The Awkward Thoughts of W. Kamau Bell: Tales of a 6' 4", African American, Heterosexual, Cisgender, Left-Leaning, Asthmatic, Black and Proud Blerd, Mama's Boy, Dad, and Stand-Up Comedian

by W. Kamau Bell

Back then, a comic book writer could just write “bathed in radiation,” and the reader would say to themselves, WELL, OF COURSE! THAT’S DEFINITELY GOING TO LEAD TO MAGICAL POWERS AND NOT SOME FORM OF LYMPHOMA! People had more room for mystery back then.

So wait . . . Lois is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and she can’t figure out that the key to Superman’s secret identity is glasses?

Creating Black superheroes with the word “Black” in their names was a way for America to once again normalize whiteness. It wasn’t “White Superman” or “White Batman” or “White Green Lantern.” Because “white” is normal. White doesn’t need to be mentioned. But “Black,” on the other hand, needs to be announced. To me, it made the superheroes sound less intimidating, less powerful, less normal than their white counterparts. I think some of that had to do with my own feelings at the time about being Black.

And this is important. This is about representation. For some reason, white people in America are perfectly comfortable with the idea of people of color just contorting their imaginations such that we can imagine ourselves as white heroes, but white people generally aren’t OK with imagining themselves as Black heroes. Every time there’s talk of a new actor taking on the role of James Bond and Idris Elba’s name comes up, white people freak out: “HOW CAN A BLACK MAN BE JAMES BOND???” Meanwhile Hollywood regularly takes characters of color and turns them white whenever it wants. In the movie Prince of Persia, the prince (and most everybody else) was white. In the movie Gods of Egypt, the gods were not Egyptian. I guess their godly status had caused them to transcend the Egyptian plane . . . and skin tone.

She is the Olivia Pope of children’s television.

WAIT A SECOND!!!! I WAS A BABY AT A GAS STATION! THIS IS NOT A THING! YOU CAN TAKE A BABY TO A GAS STATION!

You can be suspicious of something and mind your own damn business at the same time.

Well, white Americans regularly start “some,” and then get surprised when there is “some”!

we both knew that Trump’s election made a lot of people feel like they needed to be prepared for an attack. Many Arabs and Muslims were right to be worried, as the postelection hate-crime stats prove.

But in 2016, in Santa Barbara, I wasn’t afraid of failing the audience. I wanted to do well, but I was way more worried about how America had just failed itself and it was clearly going to get worse.

Because all white people are your white people. Just like Ben Carson is my people, even though I don’t know him, have never met him, and every night I go to bed and pray to Black Jesus that I never do.

But Trump makes Reagan look like Martin Luther Gandhi Winfrey Jr.

The biggest thing that white people can do is really get comfortable having conversations about race and racism in this country.

Read books—actually read Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me instead of just putting it on your shelf. Read Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow. Go to websites like The Root, Colorlines, Very Smart Brothas, Blavity, and also The Establishment and Indian Country Today, and read Lindy West, wherever she’s writing at currently. And support the artists, TV shows, and films that support the America that most Americans want. Don’t take any of these choices for granted.

Change is possible. It is not always loud and fast, but it can happen. And one small change doesn’t always mean everything changes. Because after much consternation, “my grandfather” voted for Trump. But it’s fine. Pops lives in California. Neither of our votes really counted anyway.

When Democrats say they’re going to ignore Trump’s white supremacy, xenophobia, Islamophobia, ableism, and racism because they’re going to find common ground, they’re letting him dictate what the ground is.

feel the same way about the Democratic Party now that I felt about the Republican Party in 2012: It’s time for a reboot.

You’re filled with so much anger and enmity, and it’s just because you’re in this town and you are disappointed in your circumstances. And you think it’s my fault. You think that Black people are the problem. Come to Hollywood! I’ll make you a star!

Being able to say no is the most power you can ever have. It is either a luxury when you can afford to leave, or it is necessary for survival when the cost to stay is waaaaay too high.