I am half Colombian
and half English
and I know, I'm literally
an ethnic camouflage.
I look totally white.
I look so white when
I speak in Spanish to Latinos
they answer me in English.
You know?
Like, they say if monkeys can pick
at a keyboard long enough,
they can come up with
the complete works
of William Shakespeare by accident,
if they do it long enough.
I just rattled off a coherent sentence
in Spanish by accident
(speaks Spanish)
"Yes, I think it is about . . .
(audience laughing)
"seven o'clock."
And, I'll be like,
didn't I just speak to you
in perfect Spanish?
"Do you know what?
"I think you did"
(audience laughing)
I thought it was like the monkeys
pecking on the keyboards.
(audience laughing)
You see, we live in a world
where we make assumptions
about each other
based on the way we look,
our appearance,
visual cues give us
an idea of what to expect.
I do not look stereotypically Hispanic,
but my five foot tall
Colombian mother totally does.
First of all, she's five feet tall,
let's start there
and looks Hispanic,
and speaks with
a thick Hispanic accent.
Let's just say
that if we're
crossing a border together,
she's being harassed by ICE,
they're leaving me alone.
They're not even
wondering anything.
They're probably thinking
am I lost and do I need any help.
(audience laughing)
She's 80 years old,
so all that black hair
she had in her youth
has been sucked out
by her three sons
and I'm proud of that.
(audience laughing)
It looks kind of like Gandalf
in the last movie,
very white,
if Gandalf had a bob
and so nobody ever,
ever expected
that she was my mother.
Everybody my entire life,
since I was a little kid
thought she was just
an overly affectionate maid.
Yeah.
(audience laughing)
That hugged and kissed a lot.
That's what everybody thought
and it got more awkward.
Like, if my English father
would meet us
in the park outside, like, for lunch,
because she'd run up to him
and hug and kiss him too
and of course, all the nannies
that were in the park
would be freaking out
"Oh no, oh no, she kissed the mister,
"oh no, she not supposed
"to kiss the mister!"
Because, you know,
that's the age old adage
that nannies are not supposed
to kiss the mister, right?
I mean, isn't that the golden rule?
(audience laughing)
Isn't that—I mean even in Utah,
isn't that the rule,
but maybe not here,
maybe, here, this is how
you meet the second wife.
I don't know how—
I don't know how you roll,
(audience laughing)
but you're not supposed
to kiss the mister,
(audience laughing)
so . . .
(audience laughing)
so—
and it's—when I was a baby,
I had bleach blonde hair,
blue eyes, and clearly white.
Nobody ever thought
she was my mother.
It got to the point
where she would have
to carry my passport
and birth certificate
wherever we were out
because at one time
at the Miami International Airport
we were separated for 45 minutes,
while they figured out
she hadn't abducted the white baby.
This is a true story.
It was 1970s and a short
Hispanic woman alone
at the airport with a white baby.
Hello people,
human trafficking, okay?
(audience laughing)
"Señora, señora, do the parents
"of the little Swedish boy
"know you have their child?
(audience laughing)
"Señora, do the parents
"of the little German boy . . ."
and she was freaking out.
(speaks in Spanish)
And then my English father
pops in out of nowhere,
"Unhand my progeny.
(audience laughing)
"This instant!
(audience laughing)
"I am Malcolm Wallace Kennedy
"and he is my heir!"
(audience laughing)
Dilly dilly.
(audience laughing)
I'm not even kidding.