by Amber Ruffin
While working at an Alzheimer’s home, you become used to some residents using slurs. Lacey happened to befriend a new eighty-seven-year-old resident and she was very pleasant when they first met. And during Thanksgiving time, her family was visiting her in her room. Lacey walked in to greet them, a room full of the resident’s children and her grandchildren. Her face lit up and she said, “Oh! Everyone, I want you to meet this n*****r girl!” Lacey was waiting for her family to correct her—families always do. They usually apologize with great embarrassment, like, “Oh my god, Mom! You can’t say that!” They end up apologizing profusely. But this time not one person in this room seemed shocked or embarrassed. They all came around her and said, “It’s great to meet you; my mom loves you.” Lacey immediately gave a small history lesson on how we don’t use the n-word anymore. And the old lady never used the n-word around Lacey ever again. Guess which of those sentences is a lie.
When working in management in Nebraska, it’s not uncommon to be the only person of color. That’s because people think “diversity” means hiring Black people in the lowest positions in their companies, thereby making sure to keep the system that makes it hard for Black people to succeed at that company in place. But that’s not what this book is about. This book is about a doofus named Lacey.
Amber, you are hard to like.
Lacey was at a directors’ meeting and everyone was acting really strange whenever they mentioned the new coworker starting that day. Lacey immediately knew she must be a person of color because they all kept asking her if she had seen her yet. She had not. They were dying to tell her but didn’t know the right way to do it. During the meeting, one of the directors could not take it anymore. Finally, she blurted out, “There will be another colored gal working here now, Lacey!” She was so excited to tell her that she could not hold it in. Lacey had to give a history lesson on how we don’t use the word colored anymore.
My new coworker and I had one thing in common: we were Black. Once she started, the staff and the residents at the retirement home could not tell us apart. Every day, people would mistake us for each other. I’m not in any way exaggerating. I’m a good fifteen years older than her.
She’s fifteen years older than me, too.
Shut up. I have natural long locs and she has bone-straight shorter hair. I was in a meeting with my boss for thirty-two minutes—thirty-two minutes. When the meeting was over, she said to me, “Now send Lacey in because I’m supposed to meet with her soon.” I said, “I am Lacey!” and we sat there in silence and then she apologized. I gave a lesson on how not being able to tell Black people apart is racist.
Everyone at Lacey’s work had to agree on where their annual outing was gonna be. Paintball? Olive Garden? Who knows! Everyone voted unanimously to go to the shooting range, except for one holdout. Lacey. Lacey explained how, historically, that’s gonna hafta be a big fat nope.
After Lacey had complained about many racist coworkers, one job required Lacey’s whole office to go to diversity training. Lacey was the only one who showed up. I wish Lacey had the phone numbers of everyone in the world, because nothing is funnier than the texts she sent on this, the angriest day of her life. The next day, she explained to her coworkers why that was wrong.
Once, as a lady was inviting the staff to her dinner party, she says to Lacey, “Hey, Lacey, I’m having a dinner party. Gin and juice, right? Right? We have some for you! Gin and juice!” Now, this lady is very fun and nice. But she’s as dumb as racism is real. Here’s another thing she said that we will laugh about ’til we die. In order to understand it, you have to know that Lacey, who is straight, and was married, drove a small car. She comes up to Lacey and says, “You should date Emily! You guys would make a cute couple! ’Cause you both have those tiny lesbian cars—you know, the ones that lesbians drive? You know how they drive those cars in that area? You know, there’s that one area that’s full of lesbians and their tiny cars?” Now, lesbians have many stereotypes to choose from, but tiny cars ain’t one of ’em. Subarus are not tiny. And I feel confident in saying that there is no place where lesbians meet up to drive tiny cars. How could anyone have come to that conclusion? In this instance, we learned this history lesson.
Lacey once worked at an office where almost all the supervisors were white and everyone else was Black. Their boss wanted to congratulate them on doing a good job so she bought a T-shirt for all the staff who did such a good job that says, “#wewinnin.” The T-shirt was shown in the morning meeting. Lacey asked, “Why does it say ‘we winnin’?” A coworker leaned over to her and said, “Because that’s how you guys would say it.” Lacey sent me this text as I was pitching this book:
Lacey explained how this is racist.
When the person who got those shirts left, Lacey was filled with hope. Until she met the replacement. He was a bit of a mess—let’s call him Mess. Mess was never a huge problem, but he was definitely one of those people where you didn’t know what in the world he was going to say next. Like, you could be pretty sure he wasn’t gonna say anything intentionally hurtful, but you also knew that on any day he could say something that would make you have to file a report.
So, they work in North Omaha. Again, North Omaha is a large part of Omaha. With good and not-great neighborhoods. This particular part of Omaha is a very nice part. It’s the same neighborhood my rich friend lives in. That’s where we’re at.
It’s time for the morning meeting. There are plenty of Black employees there. Mess stands up to give an inspirational speech. “I want to make this building the jewel of Omaha. Now, I know it sounds crazy because we are in North Omaha, but I believe that even in this neighborhood we can make this building look great.” He goes on, but you get it. All the Black people hear this and are giving each other the Can you believe this guy? eye. This fool is so stupid he doesn’t realize what he has said. Lacey’s the only Black director. She’s gonna have to get up and say something.
“The Black people who work here are in an unfortunate spot because most of our directors are from small towns. We have to tolerate them talking about how they’re scared to come to work and how they’re scared to walk to their car—even while the sun is up—as if someone wants to steal a 2003 Kia. North Omaha is everything north of Dodge! Warren Buffett damn near lives in North Omaha. If he is fine here, I think you’ll be fine here. Please stop acting like North Omaha is a bad place to be. We grew up here. Stop talking about the place we grew up in, live in, and love with disgust.”
This was the same place where, on her first day, Lacey looks around and the employees are dressed like you wouldn’t believe. The woman showing her the ropes was dressed like she was getting ready to paint a house. Throughout the office she sees people in torn jeans, sweatshirts, T-shirts. From the directors down to the mail guy, everyone is dressed like they’re about to put on a production of Oliver! Lacey asks why everyone is dressed like this. And would you believe that this lady fixes her face to say, “We dress this way because of the neighborhood we are in. It’s very poor and very Black. These people aren’t used to seeing people dressed up. When people see us dressed up, it intimidates them. We dress this way so that we can be on their level.” She dresses down to be on Black people’s level. If she had dressed as fancily as possible, she could not have been on our level. From where she is, she cannot see our “level” without a telescope. It was clear this woman had never heard of church.
Best Supervisor Ever!
Here’s a story about the best supervisor Lacey has ever had. One day, Lacey came in to work talking about a new program that gives African children laptops. It’s a new kind of laptop that can be manufactured for a hundred dollars a pop. A charity made and distributed as many as possible to connect African children to the Internet and give them a voice in the global dialogue. Lacey was talking about how great it was. As she was going on and on about progress and how these children can finally be heard and how interesting it will be to hear their stories, the best supervisor she’s ever had c
ould not stop laughing. Between his giggle fits, he said, “What are African kids gonna do with laptops? What are they gonna do with it? Okay, they’ll learn things, but what will they do with what they learn?” It ended with him saying, “Well, I don’t see the point and I’m against it.” To not understand it is one terrible thing, but to be against it is a second kind of terrible! How can you be against children learning? Two terribles for the price of one? In this economy?
Of all the supervisors Lacey has had in her life, that man said the fewest racist things. The man who said the fewest racist things out loud had the deepest, most stank racist belief just festering in his heart. “I’m against it.” It’s the quiet ones, y’all.
And, for contrast, here’s a story about one of my bosses!
A million years ago, I used to work at a comedy theater. Throughout my career, I’ve worked at a few. I landed this job as an actor/writer/improviser at this place after having a full-time job writing and performing comedy for, like, five years. I wasn’t green, but none of the jobs I had had were in this city, so to a lot of people I seemed to come out of nowhere. It was the best learning experience and I made some real friends for life while I was there. There was a bar across the street we would drink at almost every night. At that bar, there was a Black bouncer who would always be there, ready to talk shit and give out hugs. He would always tell me how proud he was of me. It was a magical time. Now, when you work at a regular job and someone says something racist to you, you have to do all kinds of special maneuvers, but if you’re a comedian, you can just say, “Say something like that again and see if I don’t break your leg.” Everyone laughs, the idiot gets the point, and you can save face. Only the two of you know you are dead serious. It’s great. And, because most comedy shows want only one Black person, you make the rules for how Black people are treated. No one’s ever going to go, “Well, Marcus lets me call him darkie. He says it’s funny.” That’s the trade-off you make. It may be lonely, but you don’t have to put up with anything like that for the most part.
So we do this show at this theater and it goes really well, so well that the city’s big-deal newspaper does an article on it. It’s gonna be a huge piece in the Sunday edition. We go downtown to the office and take pictures at a studio! Fancy! There are six people in the cast. The person writing the article divides us into two groups to talk to us. We think nothing of it at the time, but the two groups they put us in are:
Group 1: three white people
Group 2: me, the gay guy, and the Hispanic guy
I can’t remember the questions they ask us, but none of them stick out as crazy or suspect at the time. We end the interview and get back to work and forget all about it.
A Sunday or two later, I wake up with a million voice mails on my phone. I immediately assume someone has died. I listen to the first voice mail. It’s a guy who works at the theater. I don’t know him very well, but his message is something like, “Hey, man, I’m sorry about the article in the Sunday paper. That’s messed up and if you want me to say something, I will.” Fuck. What in the world does the article say? I get up, get dressed, and walk to the corner store as I listen to the rest of the voice mails. They all say the same thing. I snatch up the paper and head back to my apartment. I find our article! It’s cool! There’s a million pictures of us. The cast looks happy and cute and in love ’cause we are! I read the article and I get to the part everyone’s talking about. It’s a quote from one of my castmates that says:
“When you’re straight and white in the improv community, it takes ten years to get cast in a show. I think Amber’s been here for twelve whole minutes.”
People were livid. And they had a right to be. Look, even right now I’m a million years old, I’ve been doing comedy professionally full-time for more than fifteen years, and people still want to act like I don’t know what I’m doing. I think it makes them feel better about where they are in life if I only ever got anything because I’m Black. Their own mediocrity never crosses their mind.
Frankly, the fact that that guy said that did not shock me or hurt my feelings. At this point, I had known him for a while. I knew who he was and didn’t really care. The fact that he felt that way didn’t bother me in the slightest. At this point, I had been out in the world away from Omaha for quite some time, making my own way in various comedy theaters. He was not the first to say that and would not be the last!
“I could do what you do on Late Night with Seth Meyers, I just choose not to.”
—A thirty-year-old white male improviser who could never
So I thought, Well, that sucks, but it’s not that bad. It’s just one guy. Then I read the rest of the article. The whole article was about diversity. They had segregated us to talk to us about diversity. What a shitty theater for allowing them to do that to us, what a shitty paper for allowing one of their people to do that to us, and mostly what a horrible conniving person that turd of a reporter must be. I hope they find this and understand the fact that they are a bad human being. Before I was done reading the article, I would read a quote from the owner of the theater that would send me into a white-hot state of rage forever:
“I know some casts over the years have not been happy about the emphasis on diversity. There’s a feeling that the most talented improviser should get the job, period. But it’s also about content. It’s also about being truthful to the community you live in. Someone who isn’t the best improviser may have a lot to say.”
This sent me into a white-hot rage. Look, that one guy saying that one idiotic thing that negates my talent is fine. People know him. They know he’s liable to say anything. Also, his feeling like that was a secret only to white people. I would’ve had money on him saying that out loud to my face by then. Hey, whatever it takes to make yourself feel better. But the owner of the theater in an article about whether or not he should have hired the only two minorities in the goddamn show? This insinuates that we aren’t talented! This is also something people love to do. They love to act like there were no Black people good enough. No one wants to be like, “Hmmm. I’ve never met a Black person I thought was actually good enough to be in my little show. Maybe I’m a piece-of-shit racist who can’t relate to anything a Black person says, judges them before they’ve said it, and thinks Black people are funny only as stereotypes, but when they’re stereotypes, I look down on them.” Honestly, I know this sounds crazy, but there are people who think, Black people just aren’t good at this. About, like, a ton of stuff. But COMEDY? We literally use it to survive. I’m doing it RIGHT NOW.
Anyway, my boss had shown his whole ass and would need to pay.
I call Mom, Lacey, and Angie and ask them how to handle this butthole of a situation. I don’t want to, but I’m going to have to talk to this guy. That day I get two important phone calls that make me feel a lot better. One is from the lady who was in this cast before I replaced her. I made the decision to take this job, in part, based on the fact that they actually told me I would be in the cast with her. But when I got there, it turned out I had replaced her. She called me and encouraged me and talked to me about the kind of place it was and their blind spots and what they had done to her. She gave me a lot of talking points. She really helped me out.
The other call was from our director, who was almost as mad as I was. He assured me that the owner of the theater who said all those things in the paper wasn’t even in the room when I was hired. The director also had never heard of that owner being a part of casting a show—ever. He had no hand in the casting whatsoever. He told me, “I cast you because you’re great. You got the job because you were the best person for the job.” This really made me feel a lot better. I reach back in my mind and conjure up this conversation whenever I’ve let someone get to me.
Now there’s nothing left to do but go have a talk with the owner. I have my talking points and I’m going to be calm and get through to him. I know it’s not my job, but a lot of Black kids are about to come after me and I need to do what I can w
hile I have some leverage to make sure they’re treated right. I would do this for the children. Like Ol’ Dirty Bastard once said: “Wu-Tang is for the children. We teach the children.”
I go into his office for our meeting. My heart is beating a mile a minute. I’m nervous and ashamed and mad. He starts by immediately apologizing for what he said. I feel myself start to calm down. He goes on about the history of the theater and all their outreach programs. Outreach programs? Does this man think I’m here to pat him on the back for his work with the Black community? He must see my eyebrows change shape because he starts talking about how last year he was in a really bad place, and how hard his life was a year ago and how he’s struggling to keep it together. He’s trying to get me to pity him. What the fuck does that have to do with what we are talking about? That fucking tears it. I do not need to hear why this man needs my sympathy. And how dare he make this about him and his feelings? All this fool had to say was “I’m a crazy poop and I’ll try to not be.” But he tried to get me to feel SORRY for him, and in that moment, all the talking points my mom and my sisters told me slipped my mind and I fucking lost it. Y’all. I went insane. I start yelling and go on for a while. I’m screaming. Among the many insane things I yell at my boss are “Do you know how many people think that this theater only hires minorities to fill a quota? From now on, as long as this theater exists, they can have that thought, look to the owner of the theater for affirmation, and you’re dumb enough to have given it to them! You’re creating a bunch of white men who feel threatened by my mere existence!” (We didn’t have the word incels then.)
Anyway, say what you want about this man, but he let me cuss him up one side and down the other. He apologized again, and even though I cussed out my boss, I kept my job. I live in the exact opposite world as Lacey.