And I was like: What?

Hi, I’m Kara and I’m a white girl and because of that there’s some life experiences that I don’t run into. So when it comes to those experiences, I listen to people who live them, and one of those great people is Amber Ruffin.

Amber was born January 9, 1979 and has been rocking it since.The youngest of five kids she began her performing career in 2001. She went to iO Theater in Chicago to learn more about her chosen career before eventually moving to Amsterdam for a time to work with Boom Chicago Amsterdam in 2008.

Oh her return to the states she continued making important networking connections.working with the Second City, RobotDown, Story Pirates and the Sacred Fools Theater Company, with whom she performed a two person parody of of King Kong which appeared in the 2014 New York International Fringe Festival where it won Best Overall Musical 2014.

After being turned down for a spot in Saturday Night Live, she was invited to come write for Late Night with Seth Meyers when the show began in 2014, which would make her the first black woman writer in late night ever. This of course led to her getting her own show on Peacock in 2020 and co-authoring a book, You'll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey: Crazy Stories about Racism, with her sister Lacey Lamar in early 2021.

Whoo, there’s all the specifics, let’s get into the fun things now. Amber punches racism in the face. On youtube you can see a collection of some of her “fun” stories of moments she’s had innocent altercations with police, like having a gun pulled on her for skipping. This is America people, white, black, or rainbow, you should be allowed to skip. I won’t recount all of them because she is infinitely better at telling them than I ever will be.

When allowed her own talk show, she was given a lot of leeway. Not only was the show more of a talk show in that the host talks and that’s the show, but on other talk shows you can’t be as centralized on ethnic women's issues. It’s always been a white man’s game. Amber Ruffin broke a ceiling that desperately needed breaking and she did it by skipping, singing, and wearing the best clothes never found in stores.

I’ve always been fond of late night, but with Amber on Seth Meyers it’s refreshing to have someone acknowledge their privilege and pass the stage on to someone else in “Jokes Seth can’t tell” or have the news told to me in the way a normal friend would in “Amber says what?” When they announced that she was making her own show, I was worried that one of my favorite parts of Seth’s show would leave, like a lightbulb going out and being impossible to replace. I was so happy to see that she does both shows. Twice the Amber!

I’m lucky, as a white person, to have learned that there are things I don’t know, and that the most important thing for me to do is shut up, listen to other people and believe them. Amber makes her experiences, as horrifying as they are, interesting and somehow still funny. I love listening to her and I look forward to all of her off the wall segments. Now that I’ve learned that she has a book out I’m going to have to get that and read it too!

I encourage everyone to look up Amber the various places she is, in a book, on Youtube, on Peacock (that is especially fitting, strut it Amber!), or on local TV, telling the jokes that Seth and I can’t tell.