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As a child, I experienced black culture as many people did in America: on the TV, radio, and stages.
A lot of people decide, if you're mixed, you're black. And so they try to force you to choose a culture.
I viewed black musicals before 'Jelly' as a form of cultural strip mining. The exterior remained, but all the culture that signified where the people had come from and their connection to the earth was absent.
I'm trying to illuminate how perilously narrow we draw the concepts of masculinity and sexuality in our male culture - particularly in black male culture - and to help people to see that there's room enough for everyone.
I mean, I don't want to come down on call-out culture, because I guess it has its place, but there was an interesting article I read by a black feminist writer who was saying it brings shame into the equation. And shame can be very paralysing to people.
People need to realize that because black people have been established in the U.S. for a lot longer than in the U.K., the culture's a lot more embedded. We will get there with how comfortable they are with rap in the mainstream, but we're way behind them.
People always say 'You do racial comedy.' And I don't, exactly. I do cultural comedy. Because race and culture are two different things. There's black people from America and then there's black people from Africa. Racially, they're the same; culturally, they're extremely different.
Bipolar disorder is so swept under the rug as a nation and, I think especially, by black people. It's not our culture to go get therapy. 'Give them medicine for what?' We put people in court, put them in court again, versus really paying attention to what it is they are going through.