The Daily Beast Podcast - Stop Being A White Savior and Join a School Board ft. Phoebe Robinson

Episode Date: September 26, 2021

Comedian, author, and “2 Dope Queens” actress Phoebe Robinson tells white people how they can step away from the “white savior” mentality (and the Instagram posts that come with it) and do things that will actually help Black people. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to another bonus episode of The New Abnormal, and we thank you so much for being here. This week we have an extra special guest with Phoebe Robinson, who you may know from her work on two broke girls, Broad City, and, well, tons of other things. But she's back with a brand new book called, Please Don't Sit on My Bed in Your Outside Clothes. So we talked to her all about that today. Enjoy. Welcome to the New Abnormal, Phoebe Robinson. Thanks for having me. I'm so excited to be here. So I want to talk about your book. I want to talk about your book imprint. I want to talk about your show. But let's start with the book imprint because I think it's really cool what you're doing. And I would love you to explain it a little bit if you can. Yeah, of course. So my book imprint is called Tiny Reparations Books. And I met my lit agent Robert back in 2014. He found me on some list of New York comedians who were, you know, I don't know, doing what I'm. Like one of those lists that like shout people out, but don't really change your career at all.

L.O.L. Yes. So he saw me on that. And then he read a blog that I was writing at the time called Blaria, which stands for Black Darya. I love it. Yeah. Thank you. And so he emailed me.

He wrote, I'm sure you probably already have a book deal. But if you don't, I would love to meet up and chat with you, which is so exciting. Because part of the reason why I started the blog is that I wanted to get a book deal and I just didn't know how. So we met up. and I told him the idea for my first book, You Can't Touch My Hair. And he sort of got the sense that I wasn't a one and done kind of author. So he asked me sort of what the end game was.

And, you know, I was just like, oh, yeah, I want to have an imprint. I had no idea what that meant. I just wanted at all. I was just like, I knew Tony Morrison edited books while she wrote. And I was like, that seems like a lot of work. But I think an imprint would be like way easier, which was so dumb. I love it. I mean, we're laughing because, like, Jesse and I both relate to being like,

I think I want to do, da-da-da. So I just, we relate. Yeah, I just, we always had that in the back of our minds. And, you know, he'd bring it up periodically. He'd be like, you know, what about an imprint? I was like, oh, it's not the right time. It's not the right time. I'm doing two dope queens and doing what have you.

I'm pulled in different directions. And then before COVID, he and I had a conversation with my publisher Plum. And I told him about Tiny Reuters. reparations books and what I wanted to achieve. And it was just an exploratory college to see what's up and like what the bandwidth was that they had. And then COVID happened. So I was kind of like, I think the world's in a really stressed out place. And I don't think, you know, doing an imprint right now is really that important. And then I came up with this idea for this new book, please don't sit on my bed and you're outside clothes during COVID. And I told Robert about it. And he was like,

go write the proposal. So I did. And he was like, we're going to shop this proposal for your book and the imprint at the same time. Let's just do it. And so I said, okay, you sure people really want to have an imprint right now. And he was like, you know, publishing pay me is happening. You've been reading every day. You've had this idea for years. Let's just like really go for it. And so we did. And here we are. The imprint is alive. We have 11 books, including mine on the slate. Awesome. Yeah. And I'm really proud of it. So I hope that people really love the, the book. that we have to offer once they really start coming out next year. That is very cool. I am so thrilled for you. And what a cool idea. So talk to me about this book because the title, I feel this title so much. My husband puts his like shoes on the bed.

And I'm like, no. Oh my God. Right. I'm like, we put our shoes by the door because we're not animals. Yeah, I mean, you know, this was a thing that was a big deal in my parents' house growing up. Like they kept a very clean house. They, you know, swept and mobbed and vacuumed it every single week, wiping down baseboards, like, dusted, they got into it.

And with my brother and I, they were like, the outside world is funky and trifling. And do not bring that in here. Exactly. change your clothes. You know what I mean? And so that was just sort of one of the life lessons that kind of stuck with me that I didn't expect. And then I remember when I went off to college and I got my cute bedding from Target.

And, you know, my friends want to come sit on the bed. And I'd just be like, but you were on the subway. New York is disgusting. Like, get off my bed. And because I write a lot about my parents in the book, I just thought it was just sort of like a nice nod to them. Let's talk about writing about parents because I also have. have parents.

Are they mad at you for writing about them or now? No, I just don't even tell them that I do it because if I were like, hey, I'm going to write about you guys. And I'm like, don't write about me. So I just like do it and then like just deal with it later. And they're always good because I feel like, you know, what I wrote in the book about them, I didn't write anything like that made them look bad or anything. It just sort of like kind of made fun of, you know, sort of the way that they are sometimes.

So I think when they read this, they'll get a kick out of it. and everything will be cool. Yeah, you know, I come from a family of writers who write about each other all the time, and you definitely just have to do. If you start worrying about what other people think of how they're depicted, you'll never write. Exactly. Yeah, but it is really interesting. So you have a number of shows.

You have a talk show. You have a podcast. Yeah, I had a Black Fraser, which was going on. But now I was writing with my boyfriend, who he's now. back on the road touring with a rock band. So we're on hiatus until his schedule calms down. So there's, I don't know when there's going to be a season two of Black Frazier, but I hope there is because I had a great time interviewing people and giving out of ice.

Can you explain Black Frazier to me? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So I just like to give people advice whether they ask for it or not. Yes. Me too. Yeah. And I've never seen Frasier before.

My boyfriend has watched the entire series twice. and we were always joking to say that I'm like a black phrase or I'm like, great, let's just call the podcast that. And then each episode is sort of dedicated to a topic. Like I interviewed Abby Jacobson and that was about whether or not we're going to have kids. And I'm from the inside of not having kids and she's somewhere in the middle. And so we then we have people write in and sort of talk about, you know, their journey and then ask us questions. And so yeah, each episode has like a different sort of theme. and then we have people just write in,

and then we do a lot some advice, and then we say, good luck. We hope our advice doesn't derail your life. And then that's it. I love that. I mean, I think that's great. Like when you're giving advice, do you think people actually take advice?

I mean, I think it's like anyone. Half the time you take the advice, half the time you don't, because you already had your mind made up on what you wanted to do before you ask the advice. You just want to hear someone else either reaffirm what you wanted to do or just like give a different perspective

and you can still go, oh, that's not for me. I'm going to do what I want to do. So I hope that, you know, with the advice that we gave on the show that it was helpful to some people and if it wasn't helpful, it at least made them laugh.

Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, it's, yeah, it is an interesting and potentially tricky genre. Yes, absolutely. You don't want to say the wrong thing and really like screw someone's life up because then they're going to hate you forever.

So what is next for you? So the book coming out, I have a stand-up special coming out on HPL Max on October 14th called Sorry Harriet Tubman. Will you talk to us a little bit about that? I'm just like, Harriet worked so hard. And then here I am making jokes about my boyfriend's penis. All apologies. So sorry, Harriet.

But in the special, you know, I had to talk about, you know, dating my boyfriend. I talk about civil rights movies. About this time, I hung out with Michelle Obama on the Becoming Book Tour. Wow. Reparation. So it really like runs the gamut, my sex life. And it's really fun. And I think people just need to feel joy and laugh.

And so I hope everyone tunes in so I can put out a second hour. So I have that. And then I'm just in development on a couple of projects with our production company that we can't really talk about. But it's nice to just be. on the producer side of things and helping shepherd these projects along. So I'm really excited for that. And then I'll probably do a little bit more writing with a couple of ideas I have. I got to figure out how I want to get those out there.

And then take some time off. I'm really excited to have a break soon. Can you explain to us about white saviors? Oh, yes. You know, they're out there, y'all. I think we saw a lot of that during last summer with the George Floyd murder and just how some white people sort of then finally understood that racism exists and were like, move out of the way, y'all. I'm about to solve it all. And then they solved nothing and just caused a lot of chaos.

And so I think, you know, what I wrote about that in this book, please don't sit on my bed. I just really was just coming from a place of listen. Like I understand that this may be new to a lot of people, although I don't understand how you could live in America and this is new. But the way to go about solving things is not to take the fact that you looked up some infographics on Instagram and then decide that you're going to do. to fix everything. It's really about listening, learning, and then doing kind of the things that are

not glamorous, that you can't post on Instagram, but that are really actually beneficial to the lives of black people. So, you know, I think it's easy to kind of like come in and be like, oh, I want to show everyone I'm on the right side of history, which, okay, fine, but it's really not about how things look. We need to focus on how things. are how we're going to fix them. What would you say? I mean, that is really, I think, an important thing to talk about and also, like, really useful for people listening to this. What do you think they should be doing? One, people need to do research and look at what solutions they can do their most in line with what's going on in their lives and whether that's sort of, if you have kids,

and you want to be more involved with the curriculum in school and making sure, you know, in literature classes is not just the quote unquote classics, which are just mostly like dead white guys, but they're reading books by other people or, you know, stop gentrifying neighborhoods or, you know, patronized businesses that are owned by people of color. You know, if you're only hiring people of color and subordinate positions at your company, look at why you're doing that and then change that. I mean, there's so many,

these, I'm just barely like touched the surface, you know, get more involved at the local politics because that's really the one thing that we can control, like we can't really do anything at the federal level. So, yeah, I think just sort of figure out what's a problem and then look up solutions and realize how you can be a part of that solution. Yeah, and I think the school board, you hit on the school boards, which actually running for school boards is like one of the great things you can do.

And the right has people running for school boards like mad in the hope of like preventing people from studying our American history. Yeah, it's horrible. With your stand-up, does it feel very different than the writing and the interviewing? Yeah. I mean, I think each thing has its own rhythm. And stand-up certainly has that sort of you want that payoff. You want to laugh. You want to keep people in that state.

And so, you know, I'm very aware of that rhythm. And I think with writing, certainly you can have some downbeats and go, I'm going to make a point. Whereas when stand up, you can make the point, but it's got to be really freaking funny. So it's just a different kind of pressure. But I welcome it all. I think it's all great. It's all different expressions of my personality and my brain. But yeah, they're really hard in their own specific unique ways.

Yeah. I mean, I've done some of the others. stuff, but stand-up seems a whole other level hard. Yeah, for sure. I mean, you're standing on the stage and you'd be like, hey, give me your attention for a full hour. That's a big ask. And it's like, all right, well, you better have something to stay.

You better be really damn funny if you're going to sort of have that demand of the audience. And, you know, when you tell a joke that doesn't land or you're trying to build new material, which is a lot of sort of trying out the wording and figuring things out, you're going to have some not so great shows and have to sort of deal with that. Whereas if you write something and you're like, oh, this isn't good, I'll just delete it and then, you know, revise it. So there is that little bit of like you're sort of, you're making mistakes in front of people, which you just have to sort of get used to. So talk to me about the kids chapter.

That was the first chapter in the book. And, you know, my boyfriend and I, we decided that we were going to be voluntarily child free. and, you know, I think society has come a long way, but there's still a long way to go. And there's a lot of judgment around women in particular who decide to not have children. And so I really wanted to write that just for other women who are feeling that way, or even for women who, for circumstances that we don't know, are unable to have children. And I just think there's a stigma and a judgmental aspect to either not wanting to have kids of not being able to have kids.

And I think that it's good for no one to sort of treat women less than if they're not mothers. Oh, yeah. That's so true. Oh, that's so good. Everything you're doing is so important. And I really appreciate it. I'm really excited for the books from your imprint. I think that that is so cool.

And I'm very happy for you. And just thrilled that we got to have you on the podcast. Thank you. Thanks for having me on. Real quick, I'll shout out the first two books that are coming out after mine? Yes, please do. On the slate, we have 11 books including mine. Mine is coming out this year. And then we have five coming out next year and then five coming out of 2020. So first up next year, February 1st is a book called What the Fireflies New by Kai Harris. And it's a coming of age story

about a preteen girl named KB. And her father passes away from drug use. And her mother sends KB and her older sister who's, I don't know, like 15 or 16 to go live with their grandfather for the summer. And so it deals, of course, with grief, but also just, you know, remember when you were like 12 or 13 and then like you're slowly starting to get your independence, but you don't really know what that means. And you're trying to figure out your way in the world. And I remember when I was like a preteen and my brother is four years old, I mean, you could be really close as kids.

but when he's like 17, he's not going to hang out with his 13-old sister. It's sort of like just re-sort of reconfiguring what your sibling relationship is going to be as you guys age. But it's a really heartwarming book. I loved it so much. It's very moving and powerful. And then our second book coming out in April is called Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Lee. She wrote this book while in medical school. So I would never ever complain again about writing a book.

And it's about five, 20-something Chinese Americans who are hired to break into museums and still Chinese artwork and send it back to China. And so, of course, it's about identity. It's about intergenerational relationships. But it's also at the heart of it, it's just like this really sort of like fast-paced, heist narrative where you keep turning the page and you're really excited. And I love this book so much. I think it's so fantastic and it hooked me from the first page. And I think people are really going to love it. Oh, I'm so psyched.

Thank you so much, Phoebe. I'm really impressed with this and with everything you do. And I feel so glad that we got to have you. Thank you. Thanks for having me on. This was so fun, y'all. On that note, we'll wrap this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking to smart folks from the Daily Beast and beyond

from media, culture, politics and science. will help us understand what's happening to our country and the world. We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app and share the show on social media. Thanks so much for listening and we'll see you again on the next episode. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh, and our star-studied the Daily Beast podcast at the Daily Beast.com slash podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, consider becoming a Daily Beast subscriber. Subscribing is the best way to feed the beast and support all of your podcasts as we cover

what might become the darkest timeline. Head to the DailyBeast.com slash membership slash podcast and sign up today.