Life Uncut - PART 3 - Micro Aggression with Matt Okine - LIVE SHOW BONUS

Episode Date: October 20, 2022

Ya'll asked for it! The cut down interviews from our LIVE SHOW!We will be dropping 4 bonus episodes with all the amazing guests from our Sydney Live show. The first 2 guest are dropping Wednesday and the final 2 on Friday.WELCOME TO PART 3On this episode we speak to Actor, podcaster, kids performer, radio host Matt Okine on his award winning views on racial micro aggression.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A Life Uncut podcast acknowledges the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders, past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today. This episode is recorded on Gadigal land of the Aurora Nation. Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Brittany. And I'm Laura.

And this is a little packaged up bonus episode from you. We are putting all these little pieces together from the live show with all of our guests. So this is part three. So we've obviously done part one and two. Part three is Matt O'Kine. Now Matt O'Kine is one of those amazing, super annoying people that can do everything. He's an award-winning comedian, he's an actor, he does radio, he has podcasts. He literally is someone that is just like, you're like, what can't you do?

He was an incredible chat, so I hope you guys enjoy listening to him as much as we enjoyed having him on the show. Welcome to the stage, please everyone, a big loud welcome, Matt O'Kine. Hey. Why do you immediately look so much cooler than us? No, I feel very underdressed. I changed my shoelaces. That gave my shoes a whole new spritz, you know what I mean?

I did say to Matt, I was like, do you reckon you could be here at 5.45 today? And he was like, nah, I've got daycare drop off. Sorry, pick up, pick up. Daycare, pick up. And then my daughter wasn't, she was eating spaghetti and thank you so much. and she was not picking up the spaghetti right with her fork and there were so many tears. Like, it was just...

And I'm twisting the fork. I'm going, is this it? Is this it? She's like, it's not it. She's giving it away. Oh, man. But anyway, we're here. Matt, we start all of our podcast interviews with our new guests by asking them their most embarrassing story.

We like to really start low so that we can build you back up. What is the most embarrassing thing that's ever happened to you? Do you know, in two, the year, basically I suck my own dick. We've all been there. Yeah, so that was one of those things that I never thought that I would ever tell anyone else. Intentionally? Or it was like something you discovered you could do? Very much intentionally, yes.

It wasn't an accident. I thought that was... It wasn't like a really... The plane landed badly, and I was like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. No, it wasn't like that. How old were you? I was 15 at the time, so I... I'm sorry.

I had, yeah, so I had taken... It was in Ghana, right? I was visiting Ghana with my dad. I don't know if that's necessary. I know, I know, I know. I don't know details in English. Well, it's a very humid country and it feels like I was in a bath and it was hot and I feel like I was really in the bath for a long time and my back felt good

and then I got an erection and then I was just like looking at it and it was looking at me. no look like every guy in this room has tried to suck their own dick okay every single one of them I can see a few of you a few of you

you you've tried it you've tried it you fail you fail but but here's the thing i was like look we all know how this ends i'm not gonna reach you but let's just see how much i don't reach you by all right and then I got closer and closer and next thing I did was in my mouth Matt O'Kine ladies and gentlemen that's it and that's Matt O'Kine ladies and gentlemen

it wasn't I wasn't good at it do you know what I mean I wasn't like it was just like you know what I mean just the very top bit just the tip so did you

edging I think it's called no because it was happening and then I was like oh I can't do this this is disgusting you thought of that after the fact and then I was like nah I can do this and then I went back down

couldn't reach I couldn't reach the second time I couldn't reach went back for seconds why even your penis didn't want it to happen it retracted away from you yeah it was like i can't it's forbidden so matt in all seriousness because like i thought this was a myth can you did you actually make contact genuinely yeah but look here's the thing people like oh you must have big but it's not like that at all what what happened was i was 15 and and and it

had grown to its maximum length but I was still had the body of a boy do you know what I mean so it was like it was really just a once in a lifetime opportunity but truly a once in a lifetime was it once and once only yeah and that's it and that was just that was it and trust me I tried well sometimes life like offers you up these opportunities I'm so glad you grabbed that one yeah absolutely the moral of the story is never let go of a good thing no i my next question was how did you know you were funny enough to be a comedian but we can skip past that because i've got it right now now how do you know how how do you be like i'm i'm funny

i'm gonna make people pay to come and see me um yeah i don't know that i mean look what what the actual the actual biggest sort of question is at what point do you start not being embarrassed about things like that um and just realizing that that's just who you are and what you can talk about on stage um because I mean for a very long time especially as a young guy you would just be like I would I mean I swore to myself that I would never ever tell that particular story because that's so shameful and embarrassing and blah blah blah but the more you get to that point as a performer or content creator or whatever and you guys do it all the time it's like the more you open up the realer you are the more you realize that people you're not the only kid with a bathtub

you know what I mean what Matt's saying is that he also ran out of content and had to mine deeper yeah yeah exactly literally um so yeah so I mean that that's that's where things started becoming more interesting for me as a performer and as a as a comedian and stuff like that sort of hitting that truth level and honesty that I think people certainly now just want to hear or appreciate at least. Well, it's not often we do have the pleasure of being in the presence of an award-winning comedian.

So we're really going to utilise that tonight by talking about micro-racial aggression. So, I mean, go figure. We've got a comedian and we're going to go... We're going to waste our time, is what we're saying. We're taking you from talking about all of your funny times in life to talking about some very serious times in your life. Sure, go for it. Let's go for it.

Well, let's start with what is racial microaggression? Oh, look, it's just little things. I mean, you know, I had to pull up someone recently because they were talking about how my hair looks like pubes, right? And, like, while it kind of does, you're like, you don't get to say that, you know? um and so and people don't do it out of like most people don't do it out of spite or hate or anything like that they just don't know um and so the whole race conversation um there really is a battle against you know or there's naivety and um ignorance versus willful ignorance and purposeful hate you know and that and that's kind of where where the where the sort of line

is drawn down sometimes there's people that get caught in the crossfire but most of the time and the majority of people aren't willfully out to be um to be ignorant but if we're actually talking about in terms of the way that society is changing or change when it comes to you know the way people look at race it's a couple of things that I've pointed that I've happened to me recently having a daughter she's three years old right and she's got curly hair and I'm really getting scared of the day that she comes home and wants to straighten it you know because she's just so like as it's I saw my sister straighten her hair for her whole life and being called you know a puke head made fun of like hair and oh we can put velcro on the roof you can stick the roof and all that sort of

stuff it still sticks with you for a long time so seeing my daughter you know hopefully embracing the curly hair is a big one now when my partner and I just recently were showing my daughter the bananas ad from the 90s do you remember that one yeah so I mean classic ad right and my partner was like oh let's go and watch this bananas ad you know and she was singing the song and my daughter was like what is that what's that song and my partner's like we'll watch the ad so we sat down and watched the ad and after the ad this was the classic 90s ad after the ad i looked up and my partner was literally crying right and i was like oh my gosh what's what's what happened with the banana i don't know like what happened

did someone slip i know i know i know like what yeah but she was like i just realized that um there's only white kids in that ad right which is fine it was the 90s and that's what happened But then she was like, now that I, you know, our daughter is part African and now I'm with you, I'm only realising that you would have grown up watching that ad and seen a completely different ad. So she only realised that now. And that's absolutely fine. Everyone takes the time to learn that sort of stuff. But this afternoon, literally this afternoon, when I was doing that daycare pickup, my daughter walked past this sign that said, that was just had a, it was just like a community sort of sign. you know they've got them at daycare put your way your things blah blah but it had a like a young

brown girl in the sign and my daughter Sophia out of nowhere completely unprompted walked up and said dad look that girl looks like me right and I said yeah she does she's got curly hair and she's got yeah and and brown skin like me and I felt so like thankful that it has changed because I think when we talk about race and everything it's like it gets blurred to this line where us as adults understand it but kids don't and the best example I always sort of use in this scenario is when I was 10 and my and I was watching um the you know Pauline Hanson was making her biggest rise up through the ranks and she was all over the news and she was talking about immigrants and blah blah blah and I remember you know looking at at the news and thinking about

and hearing her talk about how bad immigrants are and blah blah blah and then I remember going into my mum's room and asking her is dad an immigrant and my mum said yes and I remember feeling really embarrassed about that and ashamed and like scared I thought oh no I can't let anyone know I can't let anyone know that my dad's an immigrant you know and that's so like it's quite evil what can be done and the way that kids can be manipulated through the media and so as adults it's easy to say oh well shouldn't everyone have their say and have their opinion and blah blah blah but we're forgetting who actually gets access to that and who gets to and who suddenly feels like they're not one of us and not allowed to be here

and whose parents are less valued in society. And so that's why, you know, just my daughter, seeing someone that looked like her and assigned to me today felt like we're going in the right direction. How does that for you, how does that impact you growing up? Like, seeing that ad on TV, or seeing Pauline on TV and seeing that conversation, and then having, speaking to your dad and connecting the dots,

like how does that impact you long term where you are now in your life um well the reason why i do stand-up comedy is because i didn't think that i was going to get any acting jobs because there was no brown people on australian tv and so i felt like if i um connected with audiences by being myself as much as possible that they'd see and hear someone that they could relate to without needing to go through any higher up powers etc so that's actually part of the reason why I guess I'm even sitting on this stage is because understanding that there were gatekeepers at the time and that they're still to an extent is but doing my best to sort of get around that um as far as what it does to you when you're growing up this has gone so

far away from sucking my own dick I gotta tell you oh my lord You've got to do a bit of both right You've got to have a bit of light and shade I think this is really important though So Matt won moment of the year at the podcast awards last year For speaking about this And that's why when we listened To that section

That audio that was put forward for the podcast awards That was why we were like This is the conversation we want to have on stage Yeah and look it's a really important one It's a very difficult one People get very defensive when they talk about it And feel uncomfortable That doesn't help anyone

you know you've just got to kind of try and be as open as possible about it um so what what i was going to say is you know you feel like i mean growing up you feel you do feel a little bit like uh embarrassed about being brown you're making all the sort of jokes to try and you know cover up you know who you are and what you are you kind of reject there's a lot of cultural rejection and all that sort of stuff um and you feel like i look back on some of the stuff that i used to say and do to my dad because i was kind of a little bit embarrassed by you know him being african and stuff like that and it's like it's shameful you know because this is a guy who like worked his ass off to to you know get his university degree out of ghana to move to

australia started a new life set up a family you know and everything and and then you're making fun of him for the way he says mosquito instead of mosquito you know what i mean and um i mean he still does it and i still make fun of him but you know i'm allowed to now i'm allowed to but um yeah but like things like that you know so you look back on it you're like what was i thinking but that's you know you're you're such under the influence of the the powers outside of you that you kind of don't realize the um yeah the effect that you're having on not just yourself but others the others the people that are important to you do you find that you still experience it these these microaggressions in your day-to-day life with people that are in your life so maybe

they're friends because maybe it's a level of ignorance or not being educated enough on the topic because i sometimes being casual i think even people are educated on it but they're like oh like we're mates so you don't mind do you yeah look i mean racism is one of those things that hides very well behind discrepancy and so you know in a way you can never really racists in the same way that abusers are very good at hiding what they do and they're very good at making it impossible to prove it right so that's why when you know you have to be really lucky to catch with video a police officer's choking a dude to death and even when the video exists there's still room for oh well actually I'm not that person and so it's the same with abuse

these people work so they they're masters of covering their tracks and their trails so they very rarely get caught, you know. I remember applying for a job at a video store and I remember putting my photo on the video store, on the CV, because I wanted to make sure that when people saw my last name Okine and my middle name Ajete, they looked at my photo and they saw that I wasn't that black right now it's I'm embarrassed that I did that but I also did that because studies had proven and still prove that you're less likely to get a job interview in that instance so these sort of things unless you really get busted they just happen all the time and it's the same way so often where you go I got it I got a feeling about this person

or I really don't trust this person or I wouldn't trust this person making a decision on my behalf because I actually don't think that they're an ally. It's the same way people of colour do that, the same way the women do that, the same way that you have to sort of... You kind of... You know, you just know when it's happening to you.

But, of course, very difficult to prove it more often than not. So you just have to sort of suck it up and get on with your day. I mean, that's the thing. You shouldn't have to suck it... You should suck it up because that's what you do. But you shouldn't have to suck it up and get on with your day. Of course you shouldn't. That's why we want to have these conversations.

And just on that, when we did our due diligence, I was reading an article from somebody with an ethnic name that went for a job, like put their CV down twice. They went for the job twice. They didn't have photos. It was just their name. But they changed their name with the same CV. So they had their ethnic name and then they had, you know,

John Smith and John Smith got the interview. Of course. Yeah. And the fact that that is happening now, I mean, it's very upsetting, which is why we want to have these conversations. But part of the moment of the year that you did win was talking about racism, Black Lives Matter, the movement. Do you think there has been, have you noticed in your life since the Black Lives Matter movement, have you noticed a big difference in society in things that are happening to you in the day to day? yeah i mean look i think it's i think it's it's great i think it is something that has definitely there's there's levels of overcompensation at times that i feel which i which i think is fine because it's kind of long overdue um there's also you know instances of people where um you know you know there's people who will um i'm trying to figure out how to say this without pointing at particular groups or names but essentially there'll be people or companies

who are very much on board you know oh yeah we did this and you you look back just like two years ago and you're like well you didn't represent any people of color and you had like how many people on your books a hundred people on your books you didn't care about people of color but now you suddenly care because you need to that's the sort of people that i don't that's they're the people who i get really kind of frustrated with but i mean it's it is it's definitely it's definitely changing and i'm and i'm stoked and it's always it's changed a lot since the bananas ad in the 90s and it's going to keep changing and I have faith that the

majority of people are doing the right thing and that it's, you know, we're all trying our best. I think most of us are trying our best. Matt, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for sharing your experiences. You are literally the fucking best. Thank you. Thanks guys.

Thank you so much, Matt. We'll be right back.