When I arrive at the café where we met, near Madrid's Gran Vía – on whose sidewalks groups of African men usually set up and sell fake bags until the police chase them away – Thion is eating a chocolate cake with ice cream a man can't miss eating. …Enough of the clichés. Or not. Although you've seen and heard him before on the There Are No Blacks in Tibet podcast, you're always surprised when this imposing, tall black man stands up and greets María Jesús with an Andalusian accent that makes you laugh Montero. In this interview we talk about prejudices and other mistakes, our own and those of others.
In your social networks He defines himself by saying, “I am a natural black man.” Sure?
Without colorings and preservatives. 100% Senegalese. Also the only one in my family.
I hesitate.
No, my mother was born in Senegal and is black and has Spanish nationality. My three brothers were born in Spain. I came to Huelva when I was two years old and could have been Spanish, but since I couldn't have dual nationality, I preferred my Senegalese passport because of the roots in order to have something from there.
Well, I read that as a child in Andalusia he didn't want to know anything about his country and his compatriots.
Yes. In Algeciras I was one of the only two or three blacks in the institute and had the same prejudices as the whites. I didn't want to be confused with those who were on the street. My mother asked her to have my hair straightened or dyed blonde. Racism affects you regardless of the color of your skin and I was racist too. In Spain, the cool black is the American Will Smith type, not the African one. Later, when I spent a year in Senegal playing basketball and then settled in Madrid, meeting other black people, reading and thinking, I fell off the horse. It takes work to stop racism.
My mother, older and sick, didn't want a black man to take care of her. Is that racist?
This is racist behavior that has to do with a mental structure, prejudices and a decades-old narrative. Not all racism includes hate. This happens to me every day on the street. You notice that you are creating tension. You see the black person in front of the person. Not always for the worse. I remember years ago being on the beach with my brothers and a woman holding the little girl, who was just a baby, in her arms. When I caught his attention he told me that she was so cute and there was nothing he could do about it. Excuse me? Are you holding an unknown baby by the face? We Black people are just that, Black people, as if we were props, and we activate another set of logics and behaviors in others. Not to mention the sexual themes.
I imagine it is the saying “There is no such thing as a complete woman…”.
“…until a black man puts it in you.” Exactly. I don't deny that it can be flattering at a certain moment. But the thing is, there's a step from that saying and black people having a great time to black people stealing. The logic is the same. And I tell you, I was stopped by the police several times in one day and they told them on Tinder in the first sentence that they like black eggplants and I replied that they should go to Mercadona. [muestra la conversación en el móvil].
There's a reason you're a comedian.
Humor is my best anti-racist weapon. Moral superiority scares me because everyone has their own processes and experiences and you can't empathize with them. That's why I try to create humor that neutralizes these prejudices. I have a joke where I say I'm super nervous because I have a test where I'm supposed to play the Sorcerer King in a commercial and I don't know which one. This joke works because it exposes us all. It turns out that a white man can paint himself black and be Baltasar, but I, a black man, cannot paint myself white and be Gaspar. You need to relax.
Which jokes offend you?
I think you can make humor out of absolutely anything. But if you're dealing with something that doesn't concern you, you should figure it out first. Poop, ass, fart, pee or humor with big ears is easy, kids do it in kindergarten. The difficult thing is to make humor about sensitive topics without offending anyone and being funny and even laughing at yourself. What I like most about my show “Españul” is one in which I recreate a date with a white girl. When we get to her house, she asks me vaguely: “Is what they say about black people true?” I tell him yes. Then I take off my shirt lavishly. I take off my belt and tie her to the bed. And I take the TV and leave. People laugh because they see themselves portrayed.
Lamine Thior in front of graffiti in Tirso de Molina square in Madrid. Bernardo Perez
In “The Law of the Sea” he plays a boat refugee. Was it difficult for you to get into the role?
When I received the script, my first instinct was to say no. It was my representative who told me to read it right and not wrong, because my character Barack has a whole story and arc: a father who emigrates for his children. Normally, we black people are called upon to play “Immigrant 1.” And I don't have a problem, the problem is that you can't prove your worth because these roles are usually as deep as a puddle and they call you all the time to play an immigrant 1. It is very difficult to have a career. They don't let you grow.
How do you feel when you see the poor living? 'manteros' from Gran Via? Many are his compatriots.
I have friends who have been through this. Sometimes these are qualified people who have left their homes for five years, each with their own motivations, and who, once they arrive, try to live in poor conditions in Spain for two years until they can work legally. They are people trying to make a living as best they can when the easiest way would be to steal cell phones.
What do you think of those who link? Immigration and crime?
Which is the same pattern. This kind of propagandistic logic of blaming others. Migrants, black or not, are neither angels nor demons, we are like everyone else.
I think he lives in a shared apartment with another African and a Bulgarian. Your house is like the UN.
And my landlord is Chinese, so maybe that's why he didn't cause us any problems when we called to rent the apartment to him three years ago. I'm proud of the group we created. I've already said that no one is perfect. One of my roommates, Michael, is from Ghana and was one of the two or three black people who went to high school with me in Algeciras. Well then. He is gay. And when I was little, I was one of those people who broke the dolls I played with. This is where we all need to check ourselves.
'SPANISH'
It is the title of the monologue in which Lamine Thior (Senegal, 33 years old) dismantles the clichés about blacks and whites in Spain with laughter. Thior came to Andalusia at the age of two with his father, a fisherman, and his mother and they settled in Huelva. After his father's death, he lived and was raised by his mother in Algeciras, where he attended high school before earning a degree in tourism. After spending a year in his native Senegal as part of the youth national basketball team, he returned to Spain and settled in Madrid, where he combines his concern for anti-racist activism with his passion for communication and humor. As an actor, he has just released “The Law of the Sea”, a drama inspired by a real case of rescuing a boat with migrants in the Mediterranean, together with Luis Tosar and Blanca Portillo.
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