Comic Diplomacy: Breaking Down Barriers One Laugh at a Time
W. Kamau Bell’s United Shades of America
W. Kamau Bell’s Emmy-winning show United Shades of America (CNN) takes him to places he’d really probably rather not go — like down a dark country lane to meet with hooded Klansmen deep in the Kentucky woods. But for Bell, an African-American comedian whose work often examines race in America, it was all in a day’s work.
“I’ve always been a fan of [Parts Unknown host Anthony] Bourdain,” Bell said on NPR’s Fresh Air in 2016, just before the series debut. “I always thought if I had a show like that, you would replace food with racism. Instead of sampling the food, I would sample the racism!”
Like fellow comic Sarah Silverman in her Hulu show I Love You, America, Bell says that one of his goals with United Shades is to understand other people. To do this, Bell told Fresh Air’s Terry Gross, he travels around the United States “to all sorts of different places that I’m either afraid to go, or you wouldn’t expect me to go.” Clips of Bell’s stand-up comedy routines are sprinkled throughout the hour-long show to help shed light on his inner monologue during some of these encounters.
“My agenda…is to learn about people,” Bell said in Paste magazine. “I’m not trying to take anyone down with what I do; they may take themselves down. But I try to put a human face on these people.”
Searching for Common Ground, Beneath the Hoods
Bell is realistic about the limits of his show to race relations in the country. “I think we have false notion that people get changed in one conversation…We should know by now that it doesn’t happen so quickly,” he said. He does, however, argue that some of his one-on-one interactions have moved the needle, if just a fraction. He cites his experience taping the first episode, in which he visits a KKK cross-burning, as an example.
“We were there for hours,” Bell recalled on Fresh Air. “We’d sort of have conversations, and for a little bit we’d all sort of forget where we were. We were just people working outside, working on a thing, together, in a weird way. And I know by the time I left, there’s this one guy in particular, I’m like, ‘That guy likes me!’ And I know that some of them went to sleep that night, and they were like, ‘I think I like a black guy now. Huh.’
“That’s what I walked away with: feeling like, if we actually sit down and have a conversation, we are not necessarily going to agree on everything — and this is true of the entire country — but we can at least leave room for each other’s humanity and see each other as humans at the end of the conversation.”
Like Silverman, Bell employs humor — good-natured ribbing, sardonic satire, and occasionally straight-up silliness — to make connections to both his interview subjects and his audience. In one particularly bizarre segment, Bells asks a hooded Klansman about getting materials for the “cross-lighting” ceremony:
Bell: What about just going down to the Home Depot and just buying the wood?
Klansman: We tried that before, but the wood goes up pretty fast.
Bell: So don’t get your cross at Home Depot for the cross-lighting?
Klansman: We don’t have anything against Home Depot. We’re not racist against Home Depot, whatsoever.
Bell: I love that you have all that sensitivity around Home Depot.
Klansman: Absolutely, man.
Bell effectively uses humor to engage and disarm his subjects and to gently draw attention to their hypocrisy. “We have to understand that the reason why we laugh is because we’re being tickled in a place we weren’t aware was there, and sometimes it’s a naughty place,” he said in an August 2017 discussion at the Chautauqua Institution.
There are also occasions — such as when he’s driving down that dark road in Kentucky — where you can watch Bell use his humor to self-soothe. But there are notable instances when his trusty tool fails him. When a Klan Imperial Wizard refers to “mud-races” when talking about non-whites, Bell goes for the punchline in the voiceover: “Mud races? There’s gotta be a funny comeback for that! [Sigh] I got nothing.” But it is Bell’s expression of disappointment and discomfort in the moment that is the most moving part of the exchange.
What’s underneath that rock?
Another goal of the show, Bell has said, is to expose ideology and behavior that many of us would prefer to ignore.
“When we filmed the premiere episode of United Shades of America, it was like we were turning over a rock in the woods. The KKK was not part of the national conversation. They were really just a punchline for comedians when you needed to let the audience something was really, really, really racist.
Even if the KKK isn’t the outsized presence it once was in this country, many of its principles and ideas are alive and well… the images, history, and potential for violence is still alive,” he wrote in a CNN opinion piece.
Humor, says Bell, is a good tool for focusing one’s attention.
“If you have someone laughing, you have them paying attention,” Bell said in an interview with The Root. “Comedy doesn’t care about political affiliations, and comedy doesn’t belong to a political party. I admire the work of people like Dick Gregory, George Carlin, Lenny Bruce and Chris Rock. They operate from the top to the bottom intellectually: You always feel like you’re learning something, but you’re laughing at the same time…Laughter is a great equalizer that way. It brings us closer together, without us even realizing it.
Not Everyone is Laughing
Critics have hammered Bell’s show for giving a platform for voices that deserve to be marginalized, like white nationalist and alt-right founder Richard Spencer. In a Paste article titled, “W. Kamau Bell Should Have Punched Richard Spencer in the Face,” Seth Simons writes, “Although CNN promoted the stunt as some sort of tête-à-tête, it’s a largely substance-free dialogue in which Bell laughs uproariously at Spencer’s jokes and offers little in the way of a counterpoint beyond that immigrants make good food.”
Bell defended the episode in a CNN op-ed: “I put Spencer on TV for the same reason that I put the KKK on TV. We all need to make sure that we fully understand our country.”
It’s true that Bell often doesn’t push back against his subjects’ outrageous comments. He lets bigots and racists spin out their ideas, occasionally dropping in a wisecrack in the voiceover, but often just letting the audience witness the inanity for themselves. Because, as Bell writes, “As much as I disagree with Richard Spencer, I know that more people need to be aware of these ideas because, again…There. Are. People. Who. Vote. That. Believe. Them.
“Ultimately, I’m not afraid of these people or Richard Spencer’s ideas, because I know my ideas will win. My ideas are better.”
Plus, as Bell noted in the The Root, he has the power of comedy on his side:
“Chris [Rock] would say, ‘If it’s not funny, then it’s just a poorly organized speech.’ I believe comedy is the best way to communicate, no matter what you’re doing, no matter what your job is or what you’re trying to convey. Politicians, musicians, actors — all of us use comedy to connect.”
