[MUSIC]
BARATUNDE THURSTON: No you cannot touch a black person's hair just because you're curious
about it's unique texture.
[MUSIC]
I wrote a book. It's called How To Be Black. It's a comedic memoir that looks at what I
describe as my coming of blackness. It's my upbringing and the role that race has played.
I sprinkle that narrative with satirical how-to lessons. How to be the black friend, how to
speak for all black people. So I hope that people get a number of things out of the book.
First of all, it is a comedy. So I want people to enjoy themselves, to laugh, and while all
that is happening, I have disabled their defense mechanisms and started shoving other ideas
inside their brain areas. And what I want people to get out of that part is a more deep
and empthathetic understanding of just the role that race still plays in the US today,
a way to handle some of the awkwardness around it with humor and less defensiveness and less
offensiveness because we're kinda having a good time along the way and I want people
to engage in their own life to think about where I have been different or an outsider
and can that build some level of camaraderie with those who more explicitly have to deal
with that. So the book has a series of how to chapters. In fact, the book began as only
the how to chapters. So theres's how to be the black friend. How to speak for all black
people. How to be the angry negro. Sometimes you just can't help but get mad. How to be
the black employee—which is my personal favorite. How to be the next black president,
which is pretty applicable this time of year. The how to be the black employee chapter is
so grounded in my experience in corporate American working in a cubicle, in an office,
having to dress up. Having TPS reports and conference calls and all the awkwardness of
office life. The small talk that takes years off of your life. The company holiday party
where everybody expects you to dance because the black person or they want you to have
an opinion on anything black related despite the fact that you're one of mllions. It was
really a transcript more than a satirical creation and I turned up the notch slightly
I'd say.
So one of the theories that I espoused in the book—I'd say really a discovery more
than a theory because it exists—is the black friend. That black person that is the one
among of non-black friends, especially white friends is a national treasure and indeed
a hero because they're in trenches. They're doing the day-to-day combat or really avoiding
day-to-day combat and diffusing situations by putting a light touch by explaining to
their white friends, no you cannot say the N-word just because it's in a Kanye song.
No, you cannot touch a black person's hair just because you're curious about it's unique
texture. And so by having a friendly rejection from someone whom you love or at least like
a lot, that person's more open to the possibility that maybe they don't know everything and
maybe they should take it easy and maybe they can ask their questions of the friend instead
of more embarrassingly in a public setting. So to the black friend, I say thank you all.
We should build a wall with your names on it and honor you with a moment of silence
and darkness.
So there is an opposite to the black friend. It's something like a law of physics—the
equal and opposite reaction to the black friend would be the angry negro. This is someone
who kinda wear his or her blackness as a weapon—both a shield and a sword and assumes that everything's
about race. Why is that baby looking at me? Is it because I'm black? Probably because
babies look at things and don't even have facial recognition built in. Maybe not. Probably
not, but the angry negro is so distorted by America's sort of lack of progress or work
yet to do around race that it becomes this sort of cancerous self-defeating and absorbing
attitude and that's also necessary. You don't just want a bunch of black friends making
their white friends comfortable. Sometimes people need t o be uncomfortable. Sometimes
black people, white people, all kinds of shades of people need to not think that everything
is okay. That's when you ask the black—the angry negro—to step up and take that heat.
And grab a microphone and yell and say, "That's racist!" Because the black friend might be
like "Well, that's kind of uncomfortable. You shouldn't say that anymore." The angry
negro won't pull any punches. Sometimes America needs a punch.
Hey, y'all! I'm Baratunde Thurston and you're watching Epiphany on THNKR!