Dulcé Sloan is Giving the Love Back

Dulcé Sloan is perhaps one of the most dynamic personalities on TV. Unable to limit or categorize her merely by professional titles like actress, comedian, The Daily Show correspondent, and now author, she is unapologetically outspoken, not for shock value, not for preaching, not for soundbites, it’s just her being her. From an early age, she has seen a lot, she has overcome a lot, she has worked hard a lot, and now she’s telling her stories. Her debut book, Hello, Friends! has hit the shelves and even her staunchest fans may be surprised by the intimacy of the book. She hides nothing. She talks about the strength of women, of the Black community, of curvy girls, and of the LGBTQ community.

This year she and Drag Race’s Sasha Colby were nominated for a GLAAD Award for Outstanding Variety or Talk Show Episode for their Daily TV Show segment “Dulcé Sloan & Sasha Colby Talk What It Means to Be A Happy Trans Person.” With all of her successes, she remains down to earth and ready to hang. What was supposed to be a twenty-minute chat turned into an hour-plus conversation that covered everything from activism to minorities working together to Star Trek Klingons to bad relationships, and more. Much like her book, read in one sitting because it is that delicious, you never know where the conversation is going but you are definitely along for the ride.

Hello, Friends! is being touted as a memoir, but don’t you dare call it that. She will come to correct.

First of all, I wanted to call this book, Don’t Call It a Memoir, I’m Only 39. Right? But the publisher was like, okay, we can’t tell people what it’s not. I came up with the idea because I started just saying, “Hello friends,” as a fun thing. I remember watching Blackish one day and I heard Diane say it to Charlie, but in a very threatening way. Like, “Grrrr, hello friend.” I love the idea that she’s taking these two words and is just striking fear into the heart of this man. As someone who has done that more than once, struck fear in the heart of a man, I thought, this is fun. I started saying it and it really became a way for me to just reach out to people. I saw it more as a collection of stories because I love telling stories. I’m a Southern girl, I love to spin a yarn, I like to tell a tale, I like to weave a wove. It’s dating, destiny, and day jobs, that’s what my life has encompassed.

At the beginning of the book, she takes a moment to thank and dedicate the book to herself, foreshadowing Niecy Nash-Bett’s inspirational Emmy acceptance speech who also thanked herself. Why?

We are taught that it’s ego as opposed to self-love. So that’s why when Niecy Nash got up and said, “I wanna thank me for this hard work that I did.” It was a shocking thing. But it also would be a Black woman to exclaim, “I wanna thank me, I did this, and you can also thank yourselves.” I had dedicated this book to myself, it had been printed way before we went to the Emmys, but I was thinking, thank you, Niecy Nash, for saying this was hard work that I did. This was emotionally draining. When you’re doing heavy work, we’re taught that it’s ego. We’re taught that, especially as people of color, we’re supposed to be humble, we’re supposed to be grateful, we’re supposed to be thankful that some white man gave us an opportunity. I had me to rely on. I am the one who got me to where I am.

This book is not just a collection of stories. For Dulce, it was finally allowing herself to step back, take a moment in self-discovery, and stop being in a place of servitude.

I had to not be mad at the decisions that 25-year-old me made. I’m very single, I don’t have children, I turned 41 this year and I’m still not any closer than when I started dating. I had to go and give myself grace and think, she made the best decisions that she could based upon the information that she had. In reference to the servitude of it, I am Southern, I am Black, and I am a woman. The South teaches you gratitude, and grateful politeness, all of this being helpful to others, being polite to others. Being Black teaches you the same thing. Being a woman teaches you the same thing. You were taught that everyone else’s needs come before yours. I always think of what RuPaul says, “If you can’t love yourself, how the hell are you gonna love anybody else?” And I knew I loved myself, but I always didn’t like myself.

I had to figure out to always be happy for me and find happiness in what I’m doing. And if I’m not happy with something, to move and to take the fear out of things. We’re so motivated by fear and everyone’s pushed by fear. So, if you can be in service to someone else, if you can be paying attention to someone else and doing for that other person, you don’t have to focus on your fear.

Dulce has never subscribed to what were considered the norms. Wanting to be a star since her very early childhood, she found herself not fitting the regular lead roles in school plays, her theater career, or even her stand-up career. She looked different, she acted different, and her attitude was different. She’s played a bird onstage more than a handful of times, sometimes limited to just squawks, still, she was on stage and loving it. When did it click that she didn’t need to conform in order to have success?

There was no click. I never had more fun playing that bird. I never fit a box, so I never had a moment where I had to realize I don’t have to fit in a box to succeed. I came into my theater program, talented. And just because my theater professor didn’t think I was talented, I was not gonna let one man stop me. I’m not gonna let this man stop me. Because what’s gonna happen is this man’s gonna stay in Gainesville, Georgia. I’m only here for four years. He’s here for the rest of his life.

Dulce doesn’t care what you think about her. She’s too busy thriving. She doesn’t care what you call her, with a few exceptions. In Hello, Friends! she writes that even with her outspoken opinions and activism, don’t call her an angry Black woman. Why?

Because no one asks us why we’re mad. No one’s asking, what happened? What’s wrong? They do not realize that being an angry Black woman is a defense mechanism. Do you know whose anger people do not care about? White women’s anger. That’s why feminism has not truly done what it wanted it to do. Because white men, do not care about white women’s anger. And do you know why? Because as Bill Burrs said when hosting SNL in his monologue, white men took over the whole planet for y’all. And you have the nerve to complain? They made everyone fit to your standard of beauty. They told us all of our skin was ugly, and all of our features were ugly. My hair, my nose, my butt, my body, all of us. Because we did not look like skateboards with big ol’ titties, and you heifers have the nerve to be mad. How dare you? And so now I’m a woman and I’m Black and so I’m constantly under microaggressions, attacks – so you don’t care about my tears. Because you care about white women’s tears, but you don’t care about their anger. So white women’s tears are powerful. You don’t care about my tears because you have no sympathy or empathy for me. I’m gonna be me and mad you understand that. The reason that people have so much respect and fear of Black women’s anger is because they know that they deserve to have it. So, you don’t ask us why we’re mad because you know why we’re mad. So, just take the time to consider, what happened today? Anger is a defense mechanism. Anxiety in Black women presents differently, and one that presents is anger and frustration and lack of patience because I’m being told all the time to wait and all this other stuff and constantly being disrespected.

Dulce has very strong ties with the LGBTQ community, especially the drag community. Her time in church growing up did not teach hate towards the gay community, nor did they support it. Her pastor’s teaching from the Bible was that no sin is greater than any other sin, if you lie you’re a sinner. Dulce’s exposure to the gay community was limited to school. It wasn’t until she did summer stock where she spent day after day with people of the queer community that she had the opportunity to bond and get into good gay gossip.

It was spending time with gay men and meeting them and really understanding them. Also having them see me and just being able to just go, oh, we know how all of this works. That’s the thing that people don’t realize is that when you’re in a marginalized group, you see everything and you comment on everything.  There’s a connection there, growing up we were roasting each other, basically. And that is something very much that Black and brown communities, communities of color do. You come in, your tias, anybody’s aunties, cousins, were coming and busting balls, right? Shade – reading – same thing. But it came from a community, it came from queer Black people, they came up with shade and came up with reading because that’s what they grew up doing. But you do that because you see things. I think that’s where that support for me has always come from the queer community is that, oh, she sees what we see, we’re all seeing the same thing. And all of y’all are playing around, all of y’all are presenting, this is all drag, we’re all putting the things together.

Dulce’s love for drag and Drag Race rivals that of most from our community. She saw her first drag show while doing theatre in Savannah, Georgie. Awestruck when the headliner launched into a “Rolling in the Deep” number, she was hooked.

I’m a theater kid, so that’s what I saw first, right? And I love pomp and circumstance. I saw the costume, and I saw the man, I saw the show and I was like, if these are the folks putting this on stage, oh, we’re dealing with a whole different kind of human being. We’re dealing with people who I understand. This is the heart, this is the love, this is the dedication. I can see that.

She watched Drag Race when it first came out on Logo. She laughs.

Remember when Logo was on the back part of cable? You had to have the Africa Channel to get Logo! [Laughs]

She attended the first Drag Con and spent her money supporting all the queens’ booths. Her ultimate dream came true when she was welcomed as a guest judge on Drag Race, after telling her manager to get her career to the point that she could appear on the show. She didn’t cry when she got cast on The Daily Show, she cried when she got the green light to appear on Drag Race.

It is the Super Bowl, it is the Stanley Cup, it is Wimbledon, it is all of that for drag. So as a performer, you’re like, I gotta be a part of that. If I never go to the Super Bowl, I will be fine. But if I never got to be a judge on RuPaul’s Drag Race, that is something I would truly regret.

From driving hours through icy roads for out-of-town gigs in hole-in-the-wall places, to doing children’s theatre in random cities, to holding her own in questionable situations at comedy clubs, to manning booths at college comedy fairs to get booked for college circuits, she’s put in the blood sweat and tears. In 2015, she was named a New Face of Comedy at the Just For Laughs comedy festival and won the 12th annual StandUp NBC comedy showcase. She made her late-night comedy debut on The Conan Show, to be followed up with appearances on The Steve Harvey Show, Comedy Knockout, and E! News Daily. She had the opportunity to co-host the infamous CNN New Year’s Eve Live with Don Lemon. But getting cast on The Daily Show in 2017 was a life changer, a passion project that has brought success, tears, and laughter. Bringing her two passions together – The Daily Show and Drag Race – was life coming full circle. She had the opportunity to host an entire episode of The Daily Show and insisted on interviewing the winner of that year’s Drag Race – Sasha Colby, whom she has now been able to call her drag mother. The interview was a rave success, garnering the GLAAD nomination. It was different. It presented the trans life as a happy one, something Dulce insisted on from the start.

They brought me the questions for her, and I thought, I didn’t want to talk about any type of trauma. When you’re someone who, again, is a person of color and part of a marginalized group, people want to hear about all the bad things that happened to you. And I love that she made a point to not talk about that. I made a point to not talk about that. I am not here to try to pimp somebody’s drama for these white folks on TV because I’m somebody whose trauma they have been trying to pimp. I’m not out here for that. That’s not how I walk.

I do not know what it is like to be a trans woman in this country, I know what it’s like to be a Black woman in this country. I also know what it’s like to be in a body that people hate. That’s what I can understand. So that’s why when Sasha Cole came on the show, I wanted to convey that I don’t know what her life is like, but I know the feeling that people send to her. All she does is walk in nature and live her life. People have something to say about it when no one asks them. People have a lot to say about my body because I’m Black and plus size, and nobody asked you. So that’s why I made sure she talked about being happy, where I didn’t have questions about her trauma.

With her vocal support of our community, her many appearances for our causes, and using her platforms to give us a megaphone, she is hesitant to use the word ally. In genuine tears, she slowly clarifies.

I think the term ally is a troublesome word because I think people are giving themselves credit for things that they’re not actually doing. There are people who legitimately love y’all. You know how we always give each other compliments? It’s because people don’t do that for us in the same way. If I see a trans woman, I’ll just go, hey girl, I see you! I make sure to give Black women and queer people compliments because Black women and the queer community give me compliments. And I wanna give the love back that I’m being shown. We are gonna get to a day, as people of color and as the LGBTQ+ community, when we don’t have to prove our humanity to people. We’re not going to have to beg or convince somebody that we are human, deserve our rights or should be cared for by a country we fought for, a country we live in.

And her message to the queer community?

Thank you. Because to be so misunderstood and so hated, I can understand that because I’m hated and misunderstood. But to show up every day and love yourself and love other people and have to deprogram yourself from all the stuff that you’re supposed to hate about yourself because of who you are, is special. I do not know what it’s like to be a queer person in America. I do not. But I understand the sentiment that is being put towards me because people do not understand who I am and all I want to do is just live my life… just walk into Applebee’s, get a wedding cake, be on somebody’s insurance, take care of my children. I just wanna do the things that humans are doing and somebody’s saying ‘no.’  Bitch, sit down!

There are people who legitimately love you because there are people that legitimately hate you. And so, if someone can hate you for no reason, someone can love you for no reason.

You can get Hello, Friends! wherever books are sold.

Head to DulceSloan.com