That Made All the Difference – Season 3

Welcome to the last episode of Season 3 of That Made All the Difference. 

This time around, we’ve talked with inspiring people like Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch and actress and comedian Yvonne Orji. They’ve told us about their lives and their work advancing racial equality and economic empowerment. And in a moment, we’ll be joined by Henry Louis Gates Jr. 

But first, a word about our next season, starting this Fall.

The theme for Season 4 is sustainability. We’ll look at some big-picture topics: from how we can ensure our natural resources last for future generations, to creating sustainable economic development around the globe.

And as always, I'll talk to some of the world’s most interesting people.

I hope you’ve enjoyed Season 3 – and look out for Season 4 coming soon. 

 

[THEME MUSIC UP] 

Gates CLIP: We're all from some other place. Even the Native Americans came here from some other place, walking across the Bering Strait 15,000 years ago. So, we... we're all immigrants, and we're all the same, at the most fundamental level.

ALICIA INTRO:  

What if your love of history could united us all?

Henry Louis Gates Jr. is a literary scholar, cultural critic and Director of the Hutchins Center for African American Research at Harvard. As an Emmy-winning documentarian and the creator of PBS's Finding Your Roots he is one of the most important voices on the African-American experience and intellectual tradition. With historical and personal insight, he can trace America's zigzagging progress toward racial and economic equality — from the earliest days of the slave trade, to the social unrest of our current moment.

Gates's most recent documentary is called The Black Church:This is Our Story, This is Our Song. It premiered this Spring and, wow, is it powerful.

[THEME MUSIC OUT]

Alicia: I watched The Black Church and it just blew me away.

Gates:  Well, thank you!

Alicia:  You've said that the Black Church is "the place where our people made a way out of no way."

Gates:  That's right.

Alicia:  Can you tell me what you meant?

Gates:  Well, the Black Church is the oldest and most continuous and most important institution in the history of the African-American people. It's the birthplace of Black music, Black poetry through sermons and the lyrics for the spirituals. It's the birthplace of Black politics. The African-American people are a synthesis of 50 ethnic groups brought to north America in the slave trade. and they came together through the church. So, the Black Church functioned almost as a laboratory out of which both the African-American people and African-American culture were created. 

Alicia:  Mmmm.

Gates:  It's where our ancestors learned to read and write, to worship a liberating God, to develop faith in the future — a future here on earth when their children and their grandchildren would one day be free. Unlike other Christian denominations, the Black Church had 

<Music IN>

no choice but to be political, The Church, because of anti-Black racism, developed a form of Christianity with a liberating God at its center — a God who would liberate us on Earth. 

Alicia:  Mmmm.

Gates:  So our ancestors learned deferred gratification, through the church. And by that I mean: ministers were preparing their parishioners for life after slavery, first, and life after Jim Crow racism. So the Black Church was a redemptive force for a nation whose original sin was slavery. And the Church is still relevant to politics today, as we've just seen with the critical role it played in the nomination and election of President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, and of course Senator Ralph Warnock. 

<Music OUT>

The Black Church is a sleeping giant of American politics, and its members played a key role in the defeat of Donald Trump.

Alicia:  I felt like you brought all of those elements to life. And you focus on areas that have such weight, Dr. Gates, but you also have such a wonderful sense of humor that you weave through everything. 

Gates: I got my sense of humor and my admiration for storytelling from both my mother and father in different ways. My father was so funny, he made Red Fox look like an undertaker. [laughs] I have one brother, Paul, who's five years older, and we would sit around our little Black and white TV, of course, watching one of the three channels available in the early 60s, and daddy would start telling stories. And, mom would say, "Gates!" — she called him Gates — "Gates, stop telling the boys those lies!" [laughs] 

Alicia: [laughs]

Gates:  And I would later learn that "lies" is what the tradition called the tall tales — 

Alicia:  Mmmm.

Gates:  — that the great storytellers would narrate and share, starting in slavery times. But my mother also was a great story teller, in a different form. My mother wrote the obituaries for all the Black people in the Potomac Valley — I grew up in halfway between Pittsburgh and Washington DC. And my mom was just an eloquent writer.

<Music IN>

Alicia:  Yeah.

Gates:  She- she was a- a- a beautiful speaker, a beautiful person — and, I mean, gloriously beautiful.. 

Alicia:  Literally beautiful, the way you describe her —

Gates:  — oh! She was a stylish, stylish. But, when a Black person would die, she would write their obituary — 

Alicia:  Mmmm.

Gates:  — in our little region. You know, you don't think of eastern West Virginia and western Maryland as a hot bed of African American culture, but that's where we grew up. And, there have always been Black people there in those Allegheny Mountains. But, in addition to writing the obituaries, my mom would then go to the funeral and read the person's eulogy. And it was only later, Alicia, that I realized that, my mother was the first writer that I saw. 

<Music OUT>

The first published person I knew was my mom. And so, I think I owe my career to both my mother and my father in very different ways. 

Alicia: Do you remember, do you remember the first book that really meant something to you Dr. Gates?

Gates:  Oh, yes. It was A Tale of Two Cities. It was the first — I did all my book reports on sports books. And my eighth grade teacher, Mrs. Iverson — she called me Louis — and she said, "Louis, you are forbidden from writing about sports books anymore. You need to read real literature." And I said, "What's wrong with these sports books? They're great." And she goes, "No, read this." And I looked down and it was, um, A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens and I just stayed up all night reading it. And, then I read Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, and I read The Agony and the Ecstasy about Michaelangelo and I was just, I was launched. [Laughs] .

Alicia:  That was the turning point for you?

Gates:  That was the turning point. 

<Music IN>

I fell in love with literature. I grew up in a household of magazines and books. My father liked mysteries and detective stories. And we used to get Reader's Digest condensed books. And I remember I read The Day Lincoln Was Shot and I was so — I was moved to tears by the- the grief of the American people and this terrible tragedy for our great emancipator. And so I would read widely. But I was raised to be a doctor, and so reading was going to be something I did on the side because my mama wanted two doctors and that's just the way it was. 

<Music OUT>

It took me a long time to realize that I had been put on this Earth for another purpose. I didn't really realize it until after I graduated from Yale and I majored in history, and got a fellowship to go to the University of Cambridge. And then I was gonna come back and go to med school. If that didn't work out I'd go to law school. And at Cambridge I met two Africans, Wole Soyinka —

Alicia:  Yes.

Gates:  — the great playwright who was there from Nigeria in political exile, and who 13 years later — this is 1973 — in 1986 he got the Nobel Prize for literature, the first African ever honored in that way. And an undergraduate named Kwame Anthony Appiah, who, as you know, is the most brilliant African philosopher ever. And he writes the ethics column in the Sunday Times Magazine each week.

Alicia:  Ah! Were they really pivotal mentors for you, Dr. Gates?

Gates:  They took me to dinner and my first Indian meal, with a bottle of wine. And I had never — you know, we didn't drink wine, my generation at Yale, let's say, um, lifted its spirits in more vaporous ways. [laughs]

Alicia:  [laughs] You can tell you're a beautiful writer.

Gates:  [laughs] Thank you. And, not that I partook, of course! 

<Music IN>

But I'm eating this Indian food, my mouth was on fire, and I'm drinking wine, I'm getting smashed, because Soyinka is quite a, a connoisseur of wine. And they said, "We brought you here to tell you, you are not going to be a doctor, you are going to be a Professor of Literature, and you are going to go back to the States and teach African and African-American literature." And you know, I was so deeply moved. They were absolutely right. 

Alicia: What did that feel like when they said that to you?

Gates: It felt like the laying on of the hands. You know, it was obvious that Soyinka was a genius. To have the greatest playwright out of Africa, and then it was also obvious that Anthony Appiah was a genius. he became the first African, I believe, to get a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Cambridge. It was, uh, like when someone touches you and names you, you know? They put their finger on your forehead and go, boom, they just push your button. And I understood that that's what deep down I wanted to be: a man of letters. I wanted to be a professor. And I was the first African American to get a PhD in English in the history of Cambridge. And I'm quite proud of that. 

<Music OUT>

Alicia:  It's just so clear from anyone who's watching Finding Your Roots how you also have a love affair with documents and — and I guess documents probably isn't a great word because it's so much more than that —but what is it about documentation, either historic or genetic that resonates so much with you, Dr. Gates?

Gates:  Well, Frederick Douglass famously said, in his first slave narrative published in 1845, he said, "Family trees don't grow in slavery." And I became, obsessed with my own family tree when I was 10 years old. It was the day we buried my father's father, Edward St. Lawrence Gates. 

<Music IN>

And my father took my brother and me up to his open casket. I never been that close to a, a corpse before. And my father just started weeping uncontrollably, and we had never seen my father, the funny man, cry before. 

Alicia:  Mmmm.

Gates:  So, it was doubly memorable. And then we went back to the Gates family home, my great, great grandmother had purchased her own home in 1870. My father took my brother and me upstairs to my grandparents bedroom where we never been upstairs before. We weren't allowed to go up there. And he took us out on the sun porch, and there was an armoire out there and it was full of bank ledgers because my grandfather was a janitor at the First National Bank in Cumberland, and he was stealing these bank ledgers and using them as scrapbooks. We had no idea about any of this. And my father without telling us a word started pulling these bank ledgers out, and he's on the floor searching furiously for something. And finally, he said, "Here, you boys, look here." It was an obituary dated January 6, 1888, and it said, "Died this day in Cumberland, Maryland, Jane Gates, an estimable colored woman." And then he pulled a picture of Jane Gates, out, and he said, "This is the oldest Gates that we can trace on the Gates line. I never want you to forget her name. And I never want you to forget her face." And my brother and I stared this funny looking lady who was dressed in a midwife's outfit. she was a, a nurse and, you know, a house servant. And the whole experience was overwhelming! And there was no context for it — my father had just done it.

Alicia:  Right.

Gates:  So, then he shut the bank ledger, gath ered up all the other scrapbooks and put them back in the armoire and we went downstairs for the repast, and then we drove 25 miles back home to Piedmont. And the last thing, Alicia, I did before I went to bed was, I always had my own bedroom, and I had a desk, and had a red Webster's Dictionary on that desk. 

<Music OUT>

And the last thing I did, before I went to sleep, was look up the word "estimable". Because, I didn't know what it meant and I thought, "Wow, if my great, great grandmother was estimable, maybe I'm estimable too!" 

<Music IN>

And, the next day, I asked my dad to stop at Red Bull's newsstand and buy me a composition book. And that night in front of that same 12-inch Black and white TV, I traced my family history, I did my family tree. I interviewed my mother and my father. I wanted to know how I was connected to this strange woman whose picture I'd seen the day before. And I was able to get back to my great, great grandmother Jane, on my father's side —

Alicia:  Mmmm.

Gates: — and an anonymous white man who fathered her children. She took the secret of his identity to the grave. She only told her children that they had the same father. But she never told them who that father was. And, on my mother's side I was able to go back to my great, great grandmother, and my great, great, grandfather, who were both, born free, unlike Jane. And, that was the birth of my fascination with genealogy.

<Music OUT>

Alicia:  So, that was the beginning!

Gates:  I even, uh, on a Yale program — I took a year off between my sophomore and junior year — this program was called "five-year BA" and if you were selected, they picked 12 kids, and you had to go and work somewhere in the developing world — and I went to Africa. I went to Tanzania and worked in a mission hospital — remember, I was pre-med and — an Anglican mission hospital, out in the middle of the bush I'm Tanzania. And then, with a white guy, Lawrence Biddle Weeks, whom I met in Dar es Salaam, he's an Episcopal priest, we hitchhiked across the equator together. We went from the Atlantic Ocean, to Kinshasa, the capital of Congo, entirely by land and water, sailing down the Congo River.

Alicia:  Wow. How long did that take?

Gates:  About two months. But it was a trip of a lifetime. By the time I was 20, I'd been to... six African countries. 

Alicia:  Yeah.

Gates:  And then in the year 2000 a Black geneticist, Dr Rick Kittles, wrote to me, "Dear Dr. Gates. Have you ever read Roots?"

Alicia:  Yeah.

Gates:  "We can now do what Alex Haley did in a laboratory with a test tube." I — 

<Music IN>

first of all when I read the letter, I said, "What kind of idiot does he think I am? Everybody saw Roots."

Alicia:  [laughs].

Gates:  [laughs] But he was just looking for prominent African-American men, who would volunteer to have their DNA analyzed to see where they were from in Africa. So he had no idea that I had this history —

Alicia:  Mmmm.

Gates:  — of fascination with my own genealogy. And I begged him to fly up to Cambridge, which he did, And they, took my blood, and, about a month later, he finally told me where in Africa on my mother's line, what ethnic group I was from. There was a one little match from Egypt, and so Dr. Kittles, being generous, 'cause he knew I wanted to know my African roots so urgently, picked that one — but I had a zillion matches over England! And what that means is that I am, on my father's side, descended from a white man, my great, great, grandfather, my father's father's father, right, line.

Alicia:  Right.

Gates:  But, on my mother's side, I'm in that small percentage of African-Americans who are descended from a white woman who slept with a Black man back in colonial America. 

<Music OUT>

And that would explain why my family's been free for so long, because you followed the condition of the mother, and all white people were free. It turns out I'm 50% sub-Saharan African, and 50% European. That means that, if you had an ideally populated family tree, half of my ancestors, would be white, and the other half would be Black.

Alicia:  Right.

Gates:  And, you know, I'm the chairman, at the time, of African and African-American Studies at Harvard, and half a white man! [laughs]

<Music IN>

Gates:  Well, right after I got these results, I got up in the middle of the night, and I had a eureka moment, I'd started to make documentaries from PBS... I can do a feature, and I'll get eight prominent African-Americans, and I'll trace their genealogy back to slavery, using archival documents, which is how we got launched on this subject, and then, when the paper trail runs out, as inevitably it does, I'll analyze their DNA and see what ethnic group they're from in Africa. 

<Music OUT>

And so we launched what became Finding Your Roots just with African-Americans. 

Alicia:  Mmm-hmmm. What would your father think of Finding Your Roots, Dr. Gates?

Gates:  Oh, he would love it. I, and, and... in fact, he's in the first episode, because they decided to trace my own ancestry, and that's when they found... We knew about great, great, grandmother Jane Gates, but we were able to find three sets of fourth great grandparents, all of whom were free, and, they all knew each other, they lived 30 miles from where I was born. And one of them, John Redman, on my mother's line, a free Black man who mustered into the continental army on Christmas Day in Winchester, Virginia, 1778, was mustered out in April of 1784, and because of him, my brother and I, and my brother's son, were inducted into the Sons of the American Revolution, and my daughter Maggie was inducted into the Daughters of the American Revolution.

Alicia:  Wow.

Gates: So the, the whole time, though, I'm looking for my African roots, and I can go back to the 18th century just by going to the courthouse 30 miles away in Moorefield, in Hardy County. All of those records were there waiting to be discovered. 

Alicia: You are described, Dr. Gates, as an author, a literary critic, a historian, a professor, a filmmaker... How do you describe yourself?

Gates:  I just try to be a nice guy, and, uh, make people laugh, you know. I want to be a good story teller. And I just want to be remembered 

<Music IN>

as someone who loved culture and civilization. And my political goal through Finding Your Roots is to show that despite our physical differences — the differences of features, hair texture, skin color — at the level of the genome we're all 99.99% the same. And the other political mission of Finding Your Roots, is that we're all from some other place. Even the Native Americans came here from some other place, walking across the Bering Strait 15,000 years ago. So, we... we're all immigrants, and we're all the same, at the most fundamental level. That is the reason I think Finding Your Roots is, is so popular.

<Music OUT>

Alicia: I mean, your work on Finding Your Roots, it's been revelatory. I mean, you've helped us all think about our identities differently. You've brought everyone together, and, you know, I feel like a lot of times we don't ask the questions until it's too late. You've helped us ask the questions, and you've also answered the questions. So thank you so much for doing this.

Gates: Well, thank you!

[THEME MUSIC UP]

ALICIA OUTRO:  

Henry Louis Gates Jr. has taken his life experience and built a career on peeling back the layers of our nation’s many legacies. And with his enduring curiosity, he shows us, individually and collectively, who we are. 

What would you like the power to do? 

You've been listening to Bank of America’s “That Made All the Difference”. You can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. 

This wraps up Season 3 – so stay tuned for Season 4 in the Fall. 

I’m Alicia Burke and I’ll talk to you soon.

[THEME MUSIC UP]

ARIAN CLIP:  It wasn't just the lack of diversity in investments, it's a lack of diversity in investors. The industry is 80% white males. So, I knew, okay, "I'm gonna have to get on the other side of this table to affect this change." 

ALICIA INTRO:   What if your fearlessness gave others the courage to succeed?

Arian Simone is a born saleswoman.  One of those kids who always had something going, much to her parents' delight.  With several enterprises under her belt even before graduating college, Simone knew that she loved business.  But she also discovered that securing the capital to launch and successfully sustain a great business was far more challenging for some people than others — and even more so for African American women.

After founding The Fearless Platform in 2010, she launched The Fearless Fund nine years later with Keshia Knight Pulliam and Ayana Parsons.  It’s one of the first venture capital funds built by women of color for women of color.

And for Arian Simone, it all started out with the terrific foundation of her hometown neighborhood in Detroit...

[THEME MUSIC OUT]

Arian: It was an amazing time for African American children to be growing up in the '80s and '90s in Detroit, despite what a lot of the media portrays. It was wonderful. It was 88% African American when I grew up there, and it was just very delightful seeing so large of an upper middle class African American population, and I would even say some upper class. We grew up around seeing black multimillionaires and high net worth individuals. 

Alicia: And how did that experience affect you?

<Music IN>

It was, it was beautiful to be able to drive by, like, John Salley's house, and it's like, "Oh my gosh, one of the Pistons players lives here."  Or you drive past Don Barden on the golf course. And we didn't pay our cable to Comcast or Xfinity or AT&T, we paid it to Barden Cablevision, so an African American male owned the cable company. And we had the luxury of witnessing what that was like, and this person wasn't somebody who, who we couldn't touch. it was just beautiful. Detroit has the most gorgeous historic homes I've yet to see anywhere else. 

<Music OUT>

It empowered me as a young child to know I can do and dream anything.

Alicia:  Well clearly, that worked. I mean it was in your fabric right from the beginning

Arian:  Yes. I've always wanted to be a business woman since I was a kid. My parents are cheerleaders of anything that I do. I could be selling dirt right now and they're like, "Well how many pallets are we gonna be moving?"

<Music IN>

They were very encouraging of an entrepreneurial environment. Our mayor at the time, Coleman Young, he established that the city contracts had to reflect the demographics of the city, So we just saw so many people prospering, and they were very much believers of anything that I wanted to do. But I was always selling things. I was the lead fundraiser for, like, the UNCF local chapter as an eight-year-old, I was very well-aware of how to hone in on the target audience. My best friend's mom tells the story about how she pulled up to our middle school one time and we were doing, like, this huge poinsettia sell, and they're like, "This entire half of the stage right here is Arian's. Arian went through her mother's Rolodex and called all of her friends, to sell to them and they'll be picking up today [laughing] ." 

<Music OUT>

So I've always been that person. I sold Mary Kay in high school.

Alicia:  What was it like balancing school, Arian, and all these other things you were doing, including, there you are in high school, you know, with something that's bigger than a job?

Arian: I think my mother started me off young by putting me in a lot of extracurricular activities. 

<Music IN>

I grew up in an organization called Jack and Jill, we were doing community service. so I've always had to balance a lot, and it's just how things translated later on in life.  When I got to college, I attended Florida A&M University, and there I went on to open up a mall-based retail store. So this was my first time actually raising capital, because everything else I was doing, I was pretty much just bootstrapping and just winging it. So of course, I had to have capital to get the inventory, the staff going, grand opening, et cetera. So I raised a couple hundred thousand. 

<Music OUT>

Alicia: And what was it like trying to raise those funds?

Arian:  Oh, it was difficult.

Alicia:  Hm.

Arian: That's my first taste of learning what this whole environment of raising capital was like and just the limits that were there. And don't get me wrong, some people probably just thought I was nuts because I was young, but [laughs] I realized then, right before we opened, I made a promise to myself that one day I would be the business investor that I was looking for.  And I'm honored that I live in the manifestation of that promise today.

Alicia:  So you knew it. You knew then, when you opened, what side of the equation you wanted to be on.

Arian:  Oh yeah.

Alicia: So, you left the boutique behind when you finished college, and I understand that you moved to LA for your "dream job".  Can you talk a little bit about that?

Arian:  Yeah. I just thought it was just that simple. I thought entrepreneurship had ups an downs, I was just like, "I'm getting out of this." Little did I know that the job market is, is unstable. So, [laughs] I went to go work for Nelly's Apple Bottoms and I was there for 30 days, and then the company gets sold. 

<Music IN>

And I was in shock because I had placed product on Jessica Simpson, on Tyra Banks.

Alicia:  Wow.

Arian:  So, I just thought I was the rockstar there. They said, "Well, everybody has to leave. The company got sold and they, they're not using any of us." "Okay, and you've relocated me cross country?" 

Alicia:  That's a lot of upheaval when you're just getting started out there.

Arian:  Over time I actually just ran out of money, and I ended up moving from my apartment to my car. My parents were in a divorce case, they were dealing with their life and what was going on.  I told them, "Hey, I'll figure it out."

<Music OUT>

Alicia: You were really toughing it out.  How did you keep it together?

Arian: My energy and my spirits were high, I believe in the power of being grateful for things. And that enlarges your territory.

<Music IN>

I still keep a gratitude journal, I still write down all the wins and all the wonderful things that take place that I'm grateful for. I believe in dancing in the rain, that despite situation or circumstance, you're to have fun. And I just keep going. 

Alicia:  And I understand you ended up starting another business of your own.  How did that lead to where you are now?

Arian:  After about seven months without a place to live, I ended up building a PR marketing company from the ground up. And that was a huge blessing. [laughs] And I ran that company for almost 15 years. And I had clients in the entertainment industry, from Walt Disney, to universal, to Sony Pictures, and more. And I started meeting people in the venture capital space. And that's when all the light bulbs started going off. And I'm like, "Okay, now is the time." I started educating myself about a lot of the racial disparities in the space. It wasn't just the lack of diversity in investments, it's a lack of diversity in investors. The industry is 80% white males. So, I knew, okay, "I'm gonna have to get on the other side of this table to affect this change." And that's when we started the fund.  

<Music OUT>

Alicia:  And the confidence you had, I mean, I, I've heard you say, "My confidence walks me in the doors, keeps me at the table and opens up great opportunities." 

Arian:  I knew everything was possible, so I still walk in that.  In the beginning it was, "Oh my gosh, there are enough women of color to invest in?" I'm like, "Are you kidding me? If we can just take race out of this and you just look at the businesses, this is the largest investment opportunity you can find in a startup." 

<Music IN>

So, it's amazing to be on this journey. It's empowering to be on this journey. And I understand that with power comes responsibility. We are a strategic partner to these companies that we're investing in. We're providing resources, and mentorship, and tools way beyond capital. This is very personal — a very personal mission for me. 

<Music OUT>

Alicia: Arian, what do you think the challenges that you've faced have taught you so far?

Arian:  I would definitely say patience. I remember when I closed the store, I was just young. I thought I wasn't doing well. Now, that I'm an adult, I go back and look at the financials and I just laugh. because some days were up, some days were down, and I just didn't know at that age that that was just part of business, and you just have to ride the wave.

Alicia: Arian, can you talk a little bit about how you hope your personal story informs other women of color coming up after you?

Arian:  I hope that 

<Music IN>

people seeing how I enjoy life, and how I live life, is an attraction for them to look into this as an option. And that it's inspiring a new, an uprising, class of investors. There are more African American fund managers. In VC in particular, I'm happy to see all of the diversification that is on the rise, and I hope that it continues in an upward trend.

Alicia:  Can you tell me the most favorite part of your role?

Arian:  Being able to cut another woman a check who looks like me. To say that I can invest in our own, There's something about it that means something special to me.

<Music OUT>

[THEME MUSIC UP]

ALICIA OUTRO:   

With her own remarkable energy, Arian Simone has carved out a powerful place for herself as a financial partner to women of color in business.  And beyond the funding, she is laying the groundwork for young girls of color to picture themselves as entrepreneurial change makers — whether as founders or investors.  It's a model that gives back and pays forward, all at the same time.

What would you like the power to do? 

You've been listening to Bank of America’s “That Made All the Difference”. You can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. 

I’m Alicia Burke and I’ll talk to you soon.

<Theme In>

YVONNE clip: America was this like, great, new world. I had a lot of extended family that we were kind of leaving behind, so that was sad. But then it was just like, "Yeah, we're leaving, but we're going to gain this new experience in this new poppin’ place that everybody is talking about."

ALICIA INTRO:  In a time when differences dominate today’s culture: What if you could use a gift, like humor, to bring people and communities together?

Few people have been able to represent the special experience of America's first generation immigrants with more comedic celebration than performer Yvonne Orji.  You may know her as Issa's best friend Molly on HBO's terrific series Insecure.  Or maybe you caught her exuberant standup special Momma, I Made It!  Either way, I was so excited to hear the story of this native-Nigerian.  She moved to the US at age 6, and later earned both a master’s degree in Public Health and an Emmy-nomination.  All the while, Yvonne Orji has retained a committed sense of home — in two different countries that straddle the Atlantic.  Plus, she's just really fun.

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Alicia: Yvonne, I don't know if it's a bad pun to say I'm feeling "insecure" about uh, interviewing you!  But let me just say, from Insecure, to your one-woman show, to Jesus and Jollof, you've already sort of enlightened me to a lot of different things. I wondered if we might start with you growing up in Nigeria, and what your early life was like.

Yvonne:  Yeah. You know, I, I am the youngest of four. I have three older brothers. It was just — it was fun, you know. And you're in a, in a society where everyone kind of looks like you, right?  And so it was just like, everyone's black. And then you come to America and you're introduced to cold. We came in November, to Calverton, Maryland. It was culture shock and it was… weather shock.

Alicia:  Weather shock. Mmm.

Yvonne:  Yeah, and I remember that my mom bought us these puff onesies with a hood, and we would go make snow angels in the lawn in front of our apartment complex. And it wasn't until I got to school that I realized like I was different, ‘cause I had this accent. It was very interesting transition.

Alicia:  And that was the beginning of a lot of transcending for you.

Yvonne:  Yes. Yes.

Alicia:  Can you share why you all came to the US?

Yvonne:  Yeah, you know, so, um there was a nursing shortage. And, back in those days, America was recruiting nurses from the Philippines and African countries. Immigration was a lot more open and welcoming when they needed services from you. And so my mom actually came ahead of us in, um, around '87, '88 to kind of just pave the way. My mom worked as a nurse at Howard University Hospital for just over 27 years.  

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And I think we just — you know, obviously back then too, the idea was America was this like, great, new world. I had a lot of cousins and a lot of extended family that we were kind of leaving behind, so that was sad. Then it was just like, "Yeah, we're leaving, but we're going to gain this new experience in this new poppin’ place that everybody is talking about. And we were like one of the fortunate ones that gets to go." So I think we received coming to America with, with big eyes and big dreams and big visions.

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Alicia:  I love that you did your one-woman show from — was it the Howard Theater? 

Yvonne:  Yeah. To honor my mom. 

Alicia:  It's amazing. You know, um, last season I had a chance to interview Dr. Wayne Frederick from Howard University. And he talked a lot about his mom who was a nurse for, I don't know, 30-some odd years. There's something about people who have nurses for mothers...

Yvonne:  There's so many Nigerian women that are nurses. My mom, you know, got two knee surgeries because she was working overtime. And so my image and my notion of nursing was, "This is a hard life!"

Alicia: Mmm. You've talked about having this dual lens. So, you grow up in Nigeria, you come to the United States. But you also go back and forth a lot. Even from a young age, it sounds like you were there a lot in the summers. 

Yvonne:  Yeah. Well, my dad was not very, um, he wasn’t excited about the America move, you know? My grandfather was a king in our village. My dad is a title chief. And he obviously was very aware of the racial tensions — towards black men especially, but black people in general — in America. And he just didn't want to be a, a, a different version of what he knew he could be at home — especially in another man's land. If he's getting disrespected at home, there, you know there are ways to correct that wrong, right?  But if he gets disrespected here by authorities or by people in power, it's like, well, who corrects the wrong? And so he really was not, you know, a fan of staying. 

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And so, after six years in the US, when I turned 12, we started going back to Nigeria every year, every year. And he just made sure that we knew our family, we knew our land, what belonged to us, what we were entitled to, um, you know, learning more of the language, the food, et cetera, et cetera.  So that was just very – that was his doing really of keeping that dual lens alive.

Alicia:  That's amazing. And do you feel like it got to that balance that was able for him to be, you know, happy and your mother to be happy?

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Yvonne:  Yeah, well, we're kind of the guinea pigs, right? When immigrants come to this country, they have no idea. They - and then they have kids. And so then the kids are like, "We have no idea and we're trying to figure it out ourselves." And my dad kind of took a "you're in, you’re in the world, but not of the world" approach to being in America, which I didn't think was fair because I'm like, "Nah, there's definitely going to be some things that rub off." But I do know that at some point in my going back, I also had to make the decision of, "Okay, you have to make home your own, because right now, all you know is your parent's home and that's not going to cut it." Their eyes are a little tainted. My parents saw war. My, my dad fought in the war and you know, fled, and his, his brother went missing in the war. So their eyes are always going to be skewed to their experiences. And you know, some things are going to be, you know passed down with wisdom, and some things are going to be passed down with fear. And I was just - I wanted to, to be able to adopt from both sides, not only what they were sharing, but what I was experiencing in real time.

Alicia:  Right. Right. Yvonne, you've talked a lot about your parents — they're going to have their own special, there's no question —

Yvonne:  I've created a monster. I've created several, several monsters.

Alicia:  They will definitely have a spin-off. But you felt like they influenced you early on..

Yvonne:  Because my mom stayed with us, you know, the most, while my dad went back and forth, I saw a powerful woman. 

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Like, I saw like a woman who was able to do so much: like, my mom got her Master's while we were all four here and she was working a full-time job. I remember going to work with my mom, and she, you know, had a good relationship with the Head of Surgery, and um I remember her just striking up a conversation with him. And then, I turned around and she was striking up a conversation with one of the janitors, and I was like, "Err?" And my mom pulled me to the side and she said, "You have to make sure that you treat every person you meet with kindness because you never know if you're entertaining an angel without your knowledge." That's a biblical verse, that's a scripture, but it was made practical. You know, my mom was just like, "the janitor's a human being, just like the Head of Surgery." 

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Alicia:  So fast forward, you, you go to college and then you get a master's degree, I think, in public health. And what, what motivated you to study that?

Yvonne:  Well, in undergrad, I was, I was fairly certain I was going to go to med school. And then um, organic chemistry let me know that I was not going to go to med school. And I was like, "Fair enough." Um, but I didn't know... at this point I'm 21, my whole life was all predicated on this belief that I'm going to I'm going to be a doctor. I hadn't given any attention to what alternatives were. So it's just like, yes, "Immigrant parents love education — let me just go keep getting more of that." My specialty was global health promotion, so that got me to travel. I traveled to um Guatemala. I worked in Liberia for six months. And it was just great being on the ground, actually you know investing in the communities that we were serving, and real time, real life touching people um and helping them adopt whatever behavioral changes we were um trying to communicate to them about. So that's, that’s what motivated me to do that. It was also just me trying to, trying to buy time, to be honest.

Alicia:  Yeah, It's like you were doing something you were really interested in, but not really knowing like where you wanted to end up — but knowing probably where you didn't want to end up.

Yvonne:  Yeah. I knew more about where I didn't want to end up. And then when, you know, when God told me to do comedy, I was like, "Oh, he has me twisted. I don’t, I'm not funny. I don't do comedy. I've never done — why would I do this?" 

Alicia:  I mean, it's really remarkable. I mean, so you get your Master's in public health and then you take this sharp left. And you just mentioned it but, can you talk about what happened? What was it in that moment? Or what, what, what was that calling?

Yvonne:  So while I was getting my master's, there was this pageant, right, it was the Miss Nigeria-in-America Beauty Pageant.  And my brother actually knew the organizers, and he asked if I wanted to be a contestant. It wasn't a heavy lift, and so I was like, "All right, I guess. I'm free on Saturday. I just got to get a dress and a swimsuit and maybe answer a final question. All right, great. I'm pretty smart." And then two weeks before the pageant — mind you, people have already bought tickets — I get a call stating that I hadn't listed anything in the talent portion. And I needed one if I was going to participate. And I just prayed. I was like, "Hey God, um, I got nothing. I don't know what to do. I - I really need your help." And before I even finished, I heard, 'Do comedy.'" 

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Alicia:  You heard it? It was that —

Yvonne:  I heard it. It didn't make any sense, and that's exactly what I told God. But I knew in that moment, God wasn't arguing with me. He was just like, "It's up to you. If you do trust me, you'll do this thing. If you don't, all right, well, good luck coming up with whatever your thing is." And I was like, "I don't have a thing." So then I - the only other option was to trust him.

Alicia:  So you were open enough to listen, which is a huge thing... 

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Yvonne:  I was all in.  And so when I heard, "Do comedy," even though I fought it — and the reason why I fought it was: I was rejected, I was bullied as a kid, um when I got here. And, you know, for me, comedy that's not great — you get rejected, you get booed.

Alicia:  Right.

Yvonne:  And I was like, "Oh. Yeah, I'm not doing that. Not in my adulthood. I already, I already went through that as a kid. I'm not going to voluntarily put myself in the lion's den." And that was my biggest hangup. It wasn't so much like, I don't have material. But it was like, I don't want to be laughed at and not in a favorable way. 

Alicia:  And so then what did you do, Yvonne? It's one thing to say, "Okay, I'm going to receive this. I'm going to do comedy," and the next thing to, say, now you're getting on stage, now you're needing the confidence to get up there. What was that like?

Yvonne:  Yeah. So confidence was not a problem for me. Um, the problem was like, did I have the goods? And so for those two weeks, I was testing material. Like that’s - I'm always the kind of person that will take something that other people do and try and figure out how to do it in a different way. I can't do what everyone does, right? And I figured since it's the Nigeria, Miss Nigeria-in-America pageant, let me fuse my two worlds. Like what's funny being both Nigerian and American? And so that's where my material came from.

Alicia:  Mmm. So now you're, you’re starting in comedy, but it takes a while, right? It takes a while for you to get your sea legs. 

Yvonne:  Oh man, it was a seven-year overnight success. Uh, and if we're counting from the pageant, which was 2006, I booked Insecure in 2015.  So, that's a long time. So I did the pageant, then I entered another competition, it was like the DC's Funniest College Student Competition. And of the 16 of us, I was the only girl. Again, I'm used to this position. So it's 15 guys and it's me. And I didn't win that competition, but what I remember specifically is, these two gentlemen came up to me after the show, one was Indian and one was Asian, and they said, "You remind me of my mom, just with a different accent." And it always stuck with me because I was like, "Maybe there's something to this. 

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Maybe rather than trying figure out what my shtick will be, this is it!" Because they all - I firmly believe all immigrant parents went to the same school. They - it was different languages being shared, but they all went to the same parenting class. And that resonated with me so much that I was like, "Maybe, maybe you can reach more people than you know, just being yourself."

Alicia:  Well, you know what it reminds me of is, I think you've talked about your role as a bridge —

Yvonne:  Yeah.

Alicia:  — and I wonder, is that what you mean, how you see your role through your life, Yvonne? 

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Because as these people are coming up to you and saying, "You're reminding me of your – of my mother or my sister." Here you are: you're the youngest of four, you're a woman who's both Nigerian and American, you're a comedian. You’re - it feels like you're bringing people together in your work, and that's really resonating with people wherever they're from and whoever they are.

Yvonne:  That's, I think, a really good way to put it. And thank you for drawing all those uh connective dots. Yeah, I do, I see myself as a connector. 

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It's a thing that flows from me that I love doing, because for me, it's part of my purpose of making sure that people live out the dreams that they want to live, and we need community to do that. 

Alicia:  You're a comedian, but Yvonne, on Insecure, which I know it's entering its final season, it can be really funny, but it can also be really poignant. 

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Yvonne:  Yeah. The - what I love about our show is that it's so nuanced. It's, it’s funny that even though I'm the standup, I'm the straight woman. There's, there's humor that comes from my character, Molly, but she's the straight woman. Natasha Rothwell, who plays Kelly, she's more the zingers and one-liner. And for me, they — I'll never forget the note the casting director gave me when she called after like my second audition. And she was like, "Well, the producers, they, they want you to come back, but their only note for you was um: do less." Because I was so big, I was so used to performing, I was so used to "make sure that everyone can see you from the back," you know, I have these big eyes, I have a big smile. And basically, she was just like, "The character is, she's straight. Play her straight." And that was - I think I'm very fortunate, because if I was playing what's in my wheelhouse, then I wouldn't have gained any new skills. But being able to tap into Molly's dramatic side, Molly's nuanced side, while still being able to have my measured moments of comedy, that is the thing that I'm like, really happy that I got a chance to sink my teeth into my first run out, because now it, it does give me different levels. You know, some people - that's why it was actually funny that a lot of people didn't know that I did stand up. So when my special came out, people were like, "The girl from Insecure is funny?" 

Alicia:  They got to know you backwards. They got to know you in yeah, the sequence was different. But you seem so fearless. I mean, and I know it's, it’s hard-won fearlessness, but what, what scares you?

Yvonne:  Uh, oh, my gosh. What scares me? Hoooo. I used to think it was failure. What I'm learning is being vulnerable enough to just let things happen.  My parents, they were like, "We are going to control the outcome of all of our children's life. This one will be a doctor. This one will be a lawyer. This one” – you know, everything's based on predictability. And I'm entering a season now where I'm just like, "I ... don't know what comes next."

Alicia: Mm. But do you have a sense of what you want it to be?

Yvonne:  Yeah. For me, I remember last fall calling my co-star Jay Ellis and not realizing in the moment what the feeling was, but it was anxiety, in hindsight.  And he told me that one of his acting teachers actually said the hardest thing for her students that had made it is the very next thing that they do after the thing that they made it with. And so I think just hearing that like, calmed me down, to let me know that I wasn't losing my mind. 

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I had a really good experience. Like we are, we are a family, we genuinely like each other. We're creating content that is shifting culture. Um, I get to play a delicious character that's multilayered. And you know, especially for actors of color, that's not always a, a role that we're given, like you know, to really sink our teeth into — that has nothing to do with struggle, that has nothing to do with slavery, that has nothing to do with you know oppression. Um, it's just me living and being and, and feeling able to have agency um in the world and within myself and in my circle of friends. And it's just like, "I was so spoiled out the gate. What do I do next? Like what tops this?" Well, I get to reinvent myself. And I'm choosing to only do the things that really tickle my tail feather.

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Alicia:  And what is Celine thinking...? 

Yvonne:  Ah, Celine, Celine, Celine. My mom is such a delight. It's just fun to see her come alive, now she has this second chance at living and thriving, as opposed to just surviving. They did so much and sacrificed so much for me, my brothers, their family, that this is just a joy that we get to enjoy the fruits of this labor.

Alicia:  Well, I'm glad you mentioned joy, because I have to say, Yvonne, you radiate such joy it’s — it's a gift. And I feel like, between you having, as you said, your agency, you're giving that to other people and making them think about what they can do and who they can be. As those of us who are contemplating maybe a different path in our lives or are straddling different identities, you know, what advice might you have for us?

Yvonne: Well, the way you see the world is so distinctively different than the way anyone else sees the world. It really is... recognizing your gold. People mine gold every day.

Alicia:  Well, Yvonne, I also thank you for your gold, because uh you really, syou both lift people up and you give comedy a really good name.

Yvonne:  Aw, thank you! I receive that. I'm going to write that in my journal. Thank you so much for just watering my garden right now with that comment.

Alicia: This was so much fun — and can't wait to see what you do next! We'll all be watching and listening.

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ALICIA OUTRO:

You can see Yvonne Orji in the fifth and final season of HBO's Insecure, which comes out later this year.  She's also an author: her new book is Bamboozled by Jesus: How God Tricked Me Into the Life of My Dreams. It's both a memoir and the kind of big dose of loving advice that a best friend sends when you need it most.

Yvonne’s power to use humor to bring people together is really contagious.  It's built on the hard-won experience of living in two cultures and seeing the common humanity that connects us all.  She is a testament to the resilience of growing up in an immigrant home and learning to cultivate a path forward for yourself – embracing joy all along the way.  

What would you like the power to do? 

You've been listening to Bank of America’s “That Made All the Difference” podcast. You can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. 

I’m Alicia Burke and I’ll talk to you soon.

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THEME-UP and under

Alicia Burke: Sometimes, one moment can change everything…

Lonnie Bunch: “He looks me in the eye, and he says, "I'm not really sure what you do, but if you're a real historian, your job is to help people remember not just what they want to remember, but what they need to remember." And that, more than anything else, has shaped my entire career.”

Alicia Burke: That’s Lonnie Bunch, Secretary of the Smithsonian and the creator and founder of the National Museum of African American History and Culture. He’s one of the many incredible people I’ll be speaking with on this season of That Made All The Difference, an original podcast from Bank of America. 

Lonnie Bunch: “History became my muse, it became my weapon, it became my tool. It became my armor that gave me the confidence to be able to speak.” 

Alicia Burke: I’m your host, Alicia Burke. On That Made All The Difference we explore the pivotal moments that transformed the lives of my guests and helped them find what they were meant to do -- like Yvonne Orji from the hit HBO series Insecure... 

Yvonne Orji:  I just prayed. I was like, "Hey God, I got nothing. I don't know what to do. I really need your help." And before I even finished, I heard, "Do comedy." 

Alicia Burke: In season 3, I’ll be talking to people who can offer us inspiration and perspective on the challenges we’re facing and the underlying racial and economic inequalities that are being brought to the forefront. And they’re each addressing them in their own ways. Like Connie Chung Joe, who heads up Asian Americans Advancing Justice in LA, the nation’s largest legal and civil rights organization for Asian Americans, and multi-award-winning Harvard historian, author, and filmmaker, Henry Louis Gates Jr.  

Alicia Burke: I hope you’ll join me for these conversations. Season 3 launches next week. You can find That Made All The Difference wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe now.