Unabridged: One for the Books with Danzy Senna and Zach Stafford - Transcript
This is an abridged version of Traci’s live show “One for the Books.” This time, she’s joined by two incredible guests, Danzy Senna and Zach Stafford, for a conversation on Danzy's newest book Colored Television, passing narratives, and the word "mulatto". It's an evening filled with big laughs and even bigger questions around what it means to be mixed in America.
TRANSCRIPT
Traci Thomas 0:00
Hello everybody. It is me. It is I Traci Thomas, host of the stacks here with another bonus episode of the stacks, unabridged. It is live audio from an event I did earlier this month with author danzi Sena and podcaster producer, journalist Zach Stafford, we are talking about Hollywood, we are talking about the mulatto experience, and we are talking about dancy's newest book, colored television. Okay, enough of that. Let us get to this conversation with danzie Sena and Zach Stafford from my live one for the books event, co hosted by La ist.
hi, okay, so welcome. This is one for the books. This is my live literary series I get to do with las where we talk about books. It's not pretentious. You don't have to be smart to be here. If you're smart, that's great. But if you're not smart, that's also great. You can be friends with me. We're gonna play some games. There is audience participation, so if you feel weird about that, now would be the time to get over that, because it could happen to you at any moment. And the theme for this evening or this the whole plan for the night is we have two amazing guests, author Dan Zi Sena, whose newest book is this one right here. It's called colored television. And then my other fabulous guest is producer, podcaster, reporter, journalist, Zach Stafford, who I will also bring out shortly. And we're going to be talking about television and colored people, if you will. Hence the title. So we're going to start with some TV. We always start with an opening game. Tonight's game is a sort of name that tune television edition. You're gonna hear a track. You're just gonna yell out. Okay, we're just gonna be yell out. There's no rules. You don't have to be polite, as loud as possible, as fast as possible. Okay, here we go. Our first one. This is the easiest one. Here we go.
Everybody wins. Golden Girls. Do you guys know the video where the guy does the like remake and he goes, No, okay, okay. Next one. Here we go. My personal fave. Great.
Grey's Anatomy, nailed it, nailed it. That was fast and very good. Do you love the show as well? You did Okay, so you've jumped ship. That's fine. Very loyal of you. Okay, next up you
Yes, step by step, yes, you got to hear the roller coaster. That's when you really know they go up the roller coaster and they come down, Suzanne summers, all those fucking kids. Okay, next one you Oh,
that's right, Dancing with the Stars. Yeah, that was a hard one. Very good. You all win. And what do you win? You win our first guest of the evening. What you really came for? Danzi Sena is the author of four previous works of fiction, including the best selling Caucasia. Her most recent novel before this one is this one. It's called new people, and she's the recipient of numerous awards honors and teaches writing at the University of Southern California. Please welcome densey Sena to the stage.
You got Drake as your intro music. You're welcome,
Danzy Senna 4:13
not like a soundtrack,
Traci Thomas 4:17
all right. Dancy, let me get my shit together.
Danzy Senna 4:19
TV soundtrack was very millennial focused, both for the older people. I was like,
Traci Thomas 4:26
I gave you Frasier. You did give me Fraser. A different world, different world.
Danzy Senna 4:30
Those were the only two I got, though, step by step, was I need more Gen X here.
Traci Thomas 4:35
Okay, what would you have done,
Danzy Senna 4:38
girlfriends? I mean, I would have gone to the 70s, like my childhood. Those are the ones that Jefferson I thought that Jefferson's was too easy. Okay, it might have been, but
Traci Thomas 4:47
that's I felt would have been easy. We talked about it. We threw a lot around. I tried to be inclusive of multiple generations. I felt like I failed. Gen what are the new people? Called Gen Z. Gen Z? I felt like I failed them because they don't watch TV, yeah, and euphoria doesn't have a good sound, like it doesn't have a good opening. I was like, what are they watching? So sorry, if you're Gen Z, I'm sorry. You know what, you have your whole life to have TV shows that revolve around you. You're just getting started. I promise in 20 years, I will still be here, and I will have shows that you'll know. Okay, let's talk about your book, colored television, yes, yeah. Have any of you read it? Okay, all right. Smart people. Do you like it? Okay, good. I liked it, too.
Danzy Senna 5:39
Terrible. If they all said no,
Traci Thomas 5:43
but also would be honest, and we would appreciate them for their bravery. Yeah, we would kick you out. We'd be like, Oh, you didn't like it. Okay, bye. Will you just tell folks briefly what it's about? So we're all on the same page.
Danzy Senna 5:54
Sure, it's about a writer named Jane who is writing her great American novel for 10 years, and sort of losing her mind. It's her mulatto War and Peace is what her husband calls it. And her husband also makes art that doesn't sell, and they're broke, and things sort of get more desperate, and she tries to break into television and meets this producer who wants to make the greatest mulatto comedy of all times with her. Of course, there is no other so the standard is very low, and it's a kind of dark comedy about art and middle age and trying to write your people into existence. And, you know, I'm a biracial novelist living in Los Angeles, so it's very close to, shall we say, meta upon meta, yeah, yeah.
Traci Thomas 6:52
Okay. We have talked about this before. You should all go back and listen to the episode of my podcast called the stacks, where I interviewed dancy a few weeks ago. I'm trying not to hit the same notes as we did there. So if you might need a little more, please listen, subscribe, like and review. Anyways, not I'm not above a shameless plug. I want to talk about your characters because I asked you about this at the beginning of the book tour. I know you've just done this huge book tour. Your characters behave badly. And
Danzy Senna 7:23
I love it when people say that, because it makes me seem that I have no moral center, because I'm always like they do
Traci Thomas 7:31
well. So that's sort of the question, which is like when you're writing a book, do you care about how your characters are feeling? Are you thinking about your character's feeling, or are you thinking about the action, the drama of the book, like, what is your obligation to? I
Danzy Senna 7:49
mean, Jane is a teacher of writing, and her biggest advice to her students is to make it worse, that every story hinges on you making it worse. And you know, nobody wants to read about happy, well adjusted characters, and we want conflict, tension trouble. We want them to get into trouble. My only requirement is that they be really interesting and complex, and that they the bad things they do, are believable and make sense given what's happened before that, so that there's a sense of logic to their terrible transgressions. I've
Traci Thomas 8:26
talked to some people who've read the book, and they talk about how I would never do X, Y and Z. I can't believe what Jane did, or if it's new people, I can't believe what Maria did, and honestly, I can't believe what Maria did, either. Maria. Maria goes a little further. Jane is, like, a regular person. Maria is your friend
Danzy Senna 8:46
that you don't ever want to go no contact with. Yeah, she's
Traci Thomas 8:49
your friend where it's like, yes, we can hang out in a group. Do you know what I mean? Like, it's like, I don't want to just go out with Maria anyways. But I've talked to people and they're always like, I can't believe what so and so did. And I'm wondering if, if you're interested at all in shame. No,
Danzy Senna 9:06
I mean, novels, for me, are a shameless space, in a sense, like, if you're a novelist and you sort of judge or cancel your characters, in a sense, like, reduce them to their worst act, then your fiction is not going to be good. Like you need to love your worst character, in a way, and not have this sense of, like Victorian judgment above them. You're trying to access, actually, the thing that you've considered doing but maybe didn't. And then think about what would have, what would have been, what would you have had to remove from your life in order to push you toward that point? What would you have had to put into your life to push you to that point? And you're sort of always looking at the what pushes people over that edge to do the thing that you've considered but didn't okay? So now you know. What I've considered?
Traci Thomas 10:00
Yes, I know so many things you've considered, but I'm not sure which ones you didn't do and which ones you did do. I guess I don't know you well enough, but I would like to, yeah, I think the question about shame, though, is less about yours, but are you like is Is there something about other people like the I don't it's your characters are not. I mean, Jane is feels a lot of shame throughout the book. I feel, or am I projecting? I
Danzy Senna 10:29
mean, she apparently doesn't feel enough. No, because she
Traci Thomas 10:33
doesn't stop, but like enough to like leave out, she's embarrassed about enough to not talk about,
Danzy Senna 10:38
right? No, she does feel shame. Her husband is very, kind of high on his tower, looking down at all these sellouts in Los Angeles. And he he sees himself as a high artist who is doing, you know, good art, and has sort of pure intentions with his art. And he sees her that way as well. And I was interested in how many secrets we hold in our marriages, and how much all of us are passing sort of as people that our husband or wife or partner fell in love with, and 10 years later, you know, are you actually the person they fell in love with, or have you been pretending this whole time? So I think
Traci Thomas 11:23
all the married people are laughing,
Danzy Senna 11:27
all the married people, and so they fell in love with this fantasy of being artists together who were going to create this great work, and they were going to protect each other's solitude, and she's going to write the great American novel, he's going to make this amazing abstract expressionism. And, you know, 10 years later, they're broke, they have two kids. The starving artist thing is not cute anymore when you hit middle age, and they're both responding to it very differently. And her thing is, I want to be bougie. I want to have a house in multicultural Mayberry, and I want to have, you know, an Audi with a good college bumper sticker on it someday, like she has these, really, what I think of as mid fantasies about her life, and she can't admit this to Lenny, because he would be so disgusted, yeah, and shocked.
Traci Thomas 12:20
So you have to marry someone who has your same mid fantasies. Yeah, I think that's the key. Like, don't try to be a starving artist. I'm trying to have a USC bumper sticker for my kid, though, not USC, no offense. And I know it's a lovely place that many of you probably went, that it's lovely or teach or teach. I'll see myself out. Okay, we have another guest here this evening, and I want to bring him out. His name is Zack Stafford. He is an award winning, specifically a Tony, award winning producer of a strange loop from the Broadway production, which did any of you see it here in LA, yes, that's right, me too, and he's the co host of the podcast vibe, check come on out. Zack Stafford, he got Mariah Carey. Okay, he
Zach Stafford 13:14
got my favorite mulatto Yes.
Traci Thomas 13:15
Oh, funny. I feel like you just, we just queued this up. So, ladies and gentlemen, danzi said it already. Zach just said it the three of us up here on the stage are mulattos. We are mixed race, black and white, American Standard, mulatto standard, American Standard, and we're going to talk a lot about that today. So if that makes you feel uncomfortable, take a deep breath and let it go, because you're gonna hear it for the next 45 minutes. And if you get the book, you're gonna read it a lot. You said, what? 95 times
Danzy Senna 13:47
there's a I did a word check, and it was up there. It was close to 100 times I used that word.
Traci Thomas 13:53
How have people been responding on book tour to the word?
Danzy Senna 13:56
They all want to know if it's okay for them to use it, them being white people, yeah? Them being white people. And it's asked in a spirit, actually, Sam Sanders was wondering, and he had a heart
Zach Stafford 14:10
nervous about, he's
Traci Thomas 14:11
black. Sam is black, yeah, Sam's
Zach Stafford 14:13
Black. He's, like, very black,
Traci Thomas 14:14
like every time full as they like to say, sorry. This is this has been a series I've been doing for a year and a half now, and I think this is my last one. So hope you guys enjoy it. And
Zach Stafford 14:27
this is also proof why every movie only has one mulatto person, because you put three together, it just goes off the race.
Danzy Senna 14:33
It's chaos theory. Don't
Traci Thomas 14:35
get invited back. Anyway.
Zach Stafford 14:37
You were saying with Sam Sanders, oh, yeah, he
Danzy Senna 14:39
had a really hard time using the word mulatto. He kept asking, Is this really okay? And I kept telling people for the first half of my book tour. I was like, yes, it's fine. We think it's funny. And then the more people used it who weren't mulatto, the more I was like, Yeah, fuck you, yeah,
Traci Thomas 14:55
mulatto. Who? Yeah. Who'd you call mulatto excuse? And
Danzy Senna 14:59
I was like, wait. I need to say we need to vote on this, or something like, there has to be, like, an official, okay, law about, welcome
Traci Thomas 15:07
to the official vote on mulatto, sanctioned by the Supreme Court, and also, but only the good ones. But I won't say who, because we're not telling you who to vote for here, just sending you about a guide. Um, is the question, if I can use it, or can you say, I
Danzy Senna 15:26
mean, is it? Is it the M word, is that okay? I
Zach Stafford 15:31
mean, I would love this to be answered, because so I have a partner. He is white, very white, and I read color to full white, Mormon white. Mormon white. Actually, this is like Americana, deep white, an aggressive, aggressive. And I left. I walked into our living room after reading color television, which I loved. I loved deeply, deeply Tracy, and I text about it a lot regularly. And I was like, I got to read the word mulatto so much. And it was so great, because I stopped saying it as a kid when I found out it meant donkey. And he was like, it meant donkey. And I was like, yeah. And he didn't understand our relationship to it, that we wanted to maybe use it, because he always was told never to touch it. And in that moment, I realized it was the N word for mixed kids. Yeah.
Traci Thomas 16:15
I mean, it's definitely the roots are a racial slur, right?
Danzy Senna 16:18
But nobody it's so vintage, like, nobody calls you that on the playground.
Zach Stafford 16:22
No, no, no, it's
Danzy Senna 16:24
not. Especially not me, because they don't know I'm a lotto. Like, I wish they would call me that.
Traci Thomas 16:29
I feel like you're in an interesting position, because if people don't know that you are one, and then you use it and they're like, why is that white lady saying mulatto? Like, no extra which is
Zach Stafford 16:39
my favorite type of mulatto, because my sister is that type, stealth, stealth. Mulatto. Yes, passing mulatto. Here's what white people think mulatto, yeah, Favorite type, yes. Well, that's
Danzy Senna 16:50
the Quadroon loophole, right,
Traci Thomas 16:52
yeah, okay, but if you are that kind of mulatto, how does it feel when the whites tell you about, like,
Danzy Senna 17:02
Portland, you're in Portland, well,
Traci Thomas 17:04
just like, they don't know, and then they're like, saying stuff, and then you're like, hearing it, but they don't know. But you know, like, that feels not good.
Danzy Senna 17:11
Yeah. I mean, when you're lectured on racial politics, yeah, like white person to white person, right? And you feel uncomfortable. Well, I like to let that go on as long as possible before I make them feel really uncomfortable just saying, like, let them lecture me for a long time before I and then,
Traci Thomas 17:30
do you say, like, Oh, do you want to see a picture of my dad or something? Like, how do you break the news? Are you like, Oh, my God, look at this great family picture from my childhood. Like,
Danzy Senna 17:39
I mean, I'm just really blunt. I'll just say I'm black. And then what do they do? And then they say, No, you aren't okay. And they say, No, you're Jewish. I mean, it's it. There's been, there's been so many of these incidents. Like, yeah, I mean, more than the word mulatto in my book, I so it's like, there's a variety of experiences I've had with unwittingly passing as white my whole life. I
Traci Thomas 18:06
want to talk about passing narratives briefly, yeah, because Zach and I were texting yesterday, because he was like, do I have to prepare anything for the show? And I was like, No, I think I do. But, but
Zach Stafford 18:16
I was willing to help. I was like, but if you have
Traci Thomas 18:19
any questions, like you want to do my homework? Yes, you can. But we were talking about this idea of, like, the stories of the mulatto people, the mixed race, black, white stories, like in popular culture, on screen, right? We don't have our great mulatto comedy, per se, usually not funny at all. Yes, it's usually very sad. It's Imitation of Life, yes, but it's a tear jerker. It's almost always a passing narrative, yes, like, I'm very clearly a mixed person. I think no one is ever gonna be like, you're black, right? Like, I think that I look, you know, but the representation of the mixed person I feel like is so often this, like, borderline, could they? Are they? Aren't they? Why are we obsessed with this mixed narrative?
Danzy Senna 19:08
Well, one of the reasons is that if you appear to be partly black, people read you as black. So they don't read that as a mixed narrative. Historically, it's reduced to be you're a black person, and so the way that you know mostly white authors and not all, have accessed this liminal space of race is through someone who appears to be white but knows that they're black. That's that's how they've accessed that space in between, because otherwise you're just light skinned, right, right? So, right. I mean, that's, that's, I think, why it's been so transfixing. But it's also got all of the sort of white pathology poured into it, and all the hatred of blackness poured into it that is so bright. And butter here, right? I mean, there's the idea that someone like me always wanted to be white, and they have this stain of blackness. I mean, that's part of this tragic mulatto narrative that I'm always so close pushing again you're so close. Yes, exactly. And the white narrative of passing is always the longing to be white, whereas black narratives of passing often have grief built into it about what's lost. It's not what's gained, but it's what's lost in the black community, yeah,
Zach Stafford 20:33
and I would say for speaking for white people now, passing is very much entrenched within a police state memory for whiteness in America. So you think about Jim Crow south you know, the lightest skinned person in your family, if they were mixed race due to unconsensual sex or whatever happened, and they were going to grocery stores or areas where they weren't allowed, but they were able to pass and go access spaces. Why people were so interested in them, because they wanted to surveil them and police them. So I do think we feel the echoes of that today in how people are always surveilling all of us, like, are you black? Are you white? Where do you stand? Because we used to have laws many of our lifetimes that were dictating where you could be in public space. So passing is so much about public visibility for us. Yes,
Danzy Senna 21:16
that's so true. And it's also about, you know, material gain. I mean, there was literal good reasons to pass, and a lot of people did it nine to five, and they would go home, but they would get, you know, money for their family, and come home to their family. So passing wasn't always about shame. It was just about the economy, actually, and
Zach Stafford 21:36
it's also how you're framing it. It's about access to capital, which makes Donald Trump's obsession make a lot of sense. We're gonna come back.
Traci Thomas 21:43
We're gonna come back. We're gonna play the game first before we go there. I think it's interesting, because the way that it's represented in popular culture is that the person who is passing is passing 24/7, constantly surrounded by white people, right? Like, isn't it that in Showboat. There's like the passing person, and it's like, you know, I mean, even the movie passing in the book passing, the whole like premise of the book is like, she's finally around black people again, right? Crossed over most of her life. She's come home, right? And I think it's really interesting, because in the practical sense, it was rarely, it wasn't always that. It could be that, but it could also be this thing of just like, out for outings or for trips or for the work day or whatever. And I don't think we I wish there were more of those stories too, where it's like a practical I love that, instead of, like a shame thing, but like, I'm actually outsmarting you.
Danzy Senna 22:39
And then there was, you know, the head of the NAACP for 25 years was Walter White, not the breaking bad one.
Traci Thomas 22:48
Actually, it was him. It was but he
Danzy Senna 22:52
would go down to the Jim Crow South from Harlem. He had a black wife. He was ensconced in black culture, in the black elite. He was blond, blue eyed, but came from a long line of very light skinned people. He would go to towns where there had been lynchings, and he would go and investigate them as a white man, and then come back to Harlem and write them up. And he was responsible for every you know, anti lynching legislation, so he radicalized what it was to pass in that he weaponized his own white appearance against whiteness, which was amazing.
Traci Thomas 23:28
Okay, I promised we would talk about Kamala, and I do want to talk about comma and Barack Obama, and I want to go back to sort of what we're talking about this, like representation of the mixed race person. And I think I asked you this danzi, but a thing that I thought a lot about as we're entering this season of election. And you know, she is black and Indian, and she is Jamaican, a descendant of Jamaican immigrants, right? And or a Jamaican immigrant. And the question comes to me, which is, could we ever elect a black or half black American, not immigrant, not diasporic person to be the president of this country? Are we ready for it? Yeah. I
Danzy Senna 24:13
mean, my dad grew up in Louisiana and Alabama. Was born in 44 and he said there was a saying in the Jim Crow South that if a black man wanted to sit at the front of the bus, he would just put on a turban. And I always thought it was so interesting the way once you remove yourself from the history of American slavery and American racism, and you become sort of othered in terms of nationality, some of the neutralization that takes place with you becoming foreign. So it's less, you know, fraught, I think the history of immigration, as opposed to, it's which boat did you come in?
Zach Stafford 24:59
Yeah, it there's this interesting process of like, the globalization of your mixedness that allows people to think of you as more accessible, more desirable. When I was working just as a journalist, before I had 1000 jobs, I would write a lot my early 20s about desire and race. So a lot of I wrote a lot about racism and dating. So is it racist to say you don't date black people? Is it racist to say you don't date X ethnicity, and what I the reason why was because, as a mixed person living in Chicago at the time, if I was ever read as Brazilian, Egyptian, something else, I got so many messages on Grindr, it was crazy. But once I was said, I am black, they all disappeared. And people would say, like, Oh, I'm not into black guys. I'm not into that. So I do think there's this interesting thing that happens that people don't realize that's happening, that once you go into the Global Diaspora of blackness, then you're accessible. And that's why it's interesting that Kamala and Barack, you know, when Brock ran people were like, it's so amazing that Barack Hussein, Obama is going to be president united states with a middle name like Hussein, but we, as mixed people, were like, well, he's like, the other black person. He's not the black person that you look at and think, oh, American slave trade. He's the different one. So you don't feel the guilt or shame as much as you would for us,
Traci Thomas 26:14
exactly. And the violence, yeah, I think that the violence is like, is part of what induces the shame not to invoke taunasi Coates again. But I don't know it's top of mind for me, because he had that horrible interview on CBS. If you haven't seen it, read the book. It's very great. Anne bel canto has copies out there, so you don't have to go to a book store because they came here, because they're so lovely. But one of the things he talks about, I think, with Jon Stewart, was about to be a black American, mixed or not. And when I say mixed, I mean directly, right? Because I mean, like a white parent and a black parent, and he says, To Be Black American is to be mixed. There is no black American who exists in this country who does not have white ancestry. And I think that, like the violence of that is difficult to confront, even subconsciously, the idea that this person would be tied to this country and this land, and that shame that implicates everyone who identifies as American, even if you are the child of immigrants who did not Come here before or that came here after slavery, you've either benefited from those rules and regulations or you've been harmed by them. And even if you're Asian or Honduran or whatever, all of that race play from before plays into the moment. And I think that confrontation of a black American is uncomfortable. Yeah.
Zach Stafford 27:40
I mean, we had, we did get to experience for a little bit with Michelle Obama. I mean, having a black woman, a dark skinned black woman in the White House,
Danzy Senna 27:49
that was the radical part of that for me. Yeah, was radical, but it
Zach Stafford 27:53
was Michelle at the time. I
Danzy Senna 27:54
agree. And to have a intact black family so hyper visible was really, I think, radical, but I agree. I think it was Michelle that made it feel more transgressive in a way than Kamala feels going into the White House, though I still think she's breaking all sorts of yeah lines as well. It's different ones, different ones, yeah, but the immigrant narrative is hopeful at its core, and it's,
Traci Thomas 28:20
like, relatable in a way. Well, it's the
Danzy Senna 28:23
mythology we right to believe in, whereas we're trying to forget the other one, right, and bury it,
Traci Thomas 28:29
right? And if your family came before or after slavery, but weren't part of being enslaved, you can't relate to that, right? And like, just like we can't relate to like, indigenous narratives, right? That's a whole different thing, and I think that's why those two groups, black people and indigenous people are nobody wants to talk about us like I can relate to like being in a tenement for a little bit and, like, nobody liked us because we were Irish. I actually had someone in 2020 be like, I understand what it's like to be black because my family's Irish. And I was like, Okay, well, I think you missed the message of this year. Okay, go back to the black square, my guy.
Danzy Senna 29:07
But there actually is a really interesting book called How the Irish became white, and there is a really interesting history about immigrants using whiteness to become American and and identifying themselves against blackness, yeah, as a strategy to becoming American, right?
Traci Thomas 29:26
Which is what also happened with poor white people in America. During slavery, it was like we can either be smart and work with the black people and overthrow everybody because we have the numbers, or we can be white, yeah, exactly. Feel like they made a less good choice for all of us. Okay, I have another mixed person question. This is sort of a conundrum. My dear friend Wade, who's here, who is also one of our great mulattoes, he and I got in a small fight about Zoe Kravitz. She is the daughter of Lenny Kravitz. Of an A two. She's
Danzy Senna 30:01
famous royalty. Yes,
Traci Thomas 30:03
she is famously a mulatto squared, if you will. Yes, I think that she's mixed. Wade argues that she's not because she has two in America black parents, because once you have one black parent, you become black, right? Is she mixed? Is she black? Wait,
Zach Stafford 30:21
do the math again. I'm listening.
Traci Thomas 30:23
Sorry. So she has two white grandparents and two black grandparents. Okay,
Danzy Senna 30:27
she has two mixed parents, but they're on
Traci Thomas 30:31
Yes, like all of us, but they're on different sides.
Danzy Senna 30:34
So this is like an S, A, T question, like, because I like doing
Traci Thomas 30:37
it's a conundrum, because the rules of race are, once you have one drop, you're black, yeah. So technically, she has two black parents, yes, but both of her parents are mixed, like, is she just light
Danzy Senna 30:51
skinned? Yes?
Traci Thomas 30:54
Oh, I see it's hard. I mean, I should also say race is all made up. There isn't actually a rule about any
Danzy Senna 31:02
sounding like Thomas Jefferson committee up here. I
Traci Thomas 31:05
feel like, as I said, we were appointed by the Supreme Court.
Zach Stafford 31:09
Paperback, she black, yeah,
Traci Thomas 31:12
interesting to think about because, like, for example, Wade said she's mixed, no black. I said she's mixed. Oh, interesting. She's
Zach Stafford 31:21
black and mixed,
Traci Thomas 31:22
also
white and mixed, but that's mixed, she's just black, or she's just mixed. What happened two
Zach Stafford 31:38
famous mixed parents like that? You're mixed, that's what I say culturally. But you're also black. It's also
Danzy Senna 31:42
generational. I think it's generational, right? I mean, she would have been just black, yeah, she would have been black, yeah. Like, recently, decades, she's still, this is so
Zach Stafford 31:53
wild. I have never even thought this deeply about Zoe Kravitz. And I love Zoe Kravitz. So
Traci Thomas 31:57
this is, I don't even know who she is. I mean, I know she is, but, like, I've never thought about brings
Zach Stafford 32:01
up something that I'd love to pose to y'all, that I've never got to say on stage, because I'm never on stage with other mulattos. But when I was a kid of the 90s, I was at a restaurant once with my sister, she's also mixed, and we were with our white and black parents, and a person came up to us and said, Can I talk to your kids? And my parents were like, Sure. Why not talk to our kids? Stranger? And she got down on her knee and looked at us, and she and I talked about this once a year, she looked at us and said, I want to say that you are so special. You are the future. The world is going to look like us one day. Was she mixed? She was mixed, okay? And she was kind of like this prophet, you
Traci Thomas 32:35
buried the lead. I just thought it's like a white lady, no, no,
Zach Stafford 32:39
that did happen. They were like, Oh, they're so beautiful. They adopt it. But that's Yeah, different thing. Oh, yeah. But this was a mixed person, and she was trying to affirm us, these 90s kids who were living in a world in which, like, mixed kids were finally on television or whatever, and saying that we would look we represented the future, which is kind of what Zoe Kravitz is a bit too. But do we believe that? What do you all think of that ideal ideology? Because I think mixed people why they're so special, and cultures people think we unlock some post racist future, which that's why
Danzy Senna 33:08
I always write about really damaged, messed up mixed people. Yes, I'm always trying to work against that magical mulatto thing, because that's
Zach Stafford 33:16
what Barack was. Everyone was like, He's gonna fix it all. And, yeah, and,
Danzy Senna 33:21
like, I've had that comment my whole life, like, Oh, if we could just all mix and blend and look like Zoe Kravitz, or, you know, we would all look like Zo Kravitz.
Traci Thomas 33:29
Would it be terrible? But it's like, this idea, first of all, that always, it
Danzy Senna 33:34
comes out cute, yeah, come out cute. And, and also that, like, you know, Brazil didn't happen. Like, we know that you can have a bunch of beige people and they'll still recreate systems of oppression, right, based on skin color or whatever, you know. So it's not, I just don't I reject it.
Zach Stafford 33:57
I reject I think I believed in the fantasy as a kid, because as mixed kids, you look at your parents and you're like, they don't look like me. I don't know who I look like. And you hear this kind of fantasy narrative of, oh, well, one day everyone will and it will all be okay, and then you could grow up, and you're like, it's not gonna be okay. Things are not getting better,
Danzy Senna 34:16
actually, so much Millennials too. I mean, I thought, like, you guys were supposed to be less dark and disturbed than me. No,
Traci Thomas 34:25
I think, I think we were supposed to be but, but then a lot of stuff happened in our yeah disorder, yeah.
Danzy Senna 34:33
I don't think it necessarily does.
Traci Thomas 34:35
I don't what I what I think is that the idea comes from the history, right? I'm assuming this woman was older than you, and so she probably was a mixed person who came like quickly after maybe the loving ruling, like me, like you, and I think that those her parents. I'm just, I'm just making shit up about this stranger, but I think that her parents stranger
Zach Stafford 34:59
was the. Lindsay Sinha
Traci Thomas 35:00
and we brought her here tonight so you could confront
Danzy Senna 35:07
her. The security video,
Zach Stafford 35:10
that would be amazing.
Traci Thomas 35:12
No, but I just think that, like there was we were. So they were sold this idea that once it was legal, it wouldn't be a problem, yeah, right, like that. Once it was legal, it would be okay. People would accept it because it was legal. But we know that the laws are not like moral, and they've never been moral, so it was never wrong. They all got divorced. They all got divorced. So, but everybody got divorced, right? Didn't all the parents? I mean, ex people get divorced, yeah, but wasn't that the best especially, especially my parents. My parents did not get divorced. Mother's here, my white mother, not for my white Mom, what the hell she is, tough crowd. She's very lovely. I promise
Zach Stafford 36:00
I love this, the phrase clap for my white mom. Oh my god, we'll
Traci Thomas 36:04
be selling clap for my white mom T shirts out at Bel Canto, books at the front. Get yours exclusive. I don't remember what I was saying.
Danzy Senna 36:13
It's kind of weirdly reassuring to me that you guys were still messed up.
Zach Stafford 36:18
Yeah. Well, that's why I think like when I found, found you before we met, I was like, Oh, my God, who is this person writing about mixed people in the way that I think about ourselves? And it was so refreshing to pick up, you know, color television, new people, and be like, Oh, we're a mess, but we also are people, and we're complicated and we're dynamic, and we're not just, you know, stuck in this binary of, Am I black? Am I white? Am I black? But we're
Danzy Senna 36:42
also not the future solution to anything. Like, that's a lot of pressure, yeah. Like, and it's sort of boring too.
Traci Thomas 36:51
Like, I'm so sorry, but you can't go up to like, a 10 year old and be like, Oh, congratulations. You're gonna solve race in America. You're 10. Like, there's some other people, our friend Thomas Jefferson, on our panel tonight, it's his job. Like, it's weird,
Zach Stafford 37:05
but we have a, we have an ability as a country, to look to young people and say, You're gonna fix this. I mean, look at the Parkland kids. So we, when that happened in Florida, they were like, Oh, they're gonna solve gun violence, right? You know? But,
Traci Thomas 37:16
like, they had a galvanizing, yeah, we they had a galvanizing event. We were just bored to be funnier. I was having fun until Zach brought the moon down. No, I just think like, I just don't think we could ever, and I don't think any kids will ever, because the history is so much greater than the thing, and the people with the power have to do the fixing up the problem, right?
Danzy Senna 37:39
And we're not telling you all not to go and have a lot of mixed children. Yeah,
Traci Thomas 37:43
please do.
Danzy Senna 37:44
It's nothing. It's no better than anyone else. Is what we're saying, yeah, that they're all gonna be messed up. Yes, all of
Traci Thomas 37:50
the children, and they won't fix anything. Yes, my kid breaks all the children, and I can tell you, nothing is fixed. Everything is broken. Yes, okay, is LA, the city of Los Angeles. What if LA is the, you know, there's like Sister Cities. It's like Portugal and San Francisco. What if the sister city to LA is the mulatto nation? Like,
Zach Stafford 38:18
this is our Wakanda.
Traci Thomas 38:19
I sort of feel like it is, am I crazy?
Zach Stafford 38:23
You're not crazy, because, like, Northwest is a great example. So something okay, I feel like we're in, like my living room, and gotta share secrets. The question I get asked constantly, as a person that creates, you know, a podcast and a show that people ask me personal questions all the time about is, Why is every black person that's successful married to a white person.
Danzy Senna 38:43
Oh no, here
Zach Stafford 38:44
we go. Conversation. This is so annoying. Please
Traci Thomas 38:47
clap for my white husband just while we're here. Let me just get out of the way. It's like the
Zach Stafford 38:52
conversation like at vibe check the podcast, we get that question, yes, he's got away because I have a Mormon partner. Yeah, he's very white. So I get asked it a lot, but it's a thing that people are obsessed with. But when I look around Hollywood, it is true. There are a lot of mixed kids, like the Kardashians, the next generation is black, which is crazy to think like, and that's not even a joke. Like all those kids are black kids. It does feel like we are in Wakanda okay, but
Traci Thomas 39:18
so I agree with this. The way I was thinking about it was very different. We all have, like, our favorite celebrities, right? And it's like, Oh, I love Zendaya, like her and Tom were just doing this, and oh, my God, she's wearing that. And I know her in this way, because I have access to her, and I feel like a closeness to her, and I feel like there is a perceived closeness to people. And this isn't just mulatto this is all mixed people where, like, it's like, oh, you're this. You're half that. I recognize this, half of you. I feel close to you because I can relate to you in a way that I can't relate to. Like, I think white people say things to me because they feel comfortable saying, imagine what they say to. Exactly, that's exactly right? So I feel like there's this, like closeness, parasocial relationship that happens in Hollywood, that also happens with mixed people. So it's sort of more of a metaphor, as opposed to, like an actual thing that you have tested. Did that make sense in a control group?
Danzy Senna 40:16
Yeah, no, no. I think it's interesting, because I've always thought of it like when I would go look at private schools with my kids and fantasize that they were going to go to private school, which we couldn't afford at the time, I was told by the private school directors, or everyone was told, Oh, the school's 40% students of color. And I would look around and see that all of those students of color were biracial, and I was like, that's problematic. Can we talk about that the way that these elite spaces kind of use us as proof of their diversity, and there are a lot of people who are not welcome in that space, and it has to do with class and white adjacency. Yeah, you know I'm saying, Oh yeah, 1,000%
Traci Thomas 41:07
I have our metaphor. Yeah.
Zach Stafford 41:09
I have very clear memories of growing up in Tennessee, and when we had to fill out our demographic surveys for whatever standardized tests we had to do, my sister tried to Mark White one year, and the teacher came and yelled at her and took it away and said, you have to put black, because on our chart it says you're black, and we need that number there. That's deep. Wow, yeah. And so my aunt told my sister, next time she does it right, American because you're American, which I don't think is also
Traci Thomas 41:35
the fix, you know, let's get your honor. I know she's black. Oh, those are black. Oh, those
Zach Stafford 41:41
are black. Oh, that was black, yeah.
Danzy Senna 41:43
But, you know, it's just something about, I mean, this is just going against the magical mulatto idea that these structures get recreated no matter what amount of Interracial Love is happening, right? And so I'm always interested in the problem and just observing it rather than trying to solve it,
Traci Thomas 42:05
right? Well, what is I mean? What is the solution to what I mean? I
Danzy Senna 42:11
just all the problems the world. I just, I mean, I just have fun looking at the problem more than I have trying to write something that's comforting, as you may have noticed, as you may have noticed, yeah,
Traci Thomas 42:25
definitely not comforting. Okay, we're, like, running out of time. Unfortunately, I had so many more questions, but I really, I'm like,
Danzy Senna 42:34
did we vote on this? Oh, we didn't vote. I mean,
Traci Thomas 42:39
listen, I vote yes. I know everyone's gonna hate it, but, but, like, Are
Danzy Senna 42:42
these people gonna go out and use this? No, don't use
Traci Thomas 42:44
it. If you don't feel like you can use it, you can't use it, right? Like, if you're not, I mean, I
Danzy Senna 42:51
don't think I'm using it to people who aren't black or mulatto, yeah, in my house, it's just
Traci Thomas 42:57
like, how the N word has been reclaimed, or, like, how disabled people use the word crip, like, I'm not using that,
Danzy Senna 43:04
so we're going to use it liberally.
Traci Thomas 43:07
I will use it with you.
Danzy Senna 43:08
The committee has voted yes,
Traci Thomas 43:11
yes for us, no for you. Unless you are you are, if you are us, then yes, if you want, if you are not like us, you are. Yes, you are not like us, but also not like him. He has not like that. This is amazing logic. Yeah, love it. Does anyone feel more clear? Does anybody need any answers about who's because
Danzy Senna 43:28
I know you all came in here wondering, can I mulatto, and that was the big question of the evening, yeah, well, I
Zach Stafford 43:34
would say reading color television. Who here has read the book? So a good amount of you, you walk away from that book being like, I want to kind of use this word, because you do use it so much like I was No. Did
Traci Thomas 43:45
white people who read the book want to use the word? Did you come
Danzy Senna 43:49
away screaming the word no? Maybe it's just me. It doesn't mean donkey. It means a mixture of a donkey and a horse, a mule, a mule.
Zach Stafford 43:59
That's
Traci Thomas 44:00
it, yes, yeah, not a donkey, because donkeys and horses can both recreate, procreate, but mules cannot,
Danzy Senna 44:07
and so we were supposed to be infertile, which we've proven not to be the
Traci Thomas 44:11
case. Yeah, yeah, definitely, in our lifetime, we are works, still works. Um, okay, the last thing we do here is called Five for the books. I ask you guys these five questions. Everybody who does this, these five questions. The first one is, what is the first book you remember loving
Danzy Senna 44:30
Charlotte's Web me too. And I would recite the last page. I memorized it just to make myself cry. I couldn't believe how tragic it looks,
Traci Thomas 44:41
Charlotte. That's a spoiler alert. It's a little sad. I
Zach Stafford 44:44
mine is, oh, I'm forgetting the name of it, and I brought it up the other day. It's like a book that you read when you're in elementary school. It's about a guy with two dogs, Coonhounds. What was it? Yes, thank you. We're the Redfern rose. Yeah. Yes, that I read it over and over and over. That's another one
Traci Thomas 45:03
that makes you cry. Yes, that's so sweet, weird, tragic, mulatto. David,
Danzy Senna 45:09
how many more references?
Traci Thomas 45:13
What is the perfect snack and beverage for reading time?
Zach Stafford 45:18
Wine and popcorn. Okay? Jerry, wine
Unknown Speaker 45:20
and popcorn? Yeah, I was about to say popcorn, really, yes, and I did give up drinking wine, but it would have been wine and popcorn I have about six months ago. Do
Zach Stafford 45:29
you drink non alcoholic wine?
Danzy Senna 45:31
I drink mocktails. I
Zach Stafford 45:34
mean, I don't make some bottles of non alcoholic wine. Okay, there's a great place in Silver Lake, okay, south of here that has great, nice other
Traci Thomas 45:40
people can get it or not. What
Zach Stafford 45:42
the name of it? Yeah, called, I don't remember. I know that's why. Wow, Tracy, you should have been a journalist in the past life. You're like, say the name. I
Traci Thomas 45:50
think I am one. Now someone told me I was one, so now I believe that I am. You
Zach Stafford 45:55
are actually very naturally
Traci Thomas 45:56
a journalist. I'm a fake journalist. None of the responsibility, but all of the questions, I am nosy, and now that is called being a journalist. It used to be called being a gossip. What is one book you hope to read before you die?
Danzy Senna 46:12
A morbid
Traci Thomas 46:15
before I die, I don't know what's one book that you like are like, I really have to read that. You know that kind of vibe,
Zach Stafford 46:21
um, I got mine. Okay, the secret, don't
Traci Thomas 46:25
save it. Watch save your one precious life, or whatever. Marry all of our sides. I don't know why people are so obsessed with that book. Because they have bad taste, do? I'm telling you, do not read it. Okay, do some read beloved or something like read something good, as I'm trying to say, good thing.
Zach Stafford 46:42
So before I die, I'm like, it's like, junk food. Let me have one last bite.
Danzy Senna 46:45
I know. Yeah. It's like, might as well have something really unhealthy before you die. Exactly. Yeah, my wine and my popcorn,
Zach Stafford 46:54
does he don't? Yuck? My No, I
Traci Thomas 46:55
don't want you to read it. Zach, I don't.
Danzy Senna 46:59
I feel like everything is so pretentious that I would say, like,
Traci Thomas 47:02
let's just say it. It's okay. You're an Oppie dick. Oh
Danzy Senna 47:05
yeah. But it's not true. I'm just saying that to sound so
Zach Stafford 47:09
danzi, my first thought to be pretentious was war and peace mulatto. War The mulatto. That's like, if you haven't read the book, that's a deep cut. Yes,
Traci Thomas 47:19
that's what's the main cut of the book? Well, yeah, I feel like it's like on the copy.
Zach Stafford 47:23
Is this a mulatto war and peace? Does it? Yes, it does. Wow.
Traci Thomas 47:29
Jane has high hopes on her life. Oh, the gig magically coincides with Jane sabbatical, giving her the time and space she needs to finish her second novel, a century spanning epic of her her artist husband, Lenny, dubs her mulatto war and
Zach Stafford 47:42
peace. There we go. That's why I thought of it. You know what? I almost named
Danzy Senna 47:45
this book, you told me mulatto mulatta. Oh, what's gonna be should
Traci Thomas 47:50
have been mulatto mulattoes
Danzy Senna 47:51
or mulatto like, yeah. Like,
Zach Stafford 47:57
Wait, is there a sandwich called a lotto mufalada? Of
Danzy Senna 48:03
Yeah. And there was a drink, a coffee drink called Moo latte at Dunkin Donuts. Stop. No, they, they, I was so excited. You
Traci Thomas 48:14
guys are mad at us for using the word,
Zach Stafford 48:16
well, cows are black and white, so, yeah, that makes sense. Mulatto, Oh, I
Traci Thomas 48:21
see that's actually really good. Thank
Zach Stafford 48:23
you.
Traci Thomas 48:23
Okay, what is the one book you have exactly zero interest in ever reading? I feel like this should be easy for you guys. Moby Dick. Moby Dick,
Zach Stafford 48:35
yeah, War and Peace done.
Traci Thomas 48:40
Okay, last one, America has started a National Book Club. You get to pick next month's book selection. What book are we all reading? And danzi, you can't say any of your books
Danzy Senna 48:49
like I would say, of course you would No. Well, they
Traci Thomas 48:52
already did good morning. America already did it.
Danzy Senna 48:55
They everyone always talks about nella Larson's passing, but my favorite of her two novels is quicksand. It is so disturbing. This book, it's about a woman who, you know, just wanders tragic, mulatto style through the book, but she gets married at the end. And it's the most horror movie ending I've ever read in which the last line don't tell us, okay, is a horror movie, but it's about becoming a Trad wife, okay? And it's amazing. Okay, yeah, I
Zach Stafford 49:29
meant, can I say color television? No, you
Traci Thomas 49:31
can't say Danny's. Oh, I wish. Okay, everybody read dancy's book. Now say something else. Okay,
Zach Stafford 49:36
um, what would I pick a book that everyone has to read. Well, just in this country, in this country, getting our selfie ready, I am drawing on every book I've read in my life, and I read so many books right now, save the book
Danzy Senna 49:52
you read when we were little boy. Oh,
Zach Stafford 49:54
that would be Where the Red Fern rest. Yeah, that's good. We sound really
Danzy Senna 49:58
illiterate. Like, I'm just gonna repeat the last answer. Okay, before
Traci Thomas 50:04
we get out here, we're gonna do a stage selfie. Everybody smile and look cute behind us. Okay? Thank you guys so much for coming out. Yay. Don't use the word don't do it.