Note: There is language that is excluded in the transcript but not excluded in the audio.
When is the last time you felt like you had to square off against someone? What happened?
Ugh, I should have squared off today. One of my agents calls me. That’s — she’s not even my agent. She works in the [City] office, but she was looking for one of my agents and she calls, and she refers to him, cause he’s black, she says “Who is that colored guy that’s in your office?” And I just — so upsetting.
I should have said something then and there. But it’s always like, whenever somebody is racist or discriminatory — and this happens to me and my husband all the time because we both pass very well. Um, it’s so shocking, it’s so shocking when s*** like this happens that I just can’t react properly. I’m not even prepared. I can’t even be like “You should not use that word. Do not use that word. Period. There’s no excuse for it.” I’m just so shocked, I can’t even respond, right, in these situations. And it happens to my husband all the time, because he wears a kippah out. Um, you know if he doesn’t have his hat on, people know, right, and they say stupid s*** to him constantly. Luckily people don’t know — like since I changed my last name, people don’t know, so they’ll stay stupid s*** in front of me. But they still don’t know. Um, but it’s rare. Again if they say some stupid s*** — I mean we’d have to be talking about Mexicans for them to, you know, say something stupid which usually isn’t brought up. You know with him, it’s on his f****** head. They know he’s Jewish, they can see it.
So I should’ve said something right away. But I didn’t. And I thought about it and I thought about it. So I called our boss. I was like, “You know what, this is — I’ve got to talk to somebody about it.” Cause it’s not okay, not okay to say it. It’s not a slip of the tongue, right? You don’t just accidentally say things like that unless you use it constantly. You don’t accidentally say the n-word unless you’re constantly using it. You know what slips out of [my] mouth all the time? The word f***. Do you know why? I f****** use it all the time. That’s why it slips out of my mouth. When you slip the other words out of your mouth, it’s because you use them all the time, period.
So I called our boss. I’m like, “Hey. This is what ha-” — firstly, I was like “Hey…” — you know because I don’t want to be that guy, “Hey, thank you for inviting me up to this — see this motivational speaker. It was really nice. I really had a good time. Secondly, bad news, this is why I called. You know, this sucks.” Um, you know, and there was a point where she was — I thought she was going to try to explain it away and I was like, “You know, this person is out there representing our company. You know, she’s a representative of us, spewing this out of her mouth.” And then she’s like “I understand. I’m gonna take care of it.” And really that’s all I need. You know, I want her to, to take care of it, for sure. It’s just — it’s disappointing.