College Conventions and Career Fairs #NACA #dartmouth #riceuniversity #comedycellar #MatthewBroussard @standup

To do college shows you have to do these things called NACA conventions where you go and you showcase for student bookers. But because college kids are so progressive, a lot of the other acts talk about how they've overcome persecution for their ethnicity, for their sexual orientation, for disabilities, and then me. And here's the thing about me, my appearance evokes many feelings. Sympathy is not one of them, you know what I mean? No one wants to hear about the plight of a guy with resting rich face. It's just not very compelling. There's no one in the audience like, I want to hear more about his conf or whatever it's called. And well read crowd, all right. The contrast makes it very challenging because I'll be sitting backstage and I'll hear the performer in front of me come out just like, hey, what's up, y'all? Let me tell what it's like being a sassy transgender Muslim, right? And the crowd just explodes like, yeah, you're my spirit mammal, right? And then she just crushes for 15 minutes talking about overcoming adversity and early onset Parkinson's and then I'm next. And I walk on stage and even though they've never seen me before, I'm how they already pictured the bad guy from her stories, right? The crowd, not on my side, just the death glare from a thousand gender studies majors are just like, all right, okay. So what's your struggle, huh? Talk about your hardships. It's like, uh, people incorrectly assume I'm good at lacrosse. Like I don't, that's why I'm not edgy as a comedian. I feel like I'm just too privileged looking to have an opinion. Like I can't walk on stage and be like black people. It's like, well, they're both shoes. No, no, no, no, no. You'll get to have a bold stance on race and the keys to your parents' Lake house. That's not how this life works. I feel like as a white person that whenever I bring up race, it just sounds a little bit racist. I used to do recruiting work and I ended up at a career fair at Dartmouth college. And while I was there, I saw this girl walk around who was African-American, very attractive. And she looked exactly like this girl I went to school with. And I really wanted to tell her that, but then a voice in my head was like, yeah, don't, don't say that. Because best case scenario, all she's going to hear is, oh, cute. Zach Morris thinks all black people look the same, right? So I ended up talking to her and I mentioned where I went to school and she goes, oh, rice. Um, did you have a class with my identical twin sister? And I was like, wow, that's crazy. I was going to say something, but I thought I'd sound racist because you're black. And she was like, no, but now you do.