031 SMITH JOURNALA FISH OUT OF WATER
Growing up I went to Catholic school, and
I was one of only two black kids in my year.
I’ve always said it felt like I was at a family
reunion – but I wasn’t in the family. I was
technically accepted, but there was a
feeling that I wasn’t quite in the club. And
for black people in America, that fish-out-
of-water thing is pretty much your whole
life. Even as a kid I was keenly aware of
feeling left out, and I chose to handle it
by being self-deprecating. Comedy helped
me in those moments. Still, I never
dreamed I’d make that my profession.
BE A MBITIOUS,
BUT HUMBLE
I used humour to deal with adversity at home,
too. When my parents divorced, my family
quickly went from middle-class to lower-class,
which gave me a lot of perspective. They
were very lean times. My mom was basically
raising six kids, my sisters got into drugs and
started running with some bad characters,
and it seemed like the whole world was going
crazy. At one point our roof literally caved in.
My brother and I were looking through this
hole in the ceiling, and I told him, “Man, I’m
not going to live like this.” We hunkered
down with jokes during that time. It gave me
some purpose then, but the experience keeps
me humble today. I can relate to not knowing
what’s going to happen in the future.AIM FOR THE MOON
I’m a science nerd, so as a kid I learned
everything there was to learn about the space
race. Even then I was keenly aware of the
eort it took to get people into space. It was
phenomenal, especially with the technology
we had at the time. That, and the political
climate: the moon landing took place during
the height of the Vietnam War. The year before
that, Martin Luther King Jr. was killed, and
two years before that JFK was shot. There
were protests and riots in the street. And
yet when we landed on the moon, the entire
world stopped and seemed united. It’s like that
story about the soldiers at Christmas during
W WI, where they laid down their arms and
celebrated together. Then, okay, they started
fighting again. But it was a nice moment.SCIENCE WILL UNITE US
To this day there’s been nothing quite like
the moon landing. I think that’s why there
are so many conspiracy theories about
it: people find it hard to believe that any
generation before theirs could come up with
things that are still hard to grasp. All I do
is point them to Einstein. He formulated
the theory of relativity not in the 20th
century, but the 19th – and he did it using his
imagination, not complicated mathematics:
he visualised a scenario and it confused
him, so he sat down and figured it out. It’s
impressive. But it’s not impossible. People
talk about landing on Mars as though it
will be our next big galvanising moment,
but it’s not science-fiction-y enough. The
next event will have to be a leap that will
shock people – teleportation, or going
through a wormhole. That’s what it will
take to bring people together again.>>10 things i believe
WITH COMEDIAN, SCIENCE NERD AND FORMER DAILY SHOW
‘SENIOR BLACK CORRESPONDENT’ LARRY WILMORE.Interviewer Chris Harrigan Illustrator Valentin Tkach