Very pleased to announce my team came in second place at Cultivated Wit's Comedy Hack Day! Here you can see the pitch that got us the win, including me shitting on Reddit right in front of one of its founders. AdStalker is available on the Google Chrome Store or at getadstalker.com.
A Literary Conversation with Baratunde Thurston, author of How to Be Black.
Baratunde Thurston is the supervising producer of The Daily Show, co-founder of Cultivated Wit, co-host of Our National Conversation about Conversations about Race and the author of How To Be Black.
Baratunde: “I would say the most important thing to know about this book, is that it’s funny and true. You can find it in the comedy section in your local bookstore, but yes, it is a true story and memoir of my life with a focus on race. I grew up in Washington DC to black parents, one of whom raised me, one of whom died when I was quite young. There was a heavy dose of Afrocentrism in my life and I went to very elite educational institutions. The idea of black identity being a combination of the Afrocentric ‘hood living’ and the best education the country has to offer, in my case Harvard - all that residing in one person is racially interesting. The ‘how to’ part comes with advice I offer based on different phases and experiences in my life. I try to relay those things to you, the reader, with practical and satirical intent.”
SBR: “Does the reader need to have a specific perspective to find themselves in these chapters?”
Baratunde: “There’s a universal point of access to the book. The ‘how to’ chapters are generally written as simulations, so anyone can embody the role - like a first person video game. I let you be the black employee or the black president and I lay out before you, the different options and paths you can take and the consequences of them. So if you are in real life the black friend, then I’m writing about you. But if you are the friend of the black person, then you get to try that out for a moment and get to see what they might be experiencing by being in your circle.”
SBR: “How do you feel about color blindness and the point of view that we’re all the same, which seems to be made to try to defuse racial tension?”
Baratunde: “I would call that the nonsense view. If I believed this, I would have called the book ‘We are All the Same’. The substance of ‘How to be Black’ is the opposite of that. There is no one way to be black and being black is not the only thing in this world. In terms of multitude, I brought other perspectives into the book. Mine is varied, but it’s still the perspective of a man who grew up on the East Coast in the United States and worked in heavily professionalized environments. I included a rural perspective, a female perspective, there’s the ‘actually born in Africa’ perspective and there’s a West Coast perspective - I call them my black panel. The people I brought into the book are almost all black. Other than one man from Canada who is white and I think of him as my control group. I wanted to ask white people about race because I think they’re getting off the hook too easily by not having to answer for it. Since the book has come out, I started a podcast called Our National Conversation About Conversations About Race. There are three of us hosting it: me, Tanner Colby, who is a white man from the South and now lives in Brooklyn, and Raquel Cepeda, who is a Latina women from the Dominican Republic living in the Inwood neighborhood of Manhattan. The three of us try to bring a trifocal perspective, at least, to the podcast every other week. We all wrote books on the subject of our racial identity and it’s a good starting point for a discussion that’s not binary or all male, which is a lot of what we encounter in media.”
SBR: “I’m curious how you landed on the title of your book.”
Baratunde: “It’s ridiculous. The point was: it’s a lie. ‘How to Be Black’ is a lie. I’m sorry. I do apologize to the people who hope this book will transform them into a black person or anything black. Maybe temporarily as you’re reading the ‘how to’ chapters you can pretend. And to the black person feeling inauthentic: this book does not solve that problem. The book was a satirical concept. I was working for The Onion at the time, which was a heavy influence on me. I had tweeted this joke argument with a comedian friend of mine about ‘how black are you’ and we were trying to out-black each other. That’s when HarperCollins was like, how about writing a book? I like the title because you cannot deliver on that title. It’s stark, it makes you think.”
SBR: “ The book has been out since 2012. Is there a moment you had because of the book that was a big surprise?”
Baratunde: “I’ve learned nothing. Everything is the same. This book had no impact on me. I foresaw everything that happened, no surprises, no emotional moments. Nothing special I would say really (laughs).”
SBR (laughs): “If you dislike this question, we’ll move right on.”
Baratunde: “It’s a fine question. This Spring, I was in Chicago and I was having a stressful day with lots of tiny failures. Bad weather, flight delays, the Uber app not working, you know - the struggle. I was bothered by this day, I was seeking the bar at the train station, and this guy came up to me and he’s like, ‘Baratunde?’ and I was like, ‘No! I want to be in my bubble of sadness and anger alone!’ and he was like, ‘Is that really you? I can’t believe it!’. He was so happy and said that the book changed his life. He hung out and I did a little video interview with him, he took selfies. It turned out he’s this black dude, dreadlocks, living in Chicago, he moved to the suburbs when he was young. His black family members didn’t think he was black enough and not talking right, and the white kids in the suburbs exoticised him and thought of him as extra black. So he thought he never quite fit in. He said that the book reminded him that he wasn’t alone and was a salvation that was funny and reflective. We hugged and we laughed and we were giddy. Like two school girls in the train station, but only as grown-ass men. The other moment was with a woman I met a year ago in San Diego at an event for college book buyers where I was on a panel. Afterward, she came up to me and said she was 33-years-old and she had found out that she was black 6 months ago because she found out her father was black and not Latino like she had been told growing up. She had externally identified with being Latina. Then the truth came out about who her father was and she realized that she was black. She said the book was awesome for her. I didn’t get her contact. I’d love to interview her one day. I have to find her for our race podcast. I’m on a mission now.”
SBR: “If you’re out there…”
Baratunde (laughs): “I have to find her. We screamed, we hugged. I was like, ‘You literally just found out and you are using my book as a guide because you don’t know how to do it - that’s crazy!’ I’d say that’s one of the most significant interactions I had because of the book. And then there’s the spontaneous parade that the president threw in my honor. I couldn’t make it because I was busy fighting ISIS. I was like, ‘If you can’t call me about this parade in advance, I don’t know. That’s not us. I want a real connection with you.”
SBR: “What question would you ask yourself about this book?”
Baratunde (laughs): “Ok so that question is either very awesome or very lazy. I had this book in me. A lot of it flowed easily. It was an excuse to ask questions of myself and to look back at my life in a more comprehensive fashion and try to make sense of it. A memoir forces you to answer questions of who you are. I guess one question that could be asked is: Did I see myself differently after I wrote the book? And the answer to that question, which I haven’t thought about until right now, is that it did change some things. I found out facts about myself I didn’t know before. I did a little family history digging and painted a picture physically of the geography of my upbringing. I always really appreciated my mother, but I don’t really understand how she did what she did. I realized I turned out pretty good and she is the reason. There are so many opportunities for everything to go wrong - criminally, police-wise, for being in DC at the time. There’s so much drama that could have played out differently, but it didn’t. I escaped the racial self-doubt that exists for so many people who had a similar journey to mine and the questioning: am I good enough, do I belong here? There’s some significant angst, and I dodged most of it. That’s not normal. I think she equipped me with, as Liam Neeson might say, a particular set of skills to weather that transition with minimal psychological damage. I’m very grateful for that. The more trite thing I’ve experienced are people who think the book is the whole story. ‘Oh, I know you and your life.’ It’s like no, you see what I chose to write down. I was in charge of that. There are stories that are not in there. This is my version of the truth.”
SBR: “That truth you’re talking about, does the book stay relevant because of it?”
Baratunde: “Yeah, it’s still relevant and true. The version of myself in the book is still quite useful. I’m constantly evolving. I hope I’m a better writer and slightly funnier now. But yes, I wanted the book to last a long time. I was coming out of a political blogging environment, which is so timely and disappears so quickly. The point is: buy the book. You’re gonna get truth.”
SBR: “Who do you really hope will read this book?”
Baratunde: “Human people. (long pause) I’m going to answer this question in a way I haven’t before. I think certain people who are new to the US and how it works, should read this book. I think it’s a primer on how things have developed. It’s a partial building block to understanding why things are the way they are here. That’s my highest aspiration. I also think it’s interesting for people who are younger than me. They’ve grown up thinking that race matters less somehow and that’s not quite true. We’re still defined by culture created by people who are long dead and live with their reality. So the book is for younger people who think we’re over it, which we’re not. One of the best letters I got was from a mother who said she couldn’t talk about race with her son. He thought that she was out of touch and trying to impose this oppressive history on him. She thought he was disrespectful and flippant. And my book was the bridge - they both liked it and could talk about race because of the book. If you’re struggling to talk about race - in your head, or to another person - this is a good reference and access point. The jokes and the humor eases it. There’s data, but it’s emotional data mostly, in the form of anecdotes and lived experiences.”
SBR: “What are you currently reading?”
Baratunde: “Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find and Keep Love. If that doesn’t tell you something about where I’m at in life, then I don’t know.”
The interview was held in New York City at the Canal Street Station by Uli Beutter Cohen for Subway Book Review.
OK - lots of links and lots of love to hand out today. So read on for evidence of how well I appreciate people.
Last weekend I participated in Comedy Hack Day, a super fun comedy hackathon put on by Baratunde Thurston and the friendly folks at Cultivated Wit. The idea is that a bunch of comedians and developers spend a weekend together and create apps, websites and use technology to create comedy. Tons of funny and surprisingly functional projects actually get made, then the herd of projects is thinned to 7 finalists. On Sunday night everyone gathers for a party and the final round of judging where comedians and tech leaders pick a winner. This year the judges were awesome, and in particular two comedy heroes of mine, Michael Ian Black and Aparna Nancherla, were there to hear the finalists pitch.
Through an amazing string of last minute scrambles and super-smart people coming together to work their asses off and help the idea come to life, my project Pizza Blaster actually got made AND got picked to be one of the finalists. It was a wild ride and a humbling experience to feel all the love and support the idea got from a group of generous strangers. Enormous thanks to Nikki Plyem, Adrien Pellerin, Devin McGinty and Matt Condon for stepping in and making it all happen. My wife Uli also gets a major shout-out for grabbing MIB and making him do an endorsement video for Pizza Blaster. She’s really good at grabbing people for interviews.
Pizza Blaster was awarded a special prize for “Best Delivery” and we took home our very own pizza! But more importantly than the pizza prize, I got to stand on stage in front of a room of smart and creative people and make them laugh, which is really the best I could have asked for.
Also, make sure you head over to the Pizza Blaster website and get on the list to be notified when the game is ready for public release. It is a good game. Probably the best game.
Also read this article, which explains Comedy Hack Day some more and also praises me.
