W. Kumau Bell Curve

I attended a comedy show in San Francisco last night called the W. Kumau Bell Curve. He was named 2008 comedian of the year by SF weekly. Most of his material deals with racism in America. A sample:



The Climate Theater is a tiny venue - I doubt it sits more than 50 people. He had a laptop hooked up to a projector and worked some multi-media into the presentation - online news stories, youtube videos (he opened with the latest from O. J. Simpson). I liked the intimacy and relatively low-tech nature of the production. He even played us a voicemail he received right off his phone. He interacted with the audience, and even responded to specific comments.

I thought his strongest material was his personal stories. One moment I liked was comparing his own heritage to his white fiancee's. She's a mix of various European ethnicities, but she learned to speak Italian growing up, had visited Italy, and was particularly close to her Italian grandfather. So she described herself as Italian - to which he responded, "oh, you just get to choose ... must be nice". He juxtaposed this with his own experience as the only black kid in school, and his earliest realization that his classmates all saw him as belonging to a certain group whether he liked it or not.

The saga of getting along with his finacee's racist grandfather was well done. There's a whole segment involving his attempt to introduce their family to his culture through sweet potato pie. My mom made this every year for Thanksgiving - I always thought it was just a southern thing, not an African-American thing.

Much of the show addressed racism in current events, the bulk of which related to Barrack Obama's election. It was all funny, and most of it was insightful, but I disagreed with a couple things.

He related an experience while waiting to vote (at Starbucks - apparently they do that in some neighborhoods). A guy in front of them in line - a white guy Bell described as a stereotypical San Francisco hipster - began to accuse Bell of wearing a pro-Obama t-shirt, in violation of campaigning too near a polling station. When Bell pointed out it was actually a Richard Pryor t-shirt, the guy backed off.

Now, it's certainly funny that the guy mistook Pryor for Obama. And he was being an ass since he wasn't working for the polling station, just acting as "the hall monitor", as Bell pointed out. But I didn't hear anything in the story suggesting the hipster wouldn't have done the same thing to another white guy - I didn't get why Bell thought this was racism instead of simple asshole-ism.

He made some pretty sweeping statements, like all white people are responsible for racism (his argument is that we've all benefited from it even if we don't practice it), and white people should show appropriate pride and shame for actions of others of their race (at one point he put up a pic of Bush and asked if the white folks in the audience were ashamed of him).

First, is there an easier way to get applause than criticizing George Bush in San Francisco?

Second, I just didn't get this. I'm ashamed of much the current administration has done - I'm ashamed as an American, not as a white dude. I'm not any less ashamed of our state department's actions because it's headed by Condoleeza Rice.

I liked the show overall. Even the points with which I disagreed, I enjoyed being challenged in my thinking. As is often the case, humor is an excellent vehicle for engaging in controversial issues, and W. Kumau Bell does it better than most. Check him out if you get a chance.