Get Off My Lawn Podcast #27 | I Was a Black Man for a Day in New York City
I stole this concept from Chadwick Moore. If you’re white, pretend you’re black for a day and see how many things could be construed as racist. If you’re black, pretend you’re white and see how many things could be explained away as just life in the big city. This can be extrapolated to gay (as Chadwick did), female, trans, fat, and any other group that claims victim status. It’s very possible the person out to get you is you.
I rode the train to and from the city and within the city limits.
I did communicate with y'alls.
And I gotta say that racism is alive and well today.
As a black man in America, in New York City, I experienced a level of seething hatred that was below the surface everywhere I go, everywhere I went, everywhere I was.
And it's something you just have to get through as a black man.
And I will explain this to my kids, my children, that they have to be aware of this.
They have to be aware that when they meet the police, they can die.
They can get shot going for a drive.
And they have to know that.
I'm going to tell my sons that they have to do twice as well As anyone else, in order just to be the same.
So you want to be a lawyer, you better be the best lawyer in that class.
And even then, a policeman could come and kill you on your way to the job interview.
So, you can never relax.
You always got that soul to devil please hanging over your head.
And that's something that I experienced.
And a lot of white people, they don't understand.
They can never understand.
And they can't speak to this because it's something they will never understand.
And I did this.
And I just, what I did in my mind, in my conscious mind was, I just recorded a day.
I recorded a day.
And I was coming from the suburbs of New York.
Beautiful, affluent suburbs, right?
I'm the only black man in my neighborhood that's not toiling and landscaping and repairing and lifting like a goddamn slave.
So I get on the train and I walk to the very back.
They have the two cars at the back are called the quiet cars.
And if you don't understand what that means, that's because you're white.
What y'all don't understand about the back two cars is they're the white cars.
And we got Rosa Parks all over again.
But now the white man sits at the back of the bus and the black man has to be at the front of the train.
You know why that is?
Guess who's the first to go when there's an accident?
When there's an accident, the black man dies.
The white man survives.
That is the history of America.
That is the future of America.
And that is present-day America.
So I walk to the back and, um...
I could see in their eyes, I could see them have a palpable disappointment.
And that's what you have to understand about racism today in America is it's not the hoods, you know, it's not the drinking families.
It is a systemic virus that leaks throughout.
It's almost like a gas, like a noxious fart.
That permeates society at large.
And it's something we need to work on.
You know, I was watching Drunk History the other day, and Derek Waters was doing that, like, live long and prosper thing with the Star Trek chick.
And he didn't close two of the fingers, but he had the other two fingers closed.
So it was 70% of the nanu nanu sign that they have on Star Trek.
And he was saying, we here, we ain't here.
Meaning, We ain't done the final symbol.
And, you know, we have a long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long way to go.
In fact, I don't even know if we've gone that far.
Sometimes I wonder if we've even moved at all.
Sometimes I wonder if this ain't the same as 1965.
So I get in the back of the train and I feel disdain.
I feel hatred.
I feel violence in their eyes.
And I'm a well-dressed black man, you know?
I don't... I'm not wearing a do-rag.
I don't got my Timbs on.
I'm just me.
I got a Mets jacket.
I'm clean.
I got my fade on.
I got my work shoes, my briefcase.
And I sit down and I just feel that hatred, you know?
Because I'm a black man in a partied train.
And I broke through their boundaries and they...
I ruined their safe space.
They're triggered.
You know what I'm saying?
These motherfuckers talk about, about social justice warriors.
They got all the same symptoms.
Don't be fooled.
Do not be fooled by these motherfuckers.
So I'm on that train, and I feel that disdain.
And I'm watching on my phone David Wayne, who just did a beautiful documentary about the dude who did Animal House, a nigga that killed himself.
And I just live with that hatred, you know, and I just ignore it.
I just let it roll off my back.
You know, I got a right to be here.
I'm sorry I ruined your fun.
And I walk around New York City and people are saying, move it, excuse me.
You know, they don't want a black man in their way, move it boy!
I got homeless niggas coming up to me, they expect me to pay them, calling me brother.
Why don't you ask the white people for money?
Why are you always asking a brother?
I'm not your brother!
And it gets stressful.
And it drives a man to drink.
It drives a man... You know, Sean King, my brother Sean King, was talking about a friend of his that is in jail serving time right now.
He's upstate.
Because he trashed a convenience store out of, as Sean King put it, anger and pain.
He just snapped.
You know, Chuck D said this with Public Enemy.
He said, when we were brought here, We lost our religion, our gods.
Actually, I believe he was quoting Farrakhan.
I believe it's actually a Farrakhan sample, but Chuck D brought it to my ear holes via Public Enemy.
We lost everything we held dear.
And many of us, by the way we act, we even lost our minds.
And that's why you see so much crime and hatred and rage in the black community, because we lost our minds.
From this racism, from this constant abuse and hatred.
So, I went to a bar that I go to near my office downtown, near Rockefeller Center.
And it's a dive bar.
They got a lot of Irish bars there, because they got a lot of white tourism.
And when the white man travels from Ireland, he wants to have his Guinness.
Ironically, my family is Jamaican, and we drink Guinness too, but it's part of the colonization, so I avoid it.
I have Hennessy.
But I sat down at the bar.
And... Motherfucker didn't even look at me.
The man next to me, you could tell he didn't want me in this Irish bar.
We were back in 1955 again.
And what's the first thing he do?
He move over.
He move over about a foot.
Cause he didn't want to be near me.
He didn't want to be next to the negro.
And I just ignore it, man.
I order my Hennessy and I sit there.
That man sits away from me.
And uh...
I hear him talking to other people, white people, right?
And it turns out that this man is from South Africa.
He's Portuguese by ethnic descent.
He's a fisherman.
And that man Likely grew up in apartheid South Africa.
Can you believe this shit?
We're back to the trains again.
I had that analogy on the train when it was like apartheid and then here I am at this bar and this man has brought his apartheid from South Africa and he's brought it to this bar and no one has a problem with it.
And he moves away from me.
He looks away from me the entire time.
Thinking we're in Soweto.
Well guess what motherfucker?
I ain't gonna play Sun City and I ain't gonna play that.
Y'all think you can just bring that apartheid everywhere you go?
No.
Africa is mine.
I'm an African-American.
And that's the same bar, by the way.
I was there on MLK Day.
God bless him.
Peace be upon him.
And there was a black brother in there from UPS.
And the bar was pretty empty.
Not a lot of people were working that day.
Of course, white man had me working that day.
Because he don't care about Martin Luther King.
Because racism is alive and well today!
They were saying to this black man, not to me, ignore me, but they're saying to the black man, my brother, UPS brother, in his browns, brown man in brown uniform, brown shorts on, brown socks, brown shoes.
You know, a lot of these people, they just hate the color brown, basically.
That's why they hate Mexicans, too.
They don't like brown people.
And he said that you, you know, in that white voice, he's like, you gotta work on MLK Day?
Whoa, that's an outrage!
And he's saying it so loud that I could hear it.
And he's trying to score points with me.
And I'm like, y'all, I can hear your ass.
You don't get a race.
I'm not getting you a get out of jail free card because you're outraged.
And by the way, your bar's open today.
You got someone working in this bar.
Y'all don't care about MLK.
Y'all don't care about Dr. King?
You know, then I get home and I have problems with my girl, my baby girl, and she didn't do well on a test.
And the way I have to discipline her, the way I discipline all my children, is I take away what we call screen time.
And screen time can be TV, it can be your iPad, it can be your iPhone, it's whatever screen you think is what's up.
And with her, her iPhone is what's up.
So no iPhone this whole week.
And my wife, she's a woman who sees a black man in her home and I know that she doubts my authority.
Because she thinks a black man can't run things.
You know, you don't see black quarterbacks that often in the NFL.
You definitely do not see black managers of football teams.
And I think that gets into her.
That systemic racism gets into my marriage.
And I can see her doubting my word.
And this is the worst part.
Now I might tear up, I swear to God, y'all.
It makes me doubt myself.
It makes me doubt my own authority as a man.
as a man in this country in America.
And I know what's really going on with us is she thinks a black man leaves.
She believes these statistics that a black man don't stand by his kid.
So she won't say what she means because she's scared I'm gonna leave.
And that's another way that it affects me in my day-to-day.
Alright.
Seriously folks, I didn't do that.
I stole the idea from Chadwick Moore.
He said he had this mentality where, oh that's because I'm gay, right?
And uh...
You're in New York City, where it's uncool not to be gay.
You can get straight bashed.
Actually, that's true.
I've heard of guys getting roughed up in gay bars and kicked out.
We used to go to this bar called The Hole, and it was cheap beer and super fun, so we sort of took it over, and there was so much hatred.
So much straight hate at us for taking over their bar.
Like, they would scowl at us.
No one got beat up, I'm exaggerating.
There's definitely some, some heterophobia there.
But Chadwick said that one day he just went, you know what, I'm going to pretend I'm not gay and see if, like I'm not going to act gay, I'm going to dress normal and see if it's all in my head.
And he discovered, yeah, I had a victim mentality and I was making everything about my sexuality, but it isn't.
And he said it was a very freeing moment for him.
Now, he was on Tucker saying this to a black woman.
He said, if I could just take your brain out and put it in a white woman and you could live that day, you'd see that it's New York City.
The city is full of assholes.
People aren't mean to you because you're black.
They're mean to you because it's New York.
It's the cruelest city.
It's ruthless.
I had a friend's daughter asking me about intern opportunities.
I said, I can give you some, but I want you to know this isn't sex in the city.
This is rape in the city.
So unless you're rich and you're going to be in the West Village or the Upper East Side or something or Williamsburg or the East Village, you know, above Houston, then I'm not, I don't want to encourage you to come down here because partying in East New York and Bushwick, Looks cool, but it's really dangerous.
Especially if you're a naive small-town girl from Canada.
But, uh, he said that on Tucker Carlson, and of course that was misconstrued as, uh, it was misconstrued as, um, he's telling a black woman to try walking in a white woman's shoes for a change.
Like, white women have it so hard.
It's like, no, he's saying the opposite of that.
He's saying when you have that mentality, everything starts becoming a thing.
It's called paranoia.
So anyway, I really did do this for the better part of a day.
I was a black man in my head, and I made everything racial.
And it was amazing how many things, if I'd written them down, and I told you I was black, you would go, holy crap, that sucks.
It sucks what you have to go through.
So I'm gonna go back over what I just said.
Yes, the quiet car is predominantly white.
I don't have a good reason for that.
Anyone is allowed on the quiet car.
White guys, I've noticed in the morning on the train from the suburbs, they tend to be doing work.
I'm sorry, this is just something I've noticed.
Younger people, women, people of color, my general observation, and I apologize for saying this with my eyeballs, has been they tend to want to have conversations, they watch TV on their phones, they're not doing work.
Sorry!
So the quiet car, for whatever reason, has a white predilection.
Now I did walk on, and I was dressed in my men's jacket, whatever, and there was weird looks I got.
I do look a little weird, but the looks I got was, oh shit, more people in the quiet car.
I wanted to be all alone.
I wanted this whole car to myself, because it's really hard to get to, the quiet car.
You have to walk for about five minutes.
These trains are long.
So by the time you get there, often if it's not like peak time, you can often have the entire car to yourself and then you feel like you have a private jet.
Hello, take me in my giant chair room to the city please.
Onward Jeeves!
And if it's an express, I mean you're living like Howard Hughes.
So when I show up, I ruin this Howard Hughes fantasy.
Even if there's two or three guys, I take down the specialness of the magic car a little bit.
Nothing to do with race.
At all.
I didn't have a ghetto blaster.
I wasn't making any noise.
I didn't intend to make calls.
I wasn't on my phone.
They were just bummed that I was diluting the social equation of the quiet car.
And if I was black, I could have made it a black thing.
Which I did at the beginning of this podcast.
Next event.
Walking down the street, getting shoved around, tossed around, treated like garbage.
That's New York.
I'm a rich white guy in a three-piece suit.
I get jostled and shoved and told to move.
I get bums coming up to me with some cockamamie story.
I had a bum the other day.
My thing with bums is I just go, no!
Just get out of the way.
I feel like that's the best thing to do.
Actually, back when, you know when you're at that age, maybe 20, you're at a bar and a bum is there because you're at some cheap bar that's like dollar beers or whatever?
And you end up talking to a bum because you're so open-minded and cool and you don't care that he smells like foreskin and BO because you're so awesome and open-minded.
That's a phase you all have to go through.
And then you're like, where do you sleep at night?
And he goes, I go to this dude's house.
He jerks me off and he lets me sleep on his couch.
Oh, are you gay?
Nah, it's just a place where if it's raining that I go.
Oh, I guess I'm never speaking to you guys again.
That's really, really freaky.
Uh, I can't fit that in my head.
Now I'm gonna have nightmares.
But back when I was dumb enough to talk to moms, I remember one of them going, look, don't, if you don't have change, don't do that shit about, oh, sorry, I don't got change.
Just say no.
So I do that.
And it works 95% of the time.
I just look him right in the eyes and go, no, I don't lie.
I got tons of change.
You can't have it.
No.
Now I give to charity through the Knights of Columbus, raise money for um...
Various charitable groups, the sisters, get them diapers, blah, blah, blah.
Do turkey runs at Thanksgiving.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not mean.
But I'm not giving it, I'm not in the mood, I'm not gonna stop and give you quarters so you can go buy smack.
And this one guy the other day goes, look at my face, motherfucker, my name's Paul.
I'm gonna fuck you in the ass, and I want you to remember that Paul's fucking you in the ass.
Okay, how many quarters do I got here?
It's actually a Bill Hicks bit, almost verbatim, but it really happened.
Now, I could have made that about being black, and the black bums always come to me.
No, the bums come to everyone's.
And when you walk around New York City, everyone is a mean jerk.
It's overcrowded.
Alright, let's get to the bar.
MLK Day.
Yeah, I think the owner was pandering to that UPS guy.
That's corny.
It's a bar that's at a place that's usually pretty white.
I don't know.
It's an Irish bar.
It's kind of expensive, the pints.
I don't know.
You usually get business guys who are alcoholics, like myself, just grabbing a quick beer in between meetings or whatever.
And he was pandering to that black UPS guy, but I'm not black and I could have made that about me too.
The other time, at the bar, the guy really did move over.
That's to give me room.
The stools were fairly close together and he wasn't a social guy and I realized, uh, as he was talking that there was a woman who had just had a baby by the way.
I don't know what goes on in South Africa but this guy was hitting on her.
And he's like, "Hold on, I gotta work on my South Africa." I'm like, "What are you doing?
I'm from South Africa.
And he was saying, so you're going to head home soon?
Yeah.
All right.
Well, I mean, you can have one more.
It's been nine months you've been cooped up in that house.
You can have one more with me.
That's why he wasn't turning to face me.
He was quietly hitting on this woman who just had a baby, who was having her first drink after like 10 months of cabin fever.
He expected a BJ.
He was white, by the way, like Portuguese white.
Yes, South African.
Had nothing to do with me, but of course if I was black, I could have went, oh great, a South African can't be near me.
And yes, When I got home, my wife is bummed that I was so hard on my daughter for doing so badly on the test.
She is a Midwesterner.
She's from Madison, Wisconsin.
They're not confrontational people.
I'm a Scottish person, genetically, who's been living in the big city, Montreal and New York, since I was 18.
So I've become quite accustomed to yelling and screaming and confrontation.
In fact, I like it.
And with my job, Even back at, uh, even my previous jobs, people always wanted to kill me and stuff.
I'd give a band a bad review and they'd want to murder me.
So I'm used to, like, you know, being threatened at all times.
I don't mind it at all.
But my wife, you know, she's nice, she's been to fashion, she did fashion PR.
She like, doesn't like conflict, and that's what a good marriage is, right?
I told you that story a million years ago about the little kid who pooed his pants at the airport.
I was in the next stall, and I heard the dad going, what the hell's the matter with you?
You can't keep your...
Shit, your pants!
Now I gotta throw your underwear away!
Goddammit, you're a big boy!
And he's crying.
And then he goes back to the gate.
We were at the same gate.
And I see the mother- He's just on his phone, the dad, now, in a rage.
And then I see the mother consoling the boy and stroking his hair.
He was probably... eight?
They're both right.
Get your shit together, literally.
Don't poo your pants.
It's a pain in the ass.
Not literally.
Uh, now your dad has to wipe up at the airport waiting for a flight.
He's gotta wash poo off your legs?
The hell's the matter with you?
Also, from the mom's perspective, shit happens.
You poo your pants.
I personally do it maybe once a year.
As George Brett says, I'm good for those about once a year.
And you should be consoled if your dad yelled at you.
That's why it's so important to have two parents.
So, our family is like that.
It's a normal family.
I'm the corrections officer, I bust balls, and then they go to mom and get a hug when they find out that they can't look at their iPhone for a week.
Until they get their math grades up.
I could have made that a black thing.
Anyway, this reminds me of a great sketch that says exactly what I'm saying by Key and Peele.
And if it's easier for you to hear this point from black people, then I can play it for you.
But this is a very long sketch.
It's three minutes.
I won't play the whole thing, but I'll just play some of it.
And it's called Office Homophobe.
So Peele plays a black gay dude.
Forget the race here.
This is just Peele plays the gay dude and Key plays a guy.
Wait, am I getting their names right?
Which one is which?
Peele is... yeah, Peele's the guy who did Get Out.
It must be weird when you're partners and then you're a team and then one of them skyrockets off to fame.
Like, uh, Peele is now a legend on the cover of magazines and he is just doing quite well.
That must be a trip, right?
Wow, you got another movie deal!
I mean, we came here together, hitchhiked to Los Angeles together, and you're really... Rah!
Cover of Vanity Fair!
Remember when I photoshopped myself on the cover of Vanity Fair?
Well, that's you now for real!
Anyway, you wanna get a beer?
Yeah, you're busy.
I know, I get it.
That happened to Kristen Wiig.
Her and her husband moved to New York to conquer comedy.
And then two years later, it's like Bridesmaids, starring our favorite comic ever, the funniest person in the world, Christian Wig.
Meanwhile, her husband is at Yuck Yucks going, what's with pencils?
I mean, do people still use those?
They got divorced, of course.
All right, so this is cool black people saying what I just said.
Latrell? - What's up, baby girl?
Why you don't like my music?
- Why, you don't like my music?
- Is it music?
Because it sounds like a bunch of sex noises over a bass line.
- Oh.
I get it.
- I'm sorry. - I'm sorry.
You don't like my music because I'm gay.
You can't handle a gay man's music.
No, no, no.
I'm trying to work here and that music is weirdly sexual.
Oh, I see.
So, my sexuality is weird.
You just can't fathom a man being attracted to another man.
This is sort of like that Jordan B. Peterson interview where she kept saying, what was it, Channel 4?
She kept saying, so what you're saying is that rape is often a viable sexual alternative.
And he would go, no.
Because these people, when you get in this mindset, these liberals, these persecuted victims, they have a funnel for a brain.
And the end of the funnel is, I'm persecuted.
I can't.
There's no sense in trying.
And that's why I said that thing about the talk at the beginning where you have to work twice as hard and the cops can shoot you.
It's a very crippling mentality.
Why bother trying, right?
If it's no good.
If everyone's out to get me.
And so she had her mentality of Jordan B. Peterson is a sexist, whatever, evil fascist.
And when he said something that didn't fit that, she'd say, so you're saying, that's her funnel.
And then we go down to that little tiny hole at the bottom, which was her worldview.
I can fathom it.
It's... Can you just please listen to some other gay music like Barbra Streisand or something?
Anything that's... Oh, I see.
I see.
Okay, so listening to Barbra Streisand is gay.
Stereotype much?
By the way, Key & Peele is one of the best written comedy shows in the history of comedy.
There are so many, like, sometimes I go back over SCTV and, or, you know, John Belushi era SNL, because I remember it as being so amazing, but then I realize I have selective memory and I've cherry-picked all the hits, like the sketch Halfwits.
But there's a lot of duds there.
Conversely, Key and Peele, I will go back over some old sketches and go, there's a lot of slam dunks in this one episode.
It's kind of Greatest Hits-y.
It's like Andrew W.K.' 's second album.
All right, I'll jump ahead here.
That's a close-up of- I'm fairly certain you're going to show me some- And et cetera.
Oh my God.
Can I show you a picture and then you tell me if it's good for Facebook?
Okay, I'm fairly certain you're going to show me something overtly sexual.
Don't you prejudge me!
Here it is.
Ah!
That's a close-up of an anus.
Oh, no, that's not an anus.
That's my anus, baby girl.
That's disgusting.
Oh, I see.
So you don't want to see a close-up picture of my anus, because you hate gay men!
No!
I don't want to look at a close-up picture of anyone's anus.
Homophobe.
Homophobe.
There's a homophobe right here.
That whistle he's blowing into is penis-shaped.
Homophobe alert!
Homophobe!
Woo woo woo woo!
And now I show up, and guess who I am?
I am Peele's boyfriend.
Turns out this homophobe is dating yours truly.
Hey baby.
I kiss him.
Ready to go to lunch?
Key is freaked out.
Uh, Luttrell, this is Gavin.
Gavin, this is Luttrell.
This is my boyfriend.
How you doing?
I'm-I'm-I'm doing very well.
How-how are you doing, Gavin?
Gavin?
Fine.
Wanna go?
Yeah.
Nice to meet you.
No, trust me, it's not.
It's not?
That's the guy.
Oh, I get it.
I'm not persecuted.
I'm just an asshole.
Now, they ruined it with the beep.
But he's saying, I'm not persecuted.
I'm just an asshole.
I'm not saying black people are assholes, but I'm saying what Chadwick was saying, which is just sort of pull your brain out and replace it with a non-victim just for a day.
Like, if you think everything is racist, just pretend you're Don Draper for a day and see if it's conceivable that that South African is moving over because he's hitting on a girl and he wants to give you space and he's not into socializing.
It's not all about you.
Once you get out of this victim mentality and go, "Hey, it's 2018," yes, there's a sordid past in this country.
It was not perfect.
But it's 2018 today, and no one's out to get you.
No one cares.
The Klan is not waiting to gallop around the corner and persecute you.
There's not a fag basher in a pickup truck coming by to beat you up.
There's not a bunch of trans murderers that don't want you to exist.
When we tell fat ladies, You're overweight.
It's not that we hate you.
We're just telling you a fact.
We don't really care what you do.
People are busy doing their own thing.
They have their own families, their own job.
They just want to get through the day and make a bit of money and save some money, pay off some debt, get a burrito for crying out loud.
Try being a black man for a day if you're white and you'll see all this persecution you're getting because you're black.
And black people, pretend you're white for a day and see if you can't explain away a lot of the things that you thought were prejudices could just be happening because you're in New York or wherever you are.
They could be happening to white people too.
And I'm extrapolating that black and white To trans, to gay, as Chadwick did, to obese, to albino, to whatever.
People just want to get along.
The ones that are antagonistic, they've been going extinct for the past, I don't know, billion years?
