- There was one time when I was eating fried chicken
in public though.
And this Black guy came up to me and he was like, "Really?"
(audience laughs)
"Are you really gonna' eat fried chicken right now?"
And I was so embarrassed
because like white people were sitting right next to me
and I was like, are you really gonna' chicken shame me
in front of these white people?
Like white people would never do that to each other.
They'd never be like, "Really?
Are you really going to eat hummus right now?
In front of these Black people?"
(upbeat music) (audience applauds)
- There was a middle seat open next to me
I ain't want none of them sitting there talking to me
the whole damn flight.
So I have to turn my blackness up.
Oh yeah, white people, that's something we do.
It's called managing your blackness.
See white people, y'all can be white all day long.
Black people can't be Black all day long.
(audience claps and laughs) Society don't play that.
It's messed up.
But we have to choose throughout our day when to be Black
and when not to be.
It's crazy.
That Black dude you work with,
that ain't how he really act.
(audience laughs)
That is not the real James.
(audience laughs)
You go to a job interview, you cut that Black shit off.
You go in there like, "Yes, it behooves me to-"
I don't even know what the hell behoove means
but I feel like it goes there, you know.
So I ain't want none of them sitting next to me.
So I reached in my bag, put my baseball cap,
put in on sideways, put my sunglasses on,
put my headphones on, turned that shit up real loud.
I was like kill these niggas, all these niggas.
(audience laughs)
Didn't nobody sit next to me.
They were sitting on each other laps
before they came to this seat.
Soon as they closed the door and locked it,
I was like woo, took all that bullshit off,
and pulled my Sudoku book out and was like.
(audience laughs and claps)
- I've been traveling a lot lately.
I went camping for the first time recently.
(audience member cheers)
Thank you.
I'll never do it again.
I feel like when I tell people I've been camping
for the first time, they're like, but you're a full adult.
But I'm Black.
It's not something my family did.
My parents were like, "We bought a house,
we sleep on the inside."
(audience laughs)
And my boyfriend is white
and he took me to his homeland of Missouri to do this.
And the group I was with is my boyfriend
and his childhood friends so everyone else is white,
which is not their fault.
And we're getting ready to swim in the river.
And the way they're getting ready
is by putting on prescription sunscreen,
and long sleeve swim shirts,
and long swim shorts.
And this is all foreign to me 'cause I have melanin
so I just spray a little sunscreen and go.
And it's just further proof to me
that white people aren't made for this earth.
(audience laughs and claps)
Like y'all can't handle outside.
I feel like people don't always like it when I talk
about race in my sets, which I get.
It makes some people feel uncomfortable.
I've done shows where you can literally
hear assholes tighten up like (imitates squeaking sound).
(audience laughs)
"Make her stop!"
But I don't think race is such a touchy taboo topic
that we can't discuss, or think about, or laugh at.
And I think it's good if we ask each other questions
or how else are we gonna' learn from our mistakes.
When I was in college, I lived down the hall
from a foreign exchange student from Korea
and she kept asking me if I knew certain people.
She'd be like, "Do you know John?"
And I'd be like, "No."
She'd be like, "Do you know Shayna?"
And I'd be like, "No."
And I'm not sure what tipped me off but I started to wonder
if she was only asking me if I knew Black people.
So I asked her, I was like,
"Are you only asking me if I know Black people?"
And she goes, "Yes."
And I was like, "Do you think I know all the Black people
at this school because I'm Black?"
And she goes, "Uh-huh, yes."
And I was like, "You can't do that, that's a stereotype.
That'd be like if I assume you knew all the Korean people
at this school."
And she goes, "I do.
We all know each other."
And I was like, "Nevermind."
It's a good thing we kept talking.
If that conversation had ended two sentences
before that point, I would've left being like,
"That racist bitch."
And she would've left being like,
"What's wrong with this antisocial Black girl?
She's not hanging out with her friends."
- Something's wrong man.
Just don't be one of these people
that's surprised that Black folks got issues.
Them the people I can't deal with.
I'd rather talk to somebody that don't agree with me
than somebody that's had their eyes closed.
"Did you know Black people, why are Black people angry?"
We've been angry.
(audience laughs)
This ain't new.
You think this just happened last couple of years.
Black folks been trying to tell y'all forever
that they had some issues and we sat, we invented the blues.
(audience laughs and claps)
What more of a sign did you need?
We literally invented an entire genre of music
based on sadness, that's how sad-
The blues was created here.
That is an American art form that is not native African.
Go listen to old African music, the shit is happy
'cause we was free.
(audience laughs and claps)
Every old Africans song,
♪ Freedom in Africa ♪
♪ Freedom, freedom, freedom ♪
Soon as we got off the slave ship (imitates blues music).
We've been sad.
How the hell are you surprised?
"They're not patriotic.
The Black people don't like the national anthem anymore."
(audience laughs)
Ain't no shock to you, man.
You wanna know what Black folks feeling?
Just listen to they music.
Our music tell you everything that's going on
in the Black psyche.
(audience claps) It's a beautiful telegram.
And nowhere in the history of Black music
is there a hit patriotic song.
(audience laughs)
It ain't what we do.
I mean we'll cover a song
but like we don't write no original patriotic song.
Black artists ain't never,
cause we got a conflicted relationship with the country.
You can't write no honest patriotic song.
You gotta leave that to white artists, they had a good time.
(audience laughs)
You had a good time in America,
you damn right you should be writing the patriotic-
♪ I'm proud to be an American ♪
♪ Where at least I know I'm free ♪
(audience laughs and claps)
Be serious.
You couldn't possibly expect that level of patriotism
from a race of people that have so many issues.
You can't, it's not realistic.
Black people, we don't sing about America.
We sing about specific cities
where you can have a good ass time.
(audience laughs and claps)
That's what we do.
We don't talk about the country.
We can tell you where the party at though, we can do that.
Look, I can't tell you nothing about America
but lemme tell you about the city where the heat is on,
all night on the beach to the early morn.
Welcome to Miami.
That's where you got to go.
You ever been to California?
Oh my god, boy, you have to go down to California, boy.
Boy, California knows how to party.
The city of LA, the city of good old Watts,
and the city of Compton.
They keep it rocking.
Write that shit down, trying to tell you.
(audience laughs and claps)
They keep it rocking.
Black people don't do patriotism.
Maybe "Georgia on my Mind",
that's the closest we probably come.
Maybe that one.
That's a good song, it's warm, it's about the country.
Ray Charles, "Georgia on my Mind."
Good song.
But the key word in that song is "on my mind".
(audience laughs)
Ray Charles was just thinking about Georgia.
He didn't tell you to go there.
(audience laughs)
Georgia's like every other part of the South.
It's got some pockets you should not be in after dark.
If you'd have asked Ray Charles to be more specific
on where in Georgia to go, he'd have said
go to Atlanta where the players play
and they ride on them things like every day.
(audience cheers and laughs)
My Uncle Derrick tried to shut me down on that one.
"What about James Brown "Living in America"?
That's patriotic, James Brown singing about America
is original and he's Black."
♪ Living in America ♪
♪ Living in ♪
It's a good song but keep it real, man.
James Brown wrote that song for Rocky 4
and as soon as he finished singing it,
Apollo Creed died in the ring, it's a sad song.
(audience laughs and claps)
It's a sad song.
How can you hear "Living in America"
and not think about Apollo Creed just falling lifeless.
Michael B. Jordan lost his daddy that day.
(audience laughs)
If anything, "Living in America" is not patriotic.
It's the opposite.
It's a secret message to Black people.
James Brown is one of the most masterful musicians
to ever walk this earth.
(audience claps) It's a brilliant song.
That song ain't got nothing to do with America.
That entire song, "Living in America"
is a secret message to Black folks.
All you gotta do listen to the end of the song,
very end of "Living in America",
all James Brown do is just start naming cities.
That's it, end of the song.
♪ Living in America ♪
♪ New Orleans, Detroit City, Dallas, Pittsburgh, Kansas City ♪
♪ Atlanta ♪
He just naming safe places for Black folks.
(audience laughs and claps)
- I feel comfortable with you guys,
I wanna let you know I'm a biracial, I'm a biracial person.
Which is funny to me
- [Audience Member] Woo! every time I say that out loud
because I feel pretty Black.
(audience laughs)
I feel very Black every day I wanna wake up and go outside.
But growing up, I didn't know I was biracial.
Had no idea I was biracial
till I was in junior high, girl ran up to me at school,
very out of breath.
Like, "Chanel, I saw you last night at Target
with this old white lady
and she was buying you a bra.
What is going on?"
(audience laughs)
And my first instinct, I was like, "Whoa Chelsea,
that don't even sound like me, okay.
You need to watch your mouth.
This is how rumors get started."
Then I thought about it.
I was like, "I was at Target last night
but I was there with my grandmother and she's not a white."
So then I went home
and I walked up to my grandma that day, bold as brass.
I pointed in her face and I said, "Hey, are you white?
Because a girl at school looked at you, she saw white lady.
Now I'm looking at you,
I'm starting to see a white lady too."
(audience laughs)
She said, "Of course I'm white, what'd you think I was?"
I said, "I never thought about it before."
I knew that I was Black because of BET.
(audience laughs)
So I just assumed by association,
my grandmother's probably Black too.
Like I knew she wasn't very dark skinned.
She didn't have as much fun as us on beach days
but we all got our shit.
Who was I to judge?
She said, "No, I'm 100% Italian
which means you are part Italian."
She told me that her parents moved to Philadelphia,
my hometown, from Italy.
She pulled out a picture frame
showed me two very nice looking white people.
I said, "Holy shit."
My whole life I thought that was a brand new frame
(audience laughs and claps)
and you had just been waiting to fill it.
Everything is a lie.
Like yeah, I thought my grandmother was a little lazy.
I didn't know she was white.
I didn't know that.
And sometimes when I tell that joke
people don't believe me.
They're like, how could have you been 13 years old,
you didn't know your grandmother was white?
Well she had three oil paintings in her house.
One was Malcolm X.
One was Martin Luther King Jr.
And one was a Black Jesus on the cross.
Do you know how many pictures of Black Jesus there are?
I don't even know how she found
a dread headed Caribbean Jesus.
(audience laughs)
But that shit affected me.
- Wanna start off by letting you know that I am gay as hell.
(audience laughs)
I'm great at it.
I do a great job.
I was sitting there being Black
and I was like, you know what, give me another thing.
(audience laughs)
I got it.
Come on over.
I'm also African, thoroughbred from the source.
Thank you so much, thank you.
I came to America when I was a little diva.
It was also the first time I ever saw a white person
and my immediate thought was, "It's a black ghost."
(audience laughs)
This country's filled with apparitions.
(audience laughs and claps)
Oh man, I have been gay for quite some time.
I came out when I was 18 back in the year 2000.
You know, before it was cool.
I told my parents I was gay.
They're both very traditional African immigrants
so I don't recommend doing that.
Write them a letter, they can't read.
But I told them I was gay and my dad got very upset.
I don't know if it was because I said I was gay
or that I sang the entirety of "Papa Don't Preach"
immediately afterwards. (audience laughs)
It's a much longer song than you think it is.
- Yeah, I think it's hard
for Black men, especially, to talk about depression
'cause we have so many cool words available to us
to undermine how we really feel.
(audience laughs)
Like a couple years ago I was having some suicidal thoughts
and depression, so I checked myself into a psych unit
and I know you guys are looking at me like,
"Jordan but you're so handsome and well put together."
But you know what they say Black don't crack,
only psychologically.
(audience laughs)
I got out of the psych unit
and a friend of mine was like, "Are you okay man?
Is everything all right?"
But I had so many cool words available to me,
I was like, "Yeah, I was just tripping."
(audience laughs)
But I wasn't just tripping, I had a severe mental breakdown.
If anything, I might've been bugging but I wasn't tripping.
- Wouldn't that be great if aliens came to this planet
and they were Black? (audience laughs)
And they got here and they were like,
"Yo, we so happy we found this planet 'cause we left
all these Black people here came to get 'em.
Bring them back home to their home planet.
Planet Black Black."
(audience laughs)
But you pronounce it, Black Black.
All the Black people over here be like,
"Yeah, we want to go back home to the planet Black Black."
Go to Africa and talk to the Africans and the Africans like
(sings nondescript song)
"We are going to come as well."
(audience laughs)
No more Black people (audience laughs)
on the planet.
Fat white girls be crying.
(imitates crying)
"Get off of me.
Deontay"
"Today in sports, the New York Knicks
beat the Boston Celtics 15-13 in an overtime-"
(audience laughs and claps)
"And in tragic sporting news, there will be no NFL."
(audience laughs)
(upbeat music)