We're not stupid or more racist: "Daily Show's" Dulcé Sloan says New Yorkers get Southerners wrong
You know Dulcé Sloan from "The Daily Show," where she delivers witty commentary from the desk as a correspondent and plays hilarious characters like Black Karen. You can also catch her on Fox’s animated series "The Great North," where she voices the beloved character of Honeybee. When I talked to Sloan recently about New York (where the "The Daily Show" is based), she said, "It's cold, and I hate it!" But in all seriousness, one thing Sloan shared is why she thinks America's idea of racism is incorrect.
"New York was one of the [most] racist places I've ever lived in my life," Sloan said when I asked her about the biggest misconceptions about the South. Sloan, who grew up in Atlanta, says there's an idea that "we're stupid and that Southern Black people are more docile than Northern Black people. That we are somehow lesser, that we're more racist. There's so many things."
Sloan's new memoir "Hello, Friends!: Stories of Dating, Destiny, and Day Jobs" tells her story, including the uncountable amount of jobs she had before working in comedy full time. She writes about how she takes full responsibility for her career–– acknowledging that sexism and racism do exists and cause barriers, but how she always has used her talent to push through, and not letting those factors impact her dreams, goals and success. "People spend a lot of time wanting to talk about trauma, and it's exhausting because it's not anybody's business," Sloan said. She continued, "I made my lane. I worked."
Watch my "Salon Talks" episode with Dulcé Sloan here, or read a Q&A of our conversation below to hear more about the ways in which being bullied contributed to her sense of self, why some comic are just not funny and why the South is the best place for Black people.
The following conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
You perform stand-up, but with a book, what you say is so permanent. How do you feel about that?
People are calling it a memoir, and I feel like it's memoir-ish. The way I approached it was, I called Michelle Buteau and I was like, "How do I do this?" Because she wrote her book “Survival of the Thickest,” and so she was like, "Start with stories that are too long for you to tell on stage." That's where I started from. I was like, "OK. These are lists of things I would've liked to tell on stage, but they're just too long," and then I just filled in life experiences and then working at “The Daily Show” and other little funny anecdotes, but I started from a place of comedy with it.
Did you feel like when you're on stage you want the time to be able to unpack some of these stories and talk more?
"They're called day jobs because they're not what you want to do with your life."
No, these stories go exactly where they're supposed to because these are stories that you need the context for. I'm not a comic who does very long setups to jokes, and also you need the context of, this is the thing that happened to me as a kid. There's the storytelling aspect of it, and then there's the joke writing aspect of it. All of the stories that I put in there, are comedic stories that have multiple jokes in them, but you need the context of something that happened before or something that happened after just to be able to put it together.
The book is funny throughout. You have so many childhood stories. Some girl with a “W” name and her agent, and how they tried to bully you and different conflicts you had with teachers. Do you feel like all of these experiences led to who you are?
One thing I wanted this book to do was to show people that I'm a whole person because I think we as a society like to see people as one thing, but I was an actor first and a singer and an improviser, and then I was a comic. Because I'm more well known as a comedian, that's the only identity people have for me, but I was four different things before I started. I've always been an actor and a singer my entire life. All of these experiences made me who I am as a performer as a whole.
You had a lot of jobs, a whole lot of jobs. That's actually one of my favorite sections of the book. What were some of your favorites?
My last day job I had was working at a Stucco Supply company, and my boss, who is referred to as Abby in the book, was very supportive of me pursuing stand-up. I was supposed to get five days off of work, and she let me take 13 days off to do multiple comedy festivals and to go to L.A. for a couple days and have meetings with people and then start performing at colleges and going to different events so I could perform at colleges.
That was the best day job that I had because I had a boss that I didn't have to hide from, what I was doing. I would yawn at a job, and they're like, "Oh, are you tired because you did stand-up?" I said, "No, I'm tired because I'm bored and this doesn't tap into any of my abilities as a person. But, sure, let's say I'm tired because I told jokes at 8:30 p.m. last night."
If you had to go back to one of these jobs, which one would that be?
None of them. I never wanted to do that. They're called day jobs because they're not what you want to do with your life. None of them, not a single one. No. Why would I do that? That's not what I want to do in my life.
It seems like the grind and the hustle of being a full time artist now is still being able to juggle so much. You do stand-up, you are on “The Daily Show,” you act, you have your own lip gloss company. How do you manage and maintain all of that?
"I've always found interesting is that people always call Black women angry, but no one asks us why we're mad."
I think it's the same way that I did it before. In the way that it's multiple jobs, it's still one job. As in, all of these are different aspects of doing one job. My job is being a performer and then, “Daily Show” and then “Great North” and then, when it comes to Giggle Gloss, the lip gloss company, that is supporting me being on the road, and this is merch to sell on the road. We also sell online and we're going to start partnering with........
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