Q: What is it like to grow up as a black person in an upper-middle class black neighborhood in the United States?
A: I would say the primary thing that exists there is just the kind of environment that takes away all of the surprise of the Huxtables. There was a time when people would watch the Cosby Show during the mid-late 80s and think it was unrealistic. To my sensibilities, it was the first realistic TV show approaching the kind of life I had growing up. But what people also didn't realize was how close the style that mutated into the worst of gangsta hiphop originated in what we were actually like, without being ugly, rude, stupid and criminal.
I can tell you via celebrities kind of the flavor. So the first time I saw Eddie Murphy on Saturday Night Live, I was like - Oh, he's just like my friend Mark B. Actually, if I was into celebrities, I could easily have hung out with a lot of them, athletes, politicians. LA had a fairly tightly knit community of upscale black folks. Although I didn't live directly in the nicest neighborhoods, my connection was through private school. So I was always two or three degrees of separation from the stars. For example, the lead of Vanity 6 just died this week at the age of 57. I've partied with her and it doesn't surprise me in the least that her liver was just destroyed.
There's a certain kind of pride that comes from living the life that people with racial hangups say doesn't exist. So there's always this temptation to try and correct that, but the downside is that you can end up being the racial answer man, when in fact it's really not that important. Or on the other hand you can take it so seriously that it becomes your whole career. It's surprising how chief diversity officers I know.
Essentially the great thing is that you know lots of people with the personality of Michael Jordan, just without the world class skills. You see somebody like Neil DeGrasse Tyson or Mike Tyson and you say, oh yeah I knew somebody like him when I was growing up.
I'd say folks like us tend to have strange relationships with America in theory. In practice everything is pretty predictable and largely the same as everybody else in the middle and upper class. We all shop at Macy's, right? But the presidency of Barack Obama has been an unusual experience. On the one hand, all of our black political connections supported Hillary, on the other hand, when he won, we freaked out. He was in many ways exactly like us, and yet he was unconnected - a complete stranger. I myself leaned towards the right and was never impressed with his agenda but I understand his personality very well. Speaking of which, Key and Peele? They're exactly like my old neighbors.