, she should make the world bend to her, instead of bending to them. You know what I’m saying? Just keep running… They’ll figure it out.
[crowd applauding]
The funny thing is in airports, she’ll be 20, 30 feet away from me and people are like, “There’s this little white baby running…” and they look up for the kid’s parents… but they’ll see me, and they don’t see me as a parent. They’re like, “Black man, move! I’m looking for her parents! You can’t be the parent. You’re a different shade! That’s how parenting works all the time! Move, black man!” And ’cause I’m a comedian, I’m like, “Oh, my God, yes! Let me help you find this child’s parents. Is this an amber alert? Is that how this works? I don’t know! Do we text Amber? I don’t know what to do!” [crowd laughing] People don’t like that joke. “That’s cruel to do to your daughter.” Look, she doesn’t get that far away. And nobody ever gets that involved. They’re at the airport, they’re like, “Maybe she’s late for a baby flight.”
[crowd laughing]
I mean, babies fly for free in the overhead on Spirit Airlines. I don’t know how it works. [laughs] So one time we’re in the airport and she takes off running. Like 20, 30 feet ahead of me, she turns a corner, so I gotta catch up. I turn the corner, and she’s found this toy store in the airport. And this toy store has these huge inflatable Mickey Mouses. Like, they’re just huge! And she sees them, and she grabs, like, five of them. She sets them on the ground in a semicircle and sits across from them, like, [shouts] “Airport tea party!” Which I didn’t know was a thing. Airport tea party. She does that and this woman who works at the toy store goes, “No! No! No!” And starts snatching the Mickey Mouses from her, like started pulling them. I was like, “What are you doing, lady?” First, nobody talks to my kid that way. You don’t know my kid and how I parent. We don’t talk to our kid that way. You can’t just yell at my kid. Second, it’s a toy store in the airport. You expect no one’a gonna touch this shit? Third, you may not realize, but my girl is black and mixed race. Black women take the shit end of the stick a lot in this country. So I don’t need you teaching her that at age three, okay? Nah. you can’t just be yelling at her. That’s not how it works, you can’t– No. And fourth… you just fucked up a sale. I almost bought five Mickey Mouses, you understand what I’m saying? Five overpriced airport– I would have bought six, three for each, so they wouldn’t fight over them. I almost headed back to the gate with six huge bags. “Hi, Emma. I bought six inflatable Mickey Mouses. Juno kind of liked them for a second. No, she doesn’t like them now, but we have all six of them. Yeah, we have to leave the luggage here in the Denver airport, I’m sorry. We gotta get these home.” So, lady, you just fucked up a sale. You just fucked up a huge sale. And, you know… But I was, like… in that moment, and my mom had moments like this with me, so I remember these moments, moments when the outside world gets in the way of your family… and you figure out how to defend your family and let your family know that you’re on their side no matter what happens. You know, and I realized in that moment that I had to defend her, but I also had to do what I’m trying to do in 2018. When racism happens to me… Historically, people of color just hold it. This is true of all the hates. Like transphobia, like homophobia, like ableism. You just hold it, and you have to take it home. But in 2018, I’m playing hot potato. I just toss it right back. Nope! I’m out of time. I’m out of time. [crowd applauding] You tell the story. So I realize I have to defend her, and also toss the racism back to this lady. I look down at my beautiful daughter Juno. “It’s okay, Juno, we have to go, because apparently… [shouts] they don’t serve black people here!”
[humming Sanford and Son theme] Thank you, everybody! ♪ Long long time ago ♪ Thank you.
[crowd cheering and applauding]
Thank you. [crowd continue cheering and applauding] Sir, I feel like I’m looking into my future. How am I doing in the future? It looks like I’m doing all right. It looks like I’m doing all right. [chuckles] I like those gloves. I’m gonna start wearing those gloves.
