Amber Ruffin and Lacey Lamar on the art of skewering everyday racism

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Speaker 1: Hi, everyone, It's Katie Kuric and welcome to next question. So You'll never believe what happened to Lacy. That is the title of the very funny, if completely horrifying new book by comedian and late night host Amber Ruffin. Lacy always texts me when something unbelievable, having start at work. As The book, which Amber co wrote with her sister Lacy Lamar, is a collection of essays about well all the racist ship excuse my French Lacey has had to put up with as a black woman living and working in Omaha, Nebraska. Omaha um is predominantly white. I don't think anybody's surprised by that. We have certain pockets, but it's still even in my neighborhood, which is considered a black neighborhood. I'm the only black person on my street. And I tell you what all the time To give you an understanding of how it's life. Amber and her four siblings grew up in Omaha. The Amber years ago to start her career in comedy. After years in the business, she now lives in New York City, where she has been a writer on Late Night with Seth Meyer since two thousand fourteen. She also appears in front of the camera. One of her recurring segments is called Amber says, what you guys, things have been crazy? Okay. First of all, one of the drivers in the indie five hundred got robbed at a Taco bill drive through and I was like what. Then I found out that the Bachelorette is black, and I was like what. I'm gonna have to watch it for the first time. So I watched it and I was like, what have you white people been watching? And now Amber is the star of her own late night variety show, Go Amber on Peacock, aptly called the Amber ruff and Show. As much as we joke about whiteness on this show, I do have some sympathy for white people. There's a lot of pressure on you all to be constant, perfect allies right now, and that's such a hard energy to keep up forever. When will you finally be able to stop talking about race? When can you all stop making calls to your congress people. When can the NBA peel their Black Lives Matter vinyl off the floor to make space for a City bank Ad? I know how y'all love City Bay Kads. Every Friday night is host of the Amber Rouugh and Show. Amber gets to do what she does best, hilariously skewer the kind of everyday racism she and her siblings have always had to put up with. Our family is very, very funny. Each person is funnier than the last. I mean, all this happened to me, but I am interchangeable. I could just as easily be lazy. I can just as easily be And I'm just the person who ended up here. So um we because we grew up in Omar, Nebraska, a lot of these things happened to us. And you know, back when I used to live there, we would have to have, you know, little meetings where we're like, okay, now the bus has said this, this is how long I've been working here, this is my job title at this place. How do we handle it? You know, it's kind of like a decisions by committee when something racist happens at work. And you know, first and foremost, it's always hilarious. And I'm sorry, not everything that is racist that happens is hilarious, but a good number of these things are. When you're in the rough and house, it's probably pretty darn't funny. So we had already been in the habit of saying, y'all ain't never going to believe this ship, and then we um regale one another with these insane tales, and it's just it's unrelenting because it's Omaha and there is no system to check it. So it's just like out of control and has been since the beginning of time. While Amber left Omaha, Lacey, who's four years older, stayed. Most of my family is here. Yes, Amber's in New York, but my mother and father live here, my daughter is here. I have great friends, my community Benson that I live in. I love it, wouldn't move. I don't want to move. Amber always says you should come to New York, and I'm like, but I I think I'm staying in Omaha for a while. And in the book, I'm working in my community and some of those stories, but the people that I'm working with don't represent that community. And that's what what would make it difficult for me. At work, I'm working in North Omaha, and there was a meeting about whether the workplace was in North Omaha because it had that bad stigma to it, and someone said, oh, well, I really wouldn't say this is north Omaha and what she was saying was, I don't really think there's that many black people on you know, on this part of town, so let's not call it North Omaha. So those are the problems, um that we face. And right now, I've been working before the book, I was working in a retirement home, in a retirement home as a program director, and then you know, this book took off, and so I'm not I'm not there anymore. I'm just doing events and things for the books. But I may go back. I might go back. So Amber, you were approached by a bunch of publishing houses to write a memoir because you were you were killing it, and you decided you were going to do this instead. So what was your thinking about that? So one time I had I was like, you know what, I will go talk to the book guy and the agency, even though I am absolutely never going to write a book. So on my way there, Lacy text me a story and I'm laughing so hard. And then when I get there, I'm like, hey, what if we just did a book of my sister's stories? And he was like, we'll call it. You'll never believe what happened to Lacey. We're definitely doing this it was after the races, so you didn't even have to convince them that this was a good idea. That which is pretty amazing, right, it's super lucky, so lazy. When Amber approaches you and says, I want to write a book and I want you to be a second voice in it, and I want to tell readers what it has been like for you. Were you a little trepidacious at all lazy or did you think, yeah, let's go for it. Amber, No, not at all, because this has been like a running joke in our family and with friends, Like every time something would happen to me, they would say, that's going in the book. You know. I'd be somewhere with Amber and she'd like, that's chapter twelve. You know, it's just you's and years we would always say this, that's going into the book. So when she said we're going to write a book, I'm like, it's written already. We have everything we need. Tell me a little bit, Amber and Lacy, both of you about the writing process. I love the fact that you use different fonts to represent different voices. I love just reading you guys are so funny. Amber. I love when you say shut up, lazy and Lacey. I'd love when you say, Amber, you're hard to like and it's just so funny and fun. So how did that work? Did you guys record each other? Did you write emails? Amber explain that a little bit. We first off, we wrote down a good portion of the stories, and you know, it's just how Lazy speaks is hilarious, so then you know you're really just remembering and writing it down. So then we've got most of the stories written down. And then we went to mom and Dad's house and spent like a few days, maybe a week on the couch just you know, kind of like story boarding the book and then putting the stories in different groups and then adding the little in between the bids. And that was the most fun because I think what a normal person writes a book, it's quite a process. This was not. It was simply us remembering things that had happened and writing them down, you know, and using my job. We were very lucky. You use a lot of obviously, because Amber your comedy writer, and the humor is so effective and so disarming but also very honest. I can't explain it. You just do this really interesting balance of humor and this brutal determination that people shouldn't put up with this ship? Is that an accurate way to describe it? What a perfect way to describe it? Yes, I mean, you know, it's funny. I can't help that it has a hilarious nous of its own that I'm not giving it. It just is funny. But then also, we live in a world where these things are constant, so that is unfunny. But these things are happening, so it's funny. You know, it goes round and round. But this is what life is. So how do you want to handle it? You can lay down and cry if you like, or these things are like quite hilarious, so you can have a bit of a good time. You know, it's both. There is no rule book for how to handle it, but if there was and we wrote it, it would be laughter. I'm wondering, Lacey, having written the book and read the book, why do you think this might be a really effective way of basically exposing what it's like for Black Americans on a daily, if not hourly basis, but also helping white Americans understand and and be better. Yeah, and you just said that it's laying out one person's life on a day to day basis. I can tell you two stories about something racist that happened to me, and someone might be like, oh, that's not really racist, and you know, it's only two things that happened. But when you read story after story after story after story UM for white people, it's like, Wow, I don't understand how she's going through the day, day after day dealing with this. And I you know, I've had phone calls and texts from people that have worked with me that recognize some of the things that happened in this book and was like, wow, did all of this this happened at the job because I remember a couple of them, and then they kind of realized when I would come plane and would say things I didn't realize. They would say, I didn't realize it was that bad. I want people to have that aha moment, and I think this helps them to be like great. And I hate to say it, but people are you know, some people are like racism is real. They didn't believe that it was real, and then after reading this book, they're like, Okay, that that is racism. That's right. And all I really want people to do that are reading this book. UH for white people that are reading this book. If you are doing these things, stop. If you know someone that's doing them, give them the book, tell them to stop. It's it is educating. It's like what not to do? Didn't Amber we say at one time we should have told we should have named this book. Don't do that, stop that bad, don't do that good. It's a how to not to act at work. And I think, you know, I think it's very impressively see that you have been on it. I mean you have been not only calling out this stuff, I think in a in a really effective way. So in a way, putting it on paper for everyone to read it must be feel very validating for you in some ways, Lacy, right, because you know, I'm sure there are times when you're like, well should I do this? Should I not? You have to constantly balance is this going to hurt me professionally? You know? How much? Can I speak up? Are they going to you know, think I'm an angry black woman? All those things, all those calculations you have to make constantly. So I think this must feel, as I said, incredibly validating, like yes, this happened, and Amber, you must feel very proud of Lacy she's fine. No, I am proud. It's just it is, like Lacy said, once you see the step, the sheer volume, the sheer value of these stories, it is quite something. And then you're forced to look back and go, how did this human being survived this? But she did look at her fine as ever, when we come back a dramatic reading from Amber and Lacy, that's right after this. You know, I want to get to some of the funny stuff that you guys talk about. And the very first story is really funny, and I know you kind of don't save the best for last. You are right out of the gate Amber with a funny story, and Lacy or Amber either one. I wondered if you could tell that story. Yes, Lacy had black history checks, and each check how a different historical black figure on it. So once Lacey is paying for something and she writes on the check, he hands it to the cashier. The cashier takes the check and goes, oh my gosh, I didn't realize you could get your own picture on your checks. The picture on her check was a picture of Harriet Tubman. Good cashier, hey did not know who Harriet Tubman is. B thought Lacey was Harriet Tubman and she couldn't tell that it's like literally the oldest picture on earth. What did you say to the cashier, Lacey, I said, that's Harriet Tubman and she just goes, okay, didn't she didn't know what it was. And I didn't have time to do history lesson at that point. I would have loved to, but you know, we gotta keep the line moving. I just was in shock, and things don't shock me that much, but that shocked me. Along those lines, you're to read a section for us from the book, page one oh one. This is a section of the book that really deals with this. Amber and Lacy and you all have agreed that you would would read it for our listeners. Here is an excerpt from the hit book, You'll never believe what happened to Lacey? Thank you so much, amper commence. Lacy was at a director's meeting and everyone was acting really strange. Whenever they mentioned the new coworkers starting that day, Lazy 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, and finally she blurted out, there will be another colored Gale working here, Lacey. She was just so excited to tell her that she couldn't 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 in common. We were black. Once she started, the staff and the residence at the retirement home could not tell us apart. Every day. They would mistake us for each other. And I'm not in any way exaggerating. I'm a good fifteen years older. She's fifteen years older than me, too, shut up. I have natural long locks 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, son, Lacy in because I'm supposed to meet with her soon. I said, I am lazy, and we sat in silence, and then she apologized. I gave a lesson on how not being able to tell black people apart is racist. Very well done, Well done, ladies, very good dramatic reading. How do you. I mean, how do you deal with that, and how do you deal with people's ignorance, because I think they're probably well meaning people who don't quite appreciate the level of ignorance in their comments. I did a documentary on transgender people and I interviewed Gavin Graham, who is in southern Virginia and wanted to use the men's bathroom transgender mail. And he said, you know, I don't feel like I should be teaching people about the transgender experience. And at first I was kind of like, well, if people genuinely want to learn and understand, and he said, well, that's why God invented Google. And then I started thinking about it. And after a while, you know, to have to kind of explain it over and over and over again to people who don't understand is it becomes very demeaning for people. But I thought it was interesting, Amper you basically said, full stop, you are not here to teach white people how to behave. And I wondered if you could talk a little bit about that, because I think it's something for that that has taken me a bit to understand. Yeah, it is this. I am not dragging white people into the light anymore. I lived in Omaha, Nebraska, I did it. I don't. I'm not great at it. I don't love doing it. It does have an effect on you. I before everything protect my own happiness, and it cannot thrive when I'm convincing people that I am of any value. So I don't do it anymore. And there are so many resources now that I think people can figure it out. What's more is everything has kind of gotten worse because we're now all slowly becoming aware of the fact that racism is a thing. So it's becoming a thing you can just feel free to talk to me about, even though for white people it's not. It's not a thing connected to any actual pain, but for me it is. And so for people giving me invitations to slog through my pain for their um enjoyment, amusement, understanding, um learning, I'm just not going to do that. Lacy has a different take. I wish I could do that, But sometimes when you and I, when I tell you, I used to do it every single time someone said something, every single job I had, I had a speech prepared when someone used to say something. I don't do it as much anymore, but sometimes just for the sake of other black people that work with me that would never speak up. I'll give the history lesson and then you look in the room and you see maybe not even half or getting what you're saying anyway, or even buying it. You know, they're like, really, and after you've given this fifteen minute speech, and you're mad, and you think you might cry, and and you might walk out of work to go through all of that, And still they would need, you know, ten classes to understand you know why you we don't say Negro anymore? And all these are I mean, seriously, it does um it takes a toll on you. But I'm still I still will teach people. I still do that. I don't do it as much, but I wish I could just walk away and be like, I can't. I don't have time google it, I can't do it all the time. I totally hear you, guys. It would get very old and exhausting and and hurtful to have to kind of do this on a regular basis. But how can we help come up with the solution. Do you think a lot of it is I mean a lot of it is proximity that Brian Stevenson I think talks about so eloquently, you know the fact that we're still very segregated. But also what about what about education? Is there some help in how how our our kids are being educated, what they're learning, how they're learning it, because I think that is such an important aspect to getting to a place of deeper understanding and appreciation and and less less racism, sexism, all the isms. What do you think, Lacy, education does play a big part of it. Just the other day on the news in uh, one of these small towns in Nebraska, Uh, they just had a story about how they kept you could choose whether you wanted your child to take a black history course. Where do you go from that? And you know most of the parents are probably like, absolutely not. So history is a big thing. Our history is not taught, Racism is not taught in schools, and white children aren't learning that at all. So I don't people have asked me this question, Katie, I don't. This is where I fail. I don't know how to change things. I don't know how to make white people more educated. I don't know how to make they have to want to they have to want to care. First of all, how do you do that. I don't. I don't have the answers for that at all. I don't know how to make it better and change things. And that's I feel sad when I say that, but I'm living in I feel at sometimes eighteen sixty five. I don't know how to how to begin to get out of that. It is through education, But if you have people that don't want to learn about your history or don't want to learn about your value, I don't know where to go from that. Do not ask me to pull up about bout the show, Go and look at feel sale, look at more with Amber and Lacy in just a moment, systemic racism and Henry and how do we start changing things Hamper in your view, obviously you do it. I think, as I mentioned earlier, through humor. Humor is kind of the gateway drug for talking about racism in some ways, isn't it? Yeah? It is, um. I do think. I'm sure there are a lot of people with a lot of great ideas on a way forward. Personally, I think we are lost. Everyone who is thirty enough, it's over. This is it, This is who the world is. There is no hope, but trying to find a bunch of people who are kind to the end. But I do think that, um, what we need to do, like there is a path forward, We're just not going to really benefit from it. Um. All of the textbooks in America are wrong, and not like they hide black history, they hired white history. The history books are literally very wrong and they paint a picture of a country that has taken care of its uh black community. But in um, in spite of that, the black community has done wrong by themselves. And that's not that's absolutely not what happened, but that is the narrative we're taught in school. So I think if you learn that, no wonder when you hear black lives matter, you go, hey, I don't like this, or why do you feel like you've been shifted? You know? So, uh, it's the school system. It is every book in every elementary school is literally wrong and needs to be thrown at the garbage. I totally agree, you know, I did. I did a documentary on Confederate statues because nobody really understood the lost cause they didn't understand when these statues were put up with after Brown v. Board of Education, what happened? And I think that is so true. And Black History Month I find increasingly insulting to every black person in this country. And I know you did a very funny bit the other night on your show about why we need White History Month. Hear me out. I think we do need a White History Month because the American history that's taught in schools is so whitewashed. We don't learn the real story. We learned lies like George Washington chopping down a cherry tree, but not the fact that George had eighteen slaves before he turned eighteen. Eighteen slaves. When I was eighteen, I didn't have eighteen shirts. I had three shirts and they all look like this. Taka. Tell us about that amper and and is it did that come from your uh, you know, appreciation that everybody's learning things that are just not accurate. Yes, um, I think people love to feel superior to black people. It feels good and it feels comforting. I mean, I would know I'm just assuming here, but I think that when people get mad at the fact that there is a Black History Month, then you know, it's a lot of that yummy feeling of superiority, but they also just have not been taught the truth, you know, And that's really sad. And you can look back and you can pinpoint exactly how it happened. It happened with um, what's it called the Daughters of the American Revolution, who are those children? The crazy old women, that's what they should be called, crazy old women. And they literally went in and they created a narrative for what it's emmen in America, and they became so powerful that, you know, in order to create a textbook, you had to run it by them, and if they didn't like it, then that textbook didn't get made. And those are the textbooks we are still all learning from today. Today, a child is going to put down a book that was helped written by those women and then go out and march in the protest today. So it's it's insane that those women who you know, whose only goal is to make it okay to um that people were in a Confederacy, that they that people were a part of the Confederacy, you know, to honor their grandfathers and stuff. Dude, it's wild, it's yeah, I think he's yeah, the daughters at the Confederacy and and sort of perpetuating the lost cause and narrative not not to mention the fact that Texas, because they're the largest purchaser of textbooks in the country, they have an disproportionate say and how stories are told in those textbooks, which I think is is something that people don't really recognize or realize. Can I ask you one question about intersectionality. I found it interesting Amber you talk about characteristics of Lacy that have nothing to do with her race, but it's about that she's petite and pretty. And I'm curious if you think about this intersection of gender and race in Lacy's case and how how that plays into some of the things that are said to her. If there if they are a combination, a weird combination of both of these things, they definitely is. I think people feel brave when they talk to a black person. They feel brave when they talk to a woman, but they feel super brave when they talk to a woman who's asked. They think they could be that's that's lazy. She's so tiny, But the chacker is lazy, could freaking lift a car. She's a bodybuilder. So each one of those people is hilariously wrong. But you know, I'm like, it gets bigger every time I say it. I'm like a foot taller than Lazy. It's probably like fourges. But I'm like a lot bigger than I'm a lot bigger than Lacey. And people don't say those crazy things to me that they would say to Lazy, but they can take me, can't. Amber and Lacy. The book is called You'll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey? Crazy Stories about Racism? Thank you guys so much for making some time for me on our podcast. And by the way, you all should do a podcast together. You would be This would be such a fun podcast, a great idea and get all that. I mean, we're on FaceTime breaking fifteen minutes every day. You might as well. As I'm making a podcast. I'm not kidding. That would be a fantastic podcast. Maybe I'll produce it anyway. That was Amber Ruffin and Lacy Lamar. The book is called You'll Never Believe What Happened to Lacy? Crazy Stories about Racism. It is such a fun and yes, disturbing read. Get it wherever you buy your books. There's also a link in the description of this podcast. And if you guys haven't seen that white history bit from the Amber Ruffan Show already, we linked to it in our description to watch it. Honestly, it is pretty mind blowing. And that does it for this episode of Next Question with Katie Curic. Tune in next week for a sobering anniversary the pandemic one year later. In retrospect, I feel sort of lucky that I got sick when I did. I think I would have been much more distraught if I knew then what I knew now. We're exploring all that we've learned about COVID nineteen, our health care system, science, and ourselves. It is amazing how much knowledge we have accumulated in a year. You know. I kind of think of it as we maybe have finished chapter one maybe, and this is a big book. That's next Thursday on Next Question. Next Question with Katie Couric is a production of I Heart Media and Katie Currik Media. The executive producers are me I just don't want to have to say my name one more time and Courtney Litz. The supervising producer is Lauren Hansen. Associate producers are Derek Clements, Adriana Fasio, and Emily Pento. The show is edited and mixed beautifully. I might add by Derek Clements for more information about today's episode, or to sign up for my morning newsletter wake Up Call. Don't you want me in your inbox? Every morning? People go to of course, Katie correct dot com and you can also find me at Katie Curic on Instagram and all my social media channels. 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