August 15, 2024 • 37 mins
In this episode of the NILC Freedom to Thrive podcast, host Victoria Ballesteros sits down with four-time Emmy Award-winning comedian, author, and filmmaker W. Kamau Bell.
Kamau shares insights from his extensive career, including his experiences from his acclaimed CNN show "United Shades of America." Victoria and Kamau discuss the importance of empathy, curiosity, and listening in bridging divides, as well as Kamau's latest projects, including the East Bay Film Collective and his Emmy Award-winning documentary "1000% Me: Growing Up Mixed."
Tune in to hear Victoria and Kamau's discussion about the intersection of immigration and systemic racism, the power of storytelling, and the need for solidarity among marginalized communities. Join us for an engaging and enlightening conversation that challenges us to find our compassion and shared humanity.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
There are 11 million undocumented Americans living in the U.S.
Today, give or take a couple hundred thousand at any given time,
but that's a number that has held steady over the past 15 years,
despite what the cable news programs might lead you to believe.
And 80% of these 11 million have lived in the U.S. for 10 years or more.
So these are our longtime neighbors, coworkers, fellow parishioners,
(00:23):
taxpayers, friends. ends.
In spite of this, we're hearing promises from the right of mass deportations
of immigrants, which, according to a couple of polls, a majority of Americans now support.
The last time the U.S. carried out mass deportations, people were racially profiled,
including U.S. citizens.
Communities were devastated, families separated, people died.
(00:48):
Yet we've accepted the dehumanization of immigrants and are now okay with seeing
them ripped from their homes, families, and communities.
And let's be clear, when we allow for this kind of dehumanization,
our own humanity is eroded.
And when society accepts the dehumanization of a people, atrocities follow.
That's not hyperbole. That is historical fact.
(01:10):
We have got to bring down the anti-immigrant rhetoric and find our compassion
and humanity for people coming to this country, seeking the freedom to thrive.
My guest today is a master at getting to the heart of things and building bridges
through his curiosity, dialogue, and understanding.
That's something I think we can all learn from.
(01:31):
And that is why I'm thrilled to be talking with W. Kamau Bell.
Kamau started his career as a stand-up comic. He's done several comedy specials.
In 2022, he made waves with his Showtime series, We Need to Talk About Cosby.
He's an author of several books, including a memoir, The Awkward Thoughts of W. Kamau Bell.
(01:51):
He's a four-time Emmy Award winner. He's just launched a film collective,
which I can't wait to hear more about.
He's a culture maker, a dad, and all-around super cool human.
This is the NILC Freedom to Thrive podcast, powering pro-immigrant narratives, one story at a time.
I'm Victoria Ballesteros, Executive Vice President of Narrative at the National
(02:15):
Immigration Law Center.
Kamau, welcome to the Freedom to Thrive podcast.
It's so nice to see you. Thank you for having me. I'm going to add super cool
human to my bio. I love it.
You are a busy man, so I really appreciate you making time. You've got like
seven hustles going on right now. Thank you for joining us.
Yeah, you know how it is for us people of color, Black folks,
(02:39):
Indigenous folks, you have to work twice as hard to get half as much.
So figure out how to work seven times as hard.
That's right. That is absolutely right. And I love how I'm just going to jump
right in, in, in your memoir, you talk about both of your parents, right?
Your mom and your dad with their, the inside hustles and the outside hustles, which I really loved.
But, you know, so for me, you're a natural storyteller and someone who clearly
(02:59):
isn't afraid to speak truth to power. Where does your courage come from?
That's funny. When I hear that, I'm not afraid to speak truth to power.
I think of the people that I admire who are way, way less afraid than I am.
So I'm like, I'm always like, Ooh, I got to do a better job.
If I'm going to, if I'm going to be associated with all these other folks,
like I think about like my friend Fabiana Rodriguez,
(03:19):
who I'm sure we'll talk about later, but like I'm surrounded by people in the
Bay and in my life and who I follow online who are way more fearless than I am.
And so those people, and you know, and also, you know, Angela Davis is from
here. So I can't, you know, I got to meet and do an event with Angela Davis and I can't compare.
(03:40):
Yes, I speak truth to power when it's like this lady was on the FBI's most wanted list.
So if I can't be if I can't speak up, who am I? You know, well,
you've done some really incredible things.
And especially, you know, now with our country being so fractured politically,
you know, I think it's a superpower what you do. You're so good at breaking
through and creating conversations with people from all sides of the political spectrum.
(04:03):
And even in the most tense of situations, you find a way to connect.
We need more of that. How did you learn to do this?
It's funny. I think a lot of it. So, you know, I write about this book.
I think the first step is being an only child with a single mom who took me
a lot of places that like kids wouldn't probably go if they had babysitters.
(04:25):
Like my mom didn't always have money for a babysitter. So I was always around
adults having conversations and I quickly learned that if I was quiet,
I would hear more than if I tried to interrupt or sort of be the cute kid who's
like, look at me dance, you know?
So I learned from an early age that like, you know, I talked to my oldest daughter,
both my kids, my oldest daughter about the art of ear hustling.
Like when adults are talking, just be quiet.
(04:46):
You'll hear a lot of interesting things, you know? So a lot of it will be boring,
but you'll hear some interesting things. That's the first part. And then I think.
As a stand-up comedian, your job is to sort of keep the ball up in the air,
but also you're really paying attention to the audience because it's not just
about the audience laughing.
You can really tell how much they're paying attention and what they're responding
to because there's also a lot of mm-hmm or mm or ooh or ah.
(05:08):
So you're sort of always engaged in paying attention to people's reactions.
Yeah. And I was lucky that I decided to move to the Bay Area just to be a part
of the San Francisco comedy scene.
But once I got out of here from Chicago, Chicago at that point and still,
but as a very segregated city, but even not just racially segregated,
but like culturally segregated and segregated by by lifestyles.
(05:29):
And so, like, you only knew who you knew.
And once I moved out here, the Bay Area is just not that it's not as segregated
across culture and race. So you you can stay with your own group.
But if you just sort of move around a little bit, you'll bump into all sorts
of different types of people. And I would say I learned from being around all
sorts of types of people that the more I listened, the smarter I got.
(05:50):
So if I'm hanging out with a bunch of East Bay vegan lesbians,
and I'm not a vegan lesbian, and I was living in San Francisco,
so I'm not even from the East Bay, there's a tendency to be like,
here's my opinion on what you're talking about in this country.
And I learned that if you just shut up, you're going to learn a lot that you
can then use when you talk to other people.
I love that. If you just shut up, you're going to learn a lot.
(06:11):
I think a lot of us need to pay attention to that. And it's so interesting.
So you've been exposed to a lot from an early age.
And shout out to your mom and shout out to single moms everywhere,
right, who are hustling and doing whatever they need to do for their kids.
Single mom right here, by the way.
Thank you for your service. Thank you. And side note, you know,
(06:34):
I just want to say when you, and now I'm thinking about your show,
The United Shades of America.
When you pulled up and when you were meeting with the Grand Poobah of the KKK
and you pulled up and, you know, and it's nighttime and it's almost like a scene
from a movie that doesn't end well, right? And he's flashing his headlights at you.
I was praying to the Virgen de Guadalupe that you would be okay, right?
(06:57):
I was like so terrified for you. again that's that's
courage that's that's not fearlessness to me that's courage right
or am i wrong again i want to you
know the thing that i always thought that week first of all there's two things
happening it was also a guy who needed a job so i guess so there's a part of
me was like the courage of like i need to feed my family hey and this is my
(07:18):
best shot so yeah you know there i don't have a lot of opportunities so i gotta
make the most of this opportunity even if it's It's a crazy idea.
And then the other thing I thought, and I actually said this in the episode,
that it's kind of an immense privilege to be a Black man who goes to visit the Klan,
he mostly knows he's going to be okay now sure anything could have happened but generally.
(07:43):
The i'm going to visit i'm a tourist with the kkk for a couple days i'm not a black guy in 1960.
Who got jumped by the kkk and pulled to the and pulled to into the forest and
saw a burning cross i'm not the guy i'm not the black guy from oh from oh brother
where art thou the black guitar player who gets to who is like about to be lynched
and so many black people who when they confronted front of the Klan,
(08:06):
that was the last image they were going to see in their lives.
So I was very aware of like, this is, yes, there's a, there's a,
there's a risk here, but it is nowhere near the risk that black people took
just be walking the streets in, in the South and Indiana in a pre 1970s America.
Yeah. Yeah. But that, that is still there though. Right. In some places.
No, it's still there. I'm just thinking specifically the KKK risk.
(08:28):
No, there's still, I'm still a black man in America.
I risk my life every time I leave my house and I don't, and I,
you know, just on some like who knows what can happen as a black man in America.
And even though I live in the Bay Area, there have been many black people assaulted
by police officers and killed by police officers here.
So there's no there's you're still a black man in America.
But I also don't want to act like
I'm I don't want to put too much on me meeting the Klan in 2016 or 2015.
(08:52):
Right. Yes, it was crazy. Yes, I was nervous. But also like it's it's you have to also go.
This is this is actually weirdly a privilege that I'm allowed to do this,
you know, and then walk away. And then walk away. As you said, yeah.
Well, let's talk about your show a little bit more. You won three Emmys.
Actually, I won three Emmys for that show. I have four, but I was trying to
(09:13):
remember. Oh, nice. I won three for that show, yeah.
So you're a four-time Emmy Award winner and three Emmys for United States of
America, which, by the way, is now streaming on HBO Max.
Yes, it is. On that show, you visited the U.S.-Mexico border.
You spent time with immigrants and refugees.
You talked with Venezolanos in Florida. You focused on immigrants and their
experiences And then walk away. experiences in a number of different episodes.
(09:35):
What did you learn from meeting with those communities and those visits?
So I learned a lot. First of all, I, you know, I mean, I think the first episode
we did, we did an episode in, in, that was in, in, in East LA and where we talked
about where it was the first episode we did in season one. I got to hang out
with the band Las Cafetaras.
That's right. I saw you dance. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They got me to dance.
(09:57):
That was the first episode where we learned if Kamau dances, people pay attention.
Not that I I dance well, but my wife's a dancer, so I've got,
I picked up some steps maybe.
But so, you know, I remember in that episode when I was talking to Hector from
Las Cafeteras and he goes, there's this sort of, Denise, there was this moment
where they were explaining the experience of being Chicano. And I was like, wait.
(10:19):
Am I a Chicano? Now I'm not, but just the immigrant there, you know, yes,
the immigrant experience is different than the experience of being the descendants
of slavery of enslaved Africans, but there's also overlap where you go,
Oh, I can connect to this more than I realized that we're both sort of trying
to figure out how do I connect?
I have an American citizenship, but I'm not true, but I'm not given the full
(10:41):
benefits package of that American citizenship.
And how do I find myself in this America, in this vert, in this current era of America.
So a lot of that, I found a lot of like connection points, which I think is important.
And then also, you know, it's like you, there's also a lot that I don't have to experience.
A lot of, when I'm in situations like this, I feel like I'm not explaining this to you.
(11:02):
I mean, what I learned was the idea of living in a mixed status household.
Now that's not a thing that black people generally have to figure out, have to deal with.
And so to realize that like, I think to uninformed Americans will say that That
they just think of like there's undocumented people and there's people with
citizenship and that they don't understand that like, no,
there are there are single households where there's people of all different
(11:25):
levels of status of citizenship or no citizenship.
And they all have to work every day to provide for their family.
You know, so there's not I think we don't think of these things as being connected
and how it affects not that it should matter, but how it affects you think of
undocumented people as being over there.
No, they are actually living in spaces and in communities with people who are
documented or who are citizens, and they have to figure it out.
(11:48):
So I think that was one of the big things I learned.
And then the economics of immigration and how immigrants start more businesses.
You know, we think of like there's this narrative that has been very well sold
of immigrants stealing our jobs.
And really the fact is that immigrants, many immigrants come here and go,
I have to invent my job. You know, I have to if if I don't want to do the jobs
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I'm being offered, I have to come up with a way to invent my job.
So I think that's something that isn't said enough that no immigrants,
you know, very fundamentally, you know, and I say this as someone who does not
have an immigrant background, you know, I want to be clear about that.
But America is only America because of immigrants coming here and doing a lot
of cool shit and inventing a lot of cool things that we then get to go,
(12:31):
that's America. Those things become American.
So I think that, what's more American than the restaurant Taco Bell?
You know what I mean? It's like, and that's now that was not invented by,
by immigrants, but it is like the Americanization of food that was brought here
from Mexico. You know what I mean?
So it's like, to me, it's like, I think the, the, as we've seen over the last
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few days of the Democrat, of the Republican national convention.
People are defining America in a very narrow and violent way that isn't actually
an America that they want if you were to sit them down and talk to them about it.
Okay. If we take all those things away, this is the America you're left with.
Do you want that? I don't think they
would want that if they were thinking logically and not messianically.
(13:15):
Yeah, I agree. And by the way, thank you for the clarification on Taco Bell
because we are not claiming Taco Bell.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, wow, these tacos are good.
I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm a white man. I'm going to stop my own restaurant
and totally fuck up the recipes.
Yeah. But it is an example of like, we wouldn't, he wouldn't have the ability
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to, I'm sorry, I'm swearing so much.
He wouldn't have the ability to mess up those recipes if he hadn't,
if there hadn't been Mexican immigrants going, would you like to try taco?
So like, you know. Yeah. Well, I, you know, I appreciate you,
you naming that there are a lot of similarities in our experiences, right?
They're not the same you know there are unique challenges and experiences
(13:59):
to to different communities but if we sit
down and talk with folks and listen as you said shut up
and listen we will see that there's just we have so much in common all of us
right yeah and the america part just to sort of i'm really going hard on this
taco bell thing the thing that makes it strictly american is that that business
isn't like a mexican immigrant doesn't have the it has the ability to start maybe a taqueria,
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but they don't have the ability to turn it into a multi-billion dollar business
the way that a white man can.
So that's the part that, if I was going to say, that's the same that happens to Black people too.
We have lots of good ideas that America goes, we'll take that,
but we don't always get the credit or even more importantly,
the cash for that idea. Yeah.
Is there anything that you, in your observation, think that we can or should
(14:48):
be doing to be more welcoming of immigrants?
Me and you, I think, are doing a great job. But as a society, I think we just...
It's just really... The thing I wanted with United Shades was like,
look, most of this audience is not going to get the opportunity to travel to
the places I go or sit across from these people. And so I think it's actually about like...
(15:10):
Educate yourself. And it doesn't have to be, I'm not asking you to read all
the books, but like what taking in media that is not just by your,
your usual suspects in your life, you know, you can, you can learn more about this country.
So, or more about the world. Like I've spent a lot of time over the last month
or so paying attention to like the, the election they just had in England,
(15:30):
like, and I'm not planning on moving to England.
I don't want to, I don't want to go to England, but it tells me a lot about
how elections work all around the world, that they can inform my understanding
of America's electoral process.
And so for me, I think be more curious and less judgmental.
I think that's just the general, if you can, everything I do is based in curiosity.
(15:53):
Now, and people don't understand this, most of my curiosity is not about race
and racism and white supremacy.
That's just how I make a living because that's apparently the lane I fell into.
But I'm sort of like agnostically curious about everything. thing.
And I would encourage people to be more curious and get outside of your own
bubble more often. And that's one thing that the Bay Area does.
(16:14):
It's not that hard to get outside of your own bubble in the Bay Area.
I can just go out the street, go outside and take a left instead of taking a right.
And I will find a whole new version of this experience.
Now, some people live in places where there's just not a lot there physically,
but even there, you have a device in your pocket that can take you all over
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the world and all throughout time that you can, if you are more curious about
the experience of immigrants.
You can actually Google what is the experience of immigrants and then find sources
that are actually immigrants talking and not some person who's not an immigrant
explaining to you the immigrant experience.
I think that's the thing that people do is like you let Tucker Carlson tell
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you what it is to be an immigrant in this country instead of letting...
Immigrants tell you what it is to be an immigrant in this country.
And, you know, and not just one immigrant, because not every immigrant can have the same experience.
I think people go, I think that's where the Republican Party sort of builds their whole thing.
Look, we got this black guy named Tim Scott. He says there's no racism,
so there must be no racism.
Well, yeah, find some more black people to talk to about that idea.
(17:17):
And I say the same thing here, just because you heard Geraldo Rivera on Fox
News tell you what the experience is, doesn't mean you're getting a full picture.
Sorry, I'm just laughing at the mention of Geraldo Rivera.
Yeah. So, okay. So be more curious, less judgmental. I love that.
Get out of your bubble, I think is really important. And unfortunately,
(17:39):
I feel like people don't get out of their bubbles.
And then the last thing I heard, yeah, don't want to. I mean,
of course we want to stay in our comfort zones, right? But we have to challenge
ourselves and stretch ourselves.
And the last thing that you said that I really love is amplifying the voices
of directly impacted communities, right?
Amplifying the voices of people who are actually experiencing the thing that
(18:00):
you're sitting there and judging, which we try to do. And that's what this podcast is mostly about.
So really appreciate you highlighting that.
Let's shift now, if that's okay, because you've done so many things and I want
to talk about a number of them.
And so last year, you and your wife, I believe, put out a documentary called
1000% Me Growing Up Mixed. and you look at your own family and other families,
(18:22):
and you've said that a goal of the film was to spark discussion.
What was the reaction to the documentary, and did any of that surprise you?
Oh, yeah, there was a lot of discussion.
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, so, I mean, first of all, it is, you know,
there's a i think there's there's there's been i just talked
so i just talked to somebody last night who said that they
(18:45):
basically it was like a a dad who was
like thank you for that documentary i cried all the way through
it and so i've heard from a lot of people where and people who aren't even who
aren't in mixed families mixed race families that that hearing directly from
the kids just feels different than if it would have been like hi i'm w come
out but i'm going to tell you about mixed race people yeah which i'm not a mixed
race person so why would i do that but i I think the goal of the film was to like,
(19:08):
let the kids speak for themselves and which, and I think that was the strength of the film.
If there's any strength of the film is that we get, I get out of the way and
let the kids speak for themselves and then work to sort of highlight them in
their best version of themselves from down how we filmed it to all the B-roll
we used and to letting them,
letting them sort of go off into tangents and sort of reveal their personalities.
(19:28):
So, yeah. And, and the, I think my best advertisement for the film is it's just
an hour long. So it really does literally leave room for discussion because
after the after the hours up, you can turn to your people and have discussions,
which I hear happens a lot.
And it's the first time I've ever made anything that was really family centered.
So it's like appropriate for families to watch together.
I've heard a lot of families watching it together. And the great success of
(19:50):
the film is that it's actually on United Airline flights so that a lot of people
it's the greatest thing for people to stumble across on a United flight.
Oh, it's only an hour. I'll watch it. And then I get all these messages like
are tagged in things on Instagram.
I'm crying on this plane watching this film. So I think that it's weird to think
about accessibility and the fact that it's like, it is on HBO Max too.
(20:11):
But in fact, it's just available on planes and you sort of scroll through and
go, oh, and it's a thousand percent.
So if you're in the documentary section, it's the first thing you see because numbers are first.
That's how I found it was on a United flight. I went to the documentary section.
I was like, oh, that's my film. And I watched it on a plane because you got
to be your own best supporter.
But then there's a lot of people who have issues with it because it doesn't cover everything.
It just can't cover the full range of the mixed race experience.
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And it's also not, it's really focused on kids.
So if you're a 50 year old who had, who did not have, who is not as optimistic
as these kids are and you're mixed race, I totally get it.
And it doesn't cover every version of mixed race parenting.
So I totally get that. Like it is not perfect, but I hope because it did win
an Emmy and it won some awards that other, that it is an opens the door for
(20:54):
more people to make films about the mixed race experience.
And hopefully most of those people will be mixed race people themselves.
I mean, the reason why I tried not to be on camera in the film is because it
was like, I'm trying to center the voices of mixed race people.
And I didn't want to look like the kind of person who's like,
my wife's not even on, you know, on like, she's not even people like,
why don't you interview your wife?
And it was like, we and me and her talked about that.
(21:16):
And I was just like, I don't want to look like we have made a film to center
our family, you know, that my kids, yes, but I don't want to be like,
and we're the ones who have figured it out.
I want to center other families who can talk about this. So it has definitely
opened a lot of discussion and I've heard from people and I've had discussions
that were like, I love it.
And I've had discussions that like, I hate it. And a little bit,
(21:36):
you just go, well, I guess that's the side of making an impact.
So, but overwhelmingly people have appreciated it.
That's great. And again, you're
centering the voices of directly affected individuals, which I love.
So, you know, you also have talked about Mobile, Alabama, which is where you're
from. And I think that's the place that you consider home.
(21:58):
Yeah, it's a little more complicated than that. But yeah, it's like,
so, and I didn't say this earlier.
One of the reasons that I've learned to be around lots of different people is
because I would live with my mom in like the north in Boston or in Indianapolis or Chicago.
And then every summer I'd go to the south and live with my dad for three months.
So I was really getting a very wide swath of the American experience from a
(22:18):
very early age. Yeah. And adapting to it all, right?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, but one of the things that you've said,
and this is from your, from the show, again, going back to the United States
of America, you've talked about the multiracial community there.
There's a lot of different perspectives. Is there an immigrant,
you know, population demographic there? And what's that like?
How has that changed over the years?
(22:39):
So, yeah. So I would say that when I was there, when I was a little kid,
we're talking about in the seventies now, because I'm very, very old.
I'm older than you. Oh, really?
Yes. Oh, good brown doesn't... Jeanette, right here. yeah good
look at this look at this good brown won't let you down as i say good black
will crack good brown won't let you down so yeah so in the 70s i really did
(22:59):
i'm not saying it was this but mobile felt very just there's black people and
there's white people there did not i did not see other types of people and then
as an adult when i would go back i did notice that there were,
now some of this is because i was adult but i do think literally there had been
more immigrants immigration to the south because you know how it is like the
idea of like Like, and I forget what the term is, and please educate me.
(23:20):
The idea of, like, if you're an immigrant and you go to a community and you
find out they are okay with you there, then you tell the other people of your
type, come to this community.
Like, hey. And sometimes it's, like, places where you're like,
why are there so many Indian people in this southern town?
It's because one Indian family went and was like, hey, they didn't hate us. Yeah.
So yeah, so there's a lot, there are, for example, my niece,
(23:45):
who's my stepsister's daughter is black and her dad is half black, half Korean.
So this kid is like a quarter. He's like, I don't know how the math all breaks
up, but she's a mixed race person and she has Korean grandparents. parents.
And so, and that's not a thing I met when I didn't know anybody.
I didn't know any Koreans when I was a kid in Alabama.
So the idea that there's now Korean people and there's also a big South Asian population.
(24:08):
So yeah, there, and sort of somewhat unproudly when Arizona did SB 1070 saying
that we're allowed to check the papers of, of Brown people, Mobile,
Alabama also put out a similar law.
Cause they're like, we don't like somebody being more racist than us.
So there are certainly a lot more Mexican immigrants and Central American immigrants
(24:28):
there than when I was growing up.
So yeah, there's definitely, but like, you know, there are, and some of it you
see, like when I grew up in Mobile, there was one Chinese restaurant, that was it.
And now there's a lot, there's a lot more, the sign of more immigrant,
of more immigrant population being there is a lot more restaurants that are not just fried fish.
Yeah. See, I would never have have thought that i
(24:51):
mean i've never been to alabama but i just i
wouldn't have thought that there was a you know i'm going
to introduce you to some to some some people who have southern
accents you wouldn't expect to have southern accents yeah there's definitely yeah
and you know some of it is like yeah there's just lots of reasons why people
move to different communities and so and yeah so there's like my my step my
(25:13):
so my my my stepsister's husband was was his sister was married to a South Asian
man whose South Asian family had moved to the South.
So there's just... It's funny. It has changed dramatically in my lifetime down there. Yeah.
That sounds beautiful. Okay, so I'm going to shift again because I want to talk
about this book. Oh, yeah. There we go.
(25:34):
Anti-Racist Activity Book. Do the work. I love this. I think...
I think, is it true that you're doing a children's version of this? Yeah.
Me and Kate Schatz, who's my co-author, or I'm her co-author,
however it goes, we're working on a children's version of the book.
That is going to be very different because kids don't want to hear do the work.
And also, we really worked hard to make adults feel like they had,
(25:58):
like basically do the work adult book is like, hey, you probably haven't done enough of the work.
And some of this is about shaming you into doing the work. Whereas you don't it's not with kids.
It's about here's some information that you should have and that you're going to be find interesting.
Not not about like you haven't been enough of an anti-racist 11 year old. Right.
(26:19):
Well, I love it because it's I mean, there's paper dolls in here.
There's crossword puzzle. I mean, it just it's it's very user friendly.
I'll put it that way. We try to like approach it from like once we decide to make it a workbook.
The idea was to do make the activities as diverse as possible because there
are going to be the super nerds who i love who are going to start from the beginning
and go straight to the end and there's going to be people who we want to make
(26:41):
it so you could flip through and be like oh i like crosswords i'm going to do
this crossword you know so and we made it diverse in the fact that like
all there's like 15 or 16 all the graphic designers and artists in the book
are artists of color and black artists so so we really even like it's not even
just one we didn't just hire one artist of color. We hired 15,
(27:02):
16 different artists of color.
And Diane Holton is the black woman who was the art director of the book who pulled it all together.
So it's really like we wanted to do the work while we were actually telling people to do the work.
That's very well done. I love it. And, you know, I have this reflection as I'm
looking at this book that.
There are parallels between systemic racism and anti-immigrant dehumanization
(27:24):
and the systems of oppression that target immigrants in this country were born
from the systems of oppression that historically have targeted Black Americans in this country.
So why aren't we all working together? Why don't we all come together,
right? Black, brown, let's bring in everybody.
(27:45):
Like, why are we not working together to fix these issues? I mean,
I think you have to, I think, first of all, I think more of us are working together than we think about.
I think there's more in as general in America, as always happens in America,
there's more focus on the division than the coming together.
So like, you know, I mean, to be quite honest, when, when you reached out for
me to do this podcast, I was like, Oh, Las Carpinteras, they're okay.
(28:07):
Like, it was like, they're cool. This podcast is cool people.
I'm cool with, I should do that. Like, it was just like, that's,
I should do this because this is because this is doing the work,
you know? So, you know, so I think the more you start to recognize that,
like, it's easy to say no when you're outside of your comfort zone.
And I'm just always like, it's better to say yes, generally, if you can.
So I often say yes to too many things as my people around me tell me.
(28:29):
And I think that, like, I will acknowledge that, like, the only reason I know
more about this than I would is because my friend Fabiano Rodriguez,
who didn't know me, we weren't friends at the time.
And Jeff Chang and other activists invited me and a delegation of artists to
go to the border with an organization called Culture strike at the time now
it's a center for cultural power And that's the first time I went and that up
(28:51):
that experience led me to do the episode of United States years later
and I even have the United States at the time when I went with them and I brought
Fabiana back into the episode because I was like I have to credit the person
who brought me here who had shared this with me and so I.
I think in the Bay, there's really a tradition of like people working across
cultural and racial lines in ways that doesn't exist all over this country.
(29:13):
And, you know, it does that, you know, the Black Panthers were working with
the Young Lords who were working with the I think it was the Young Americans,
the white lower class economic group.
And so I think there's just a tradition of the Bay Area of like,
if you can work across these cultural and racial lines that I'm that I also
has really helped me and has helped me in my life, too. to I'm glad I moved
(29:33):
here is all I'm saying. Like it really has helped me in ways I could not have imagined.
But yeah, you know, so I think that like certainly we need more of it and we
just need more generosity of spirit and forgiveness around the times when we
come together and there's rough edges and it doesn't work out the way we want to.
I think that's the other thing. It's like it's not I think we sort of,
you know, during 2020 when at post George Floyd's murder by the Minneapolis
(29:54):
police and there's all these Black Lives Matter protests around the country,
those were multiracial protests. process.
Then later that year, when there sort of became a focus on stop anti-Asian hate,
I became clear that like, I need
to step up and make sure the Asian community knows I'm a part of this.
And then there were some people online who represented themselves as Black,
I don't know if they were, who were like, they never show up for us,
(30:15):
why should we show up for them?
And I think you have to go like, well, if we show up for them,
won't they learn to show up for us?
Let's say they haven't showed up for us, which is not true. Yuri Kochiyama was
in Malcolm X's kitchen or he was in her kitchen building solidarity back in the day.
But also like who cares if they haven't shown up for us? Don't we need to,
again, this is all tied into this thing called white supremacy.
(30:35):
So the more we all show up for each, for ourselves and each other,
the more we will all show up for ourselves and each other.
Yeah, true. Thank you. And, and I'll just share one, you know,
fact that, you know, a lot of people think about immigration,
they think about Mexicans, right?
They think immigration is a Latino issue.
There are 619,000 undocumented Black Americans in this country.
(31:00):
And a lot of people don't think of immigration as a Black issue,
right? But it's a significant population in this country.
So yeah, again, I just think there's so many commonalities and things that if
we shut up and listen, as you said, we will start to see. So thank you for that.
Last question I want to ask you is, it's all over the news right now.
(31:22):
I keep hearing about this East Bay Film Collective. It sounds so exciting.
Again, another one of your hustles, right? Like, what is it?
Tell me, tell me what was behind creating it and what are you hoping to achieve?
So, yeah, I mean, this is definitely like a hustle that is about the community
less than it is about feeding my family.
I would say that because it's about like the Bay Area has given me so much.
(31:43):
It's time for me to think about how do I help? How do I help give back?
So, so I would say it started with me about a little over a year ago,
last summer, the mayor of Oakland reached out to me and said,
I want, what can I do to help the filmmaking community?
Cause there's like the, as small as the Oakland and the East Bay is, there are a lot of like.
Nationally known internationally known filmmakers here you know
(32:06):
there's more than you would expect who still live here so like you
know wherever i am i'm here ryan coogler lives
here boots riley lives here cheryl dunye lives
here there's just a lot of people who've who who have shifted culture and and
and there's people who are from here who used to live here who still always
come back to do things here rafael casal and david diggs being the most popular
(32:26):
so when the mayor reached out to me the first thing i did before i met with
the mayors i called my friend pastor michael mcbride who's a local activist.
Like he says, I don't say what would Jesus do? I say, what did Jesus do?
So he's, he's a social justice. He believes that part of being a pastor is social
justice out of the Martin Luther King jr. Tradition.
(32:46):
So, and the Malcolm X tradition. So he, I reached out to him.
I was like, I'm only meeting with the mayor if he's there.
Cause he's, he knows the community better than I do. And I don't want this to look like I'm,
I'm, I'm a fancy filmmaker and I want to i want
to get money from the city i'm like i bring him in to go how do
we make sure this helps the people and then we met with the mayor
and the mayor was like what do we do next and we said let us get some people together
(33:07):
and we reached out to all those people i just mentioned and more and and
unfamous filmmakers who live here and said hey we have an opportunity here if
we can and people have tried to do this before there's a moment when the wayans
brothers wanted to come up here and start a studio but the political operatives
of that day some of whom were still in office here didn't understand it they're
like why are we giving money to hollywood they didn't understand the fact that it was an investment.
(33:28):
And those people who, many of whom still work in politics here,
are like, understand it now. They get it. Because in that interim, Atlanta has happened.
Atlanta went from a place where like, why would you film there to like,
Tyler Perry has the biggest movie studio in the country in Atlanta now.
Yeah. So we were sort of, the model has been successful outside of LA now many times.
And so we, and Oakland has a tradition of arts and culture.
(33:50):
So it just makes sense here more than it makes sense in places like Oklahoma,
where they're also trying to do it. Right. So, yeah.
We spent the last year organizing. We decided to call ourselves the East Bay Film Collective.
And it is just, if you're a filmmaker or an artist maker here and you want to
be in, you're in. There's no application process currently.
And it's just, and we got Steph Curry and his company to join.
And so, which was great because Steph really believes, he really loves Oakland
(34:14):
because this is where he started his career.
And so, in the last year, since we started it, we got the city to pass this
tax incentive. And last night we had a party to celebrate it with all these
like local filmmakers to be like, now the hard work begins.
And it's just about making Oakland a more accessible and equitable place.
That's the key part that they're not going to do in other places.
(34:35):
They're not worried about equitable.
We want to make Oakland more accessible and more equitable for local filmmakers
and for filmmakers out of town.
And part of that is about tax incentives and rebates and incentives plans.
And the city passed it. And now the fun begins.
How do we make this happen? But yeah, it's just about for me,
it's about giving back to the community that has given so much to me.
(34:55):
That's incredible. Congratulations.
I mean, that's going to be a game changer, really. That's the goal.
That's the goal. And luckily, jobs and investments.
Yeah. Right. The way I think about it is like it's really a jobs program because
most of making film isn't being a director or a screenwriter or an actor.
It's catering. It's driving. It's truck driving. It's it's it's being an electrician
(35:17):
or a carpenter. Like, it's just a jobs program.
Hair and makeup, right? It's hair and makeup. Yeah, it's like it's not – it's
a lot of behind – and when you make films, a lot of those are union jobs.
So, like, the jobs pay better than if you were –.
If you were just doing hair and makeup at a salon, it'll pay you better if you
do it for a movie. So, yeah.
So, and are there specific stories that you're hoping to tell or that you're
(35:38):
hoping come out? Or is it just like agnostic?
You just want people to come make films? I mean, I think we really do want to
make sure the core of this is that it is not specific stories,
just specific types of stories.
So, yeah, I want somebody who's like, I want to be a filmmaker in Oakland to
to have a path to that goal.
So like right now if you're a kid going to
school in oakland and you want to be a filmmaker you sort
(36:00):
of still think the path is moving to la even though ryan coogler lives
here you know so we're saying oakland you have all the people here how do you
create infrastructure so that kid can go oh if i want to be a filmmaker i go
to the oakland film center and i fill out and i fill out a profile and i submit
my name and i go to a workshop there and i volunteer like what do you know and i get a summer job?
(36:22):
Like, how do you create the same way that if you back in the day,
if you lived in Detroit, you just got to, you know, at some point I'm,
I have an opportunity to get a job at making cars.
Cause that's what we do here. So how do we create, how do we have that here
in Oakland? It's like, we're, it's just the industry.
One of the industries that the town runs on. And if you're a kid,
it's accessible to you. It doesn't mean you're going to get an Oscar,
but maybe you can get a job. You know what I mean?
(36:44):
So yeah. Yeah. That's really important and exciting.
Kamau, Mal, thank you for spending time with me today. It's been such a pleasure
and a privilege to just have this time.
Thank you for sharing your story and thank you for the important and impactful work that you do.
I wish you incredible success with the East Bay Film Collective and everything,
all your other hustles too. I wish you incredible success with everything.
(37:06):
And I hope we have an opportunity to connect again. And I promise next time
I will not bring up Taco Bell once.
I really went too far down that Taco Bell hole.
Can we also not bring up Parola Rivera again? Yeah, no, I just,
I just, I just, I started yapping.
I promise I will never bring up those two names ever again. I appreciate it,
(37:27):
Kamau. Thank you so much. Thank you.
I want to thank our listeners for spending time with us. For more immigration
truths, visit us at nilk.org and freedomtothrive.com.
And make sure you subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes.
I look forward to continuing this conversation with all of you.
There are 11 million undocumented Americans living in the U.S.
Today, give or take a couple hundred thousand at any given time,
but that's a number that has held steady over the past 15 years,
despite what the cable news programs might lead you to believe.
And 80% of these 11 million have lived in the U.S. for 10 years or more.
So these are our longtime neighbors, coworkers, fellow parishioners,
(00:23):
taxpayers, friends. ends.
In spite of this, we're hearing promises from the right of mass deportations
of immigrants, which, according to a couple of polls, a majority of Americans now support.
The last time the U.S. carried out mass deportations, people were racially profiled,
including U.S. citizens.
Communities were devastated, families separated, people died.
(00:48):
Yet we've accepted the dehumanization of immigrants and are now okay with seeing
them ripped from their homes, families, and communities.
And let's be clear, when we allow for this kind of dehumanization,
our own humanity is eroded.
And when society accepts the dehumanization of a people, atrocities follow.
That's not hyperbole. That is historical fact.
(01:10):
We have got to bring down the anti-immigrant rhetoric and find our compassion
and humanity for people coming to this country, seeking the freedom to thrive.
My guest today is a master at getting to the heart of things and building bridges
through his curiosity, dialogue, and understanding.
That's something I think we can all learn from.
(01:31):
And that is why I'm thrilled to be talking with W. Kamau Bell.
Kamau started his career as a stand-up comic. He's done several comedy specials.
In 2022, he made waves with his Showtime series, We Need to Talk About Cosby.
He's an author of several books, including a memoir, The Awkward Thoughts of W. Kamau Bell.
(01:51):
He's a four-time Emmy Award winner. He's just launched a film collective,
which I can't wait to hear more about.
He's a culture maker, a dad, and all-around super cool human.
This is the NILC Freedom to Thrive podcast, powering pro-immigrant narratives, one story at a time.
I'm Victoria Ballesteros, Executive Vice President of Narrative at the National
(02:15):
Immigration Law Center.
Kamau, welcome to the Freedom to Thrive podcast.
It's so nice to see you. Thank you for having me. I'm going to add super cool
human to my bio. I love it.
You are a busy man, so I really appreciate you making time. You've got like
seven hustles going on right now. Thank you for joining us.
Yeah, you know how it is for us people of color, Black folks,
(02:39):
Indigenous folks, you have to work twice as hard to get half as much.
So figure out how to work seven times as hard.
That's right. That is absolutely right. And I love how I'm just going to jump
right in, in, in your memoir, you talk about both of your parents, right?
Your mom and your dad with their, the inside hustles and the outside hustles, which I really loved.
But, you know, so for me, you're a natural storyteller and someone who clearly
(02:59):
isn't afraid to speak truth to power. Where does your courage come from?
That's funny. When I hear that, I'm not afraid to speak truth to power.
I think of the people that I admire who are way, way less afraid than I am.
So I'm like, I'm always like, Ooh, I got to do a better job.
If I'm going to, if I'm going to be associated with all these other folks,
like I think about like my friend Fabiana Rodriguez,
(03:19):
who I'm sure we'll talk about later, but like I'm surrounded by people in the
Bay and in my life and who I follow online who are way more fearless than I am.
And so those people, and you know, and also, you know, Angela Davis is from
here. So I can't, you know, I got to meet and do an event with Angela Davis and I can't compare.
(03:40):
Yes, I speak truth to power when it's like this lady was on the FBI's most wanted list.
So if I can't be if I can't speak up, who am I? You know, well,
you've done some really incredible things.
And especially, you know, now with our country being so fractured politically,
you know, I think it's a superpower what you do. You're so good at breaking
through and creating conversations with people from all sides of the political spectrum.
(04:03):
And even in the most tense of situations, you find a way to connect.
We need more of that. How did you learn to do this?
It's funny. I think a lot of it. So, you know, I write about this book.
I think the first step is being an only child with a single mom who took me
a lot of places that like kids wouldn't probably go if they had babysitters.
(04:25):
Like my mom didn't always have money for a babysitter. So I was always around
adults having conversations and I quickly learned that if I was quiet,
I would hear more than if I tried to interrupt or sort of be the cute kid who's
like, look at me dance, you know?
So I learned from an early age that like, you know, I talked to my oldest daughter,
both my kids, my oldest daughter about the art of ear hustling.
Like when adults are talking, just be quiet.
(04:46):
You'll hear a lot of interesting things, you know? So a lot of it will be boring,
but you'll hear some interesting things. That's the first part. And then I think.
As a stand-up comedian, your job is to sort of keep the ball up in the air,
but also you're really paying attention to the audience because it's not just
about the audience laughing.
You can really tell how much they're paying attention and what they're responding
to because there's also a lot of mm-hmm or mm or ooh or ah.
(05:08):
So you're sort of always engaged in paying attention to people's reactions.
Yeah. And I was lucky that I decided to move to the Bay Area just to be a part
of the San Francisco comedy scene.
But once I got out of here from Chicago, Chicago at that point and still,
but as a very segregated city, but even not just racially segregated,
but like culturally segregated and segregated by by lifestyles.
(05:29):
And so, like, you only knew who you knew.
And once I moved out here, the Bay Area is just not that it's not as segregated
across culture and race. So you you can stay with your own group.
But if you just sort of move around a little bit, you'll bump into all sorts
of different types of people. And I would say I learned from being around all
sorts of types of people that the more I listened, the smarter I got.
(05:50):
So if I'm hanging out with a bunch of East Bay vegan lesbians,
and I'm not a vegan lesbian, and I was living in San Francisco,
so I'm not even from the East Bay, there's a tendency to be like,
here's my opinion on what you're talking about in this country.
And I learned that if you just shut up, you're going to learn a lot that you
can then use when you talk to other people.
I love that. If you just shut up, you're going to learn a lot.
(06:11):
I think a lot of us need to pay attention to that. And it's so interesting.
So you've been exposed to a lot from an early age.
And shout out to your mom and shout out to single moms everywhere,
right, who are hustling and doing whatever they need to do for their kids.
Single mom right here, by the way.
Thank you for your service. Thank you. And side note, you know,
(06:34):
I just want to say when you, and now I'm thinking about your show,
The United Shades of America.
When you pulled up and when you were meeting with the Grand Poobah of the KKK
and you pulled up and, you know, and it's nighttime and it's almost like a scene
from a movie that doesn't end well, right? And he's flashing his headlights at you.
I was praying to the Virgen de Guadalupe that you would be okay, right?
(06:57):
I was like so terrified for you. again that's that's
courage that's that's not fearlessness to me that's courage right
or am i wrong again i want to you
know the thing that i always thought that week first of all there's two things
happening it was also a guy who needed a job so i guess so there's a part of
me was like the courage of like i need to feed my family hey and this is my
(07:18):
best shot so yeah you know there i don't have a lot of opportunities so i gotta
make the most of this opportunity even if it's It's a crazy idea.
And then the other thing I thought, and I actually said this in the episode,
that it's kind of an immense privilege to be a Black man who goes to visit the Klan,
he mostly knows he's going to be okay now sure anything could have happened but generally.
(07:43):
The i'm going to visit i'm a tourist with the kkk for a couple days i'm not a black guy in 1960.
Who got jumped by the kkk and pulled to the and pulled to into the forest and
saw a burning cross i'm not the guy i'm not the black guy from oh from oh brother
where art thou the black guitar player who gets to who is like about to be lynched
and so many black people who when they confronted front of the Klan,
(08:06):
that was the last image they were going to see in their lives.
So I was very aware of like, this is, yes, there's a, there's a,
there's a risk here, but it is nowhere near the risk that black people took
just be walking the streets in, in the South and Indiana in a pre 1970s America.
Yeah. Yeah. But that, that is still there though. Right. In some places.
No, it's still there. I'm just thinking specifically the KKK risk.
(08:28):
No, there's still, I'm still a black man in America.
I risk my life every time I leave my house and I don't, and I,
you know, just on some like who knows what can happen as a black man in America.
And even though I live in the Bay Area, there have been many black people assaulted
by police officers and killed by police officers here.
So there's no there's you're still a black man in America.
But I also don't want to act like
I'm I don't want to put too much on me meeting the Klan in 2016 or 2015.
(08:52):
Right. Yes, it was crazy. Yes, I was nervous. But also like it's it's you have to also go.
This is this is actually weirdly a privilege that I'm allowed to do this,
you know, and then walk away. And then walk away. As you said, yeah.
Well, let's talk about your show a little bit more. You won three Emmys.
Actually, I won three Emmys for that show. I have four, but I was trying to
(09:13):
remember. Oh, nice. I won three for that show, yeah.
So you're a four-time Emmy Award winner and three Emmys for United States of
America, which, by the way, is now streaming on HBO Max.
Yes, it is. On that show, you visited the U.S.-Mexico border.
You spent time with immigrants and refugees.
You talked with Venezolanos in Florida. You focused on immigrants and their
experiences And then walk away. experiences in a number of different episodes.
(09:35):
What did you learn from meeting with those communities and those visits?
So I learned a lot. First of all, I, you know, I mean, I think the first episode
we did, we did an episode in, in, that was in, in, in East LA and where we talked
about where it was the first episode we did in season one. I got to hang out
with the band Las Cafetaras.
That's right. I saw you dance. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They got me to dance.
(09:57):
That was the first episode where we learned if Kamau dances, people pay attention.
Not that I I dance well, but my wife's a dancer, so I've got,
I picked up some steps maybe.
But so, you know, I remember in that episode when I was talking to Hector from
Las Cafeteras and he goes, there's this sort of, Denise, there was this moment
where they were explaining the experience of being Chicano. And I was like, wait.
(10:19):
Am I a Chicano? Now I'm not, but just the immigrant there, you know, yes,
the immigrant experience is different than the experience of being the descendants
of slavery of enslaved Africans, but there's also overlap where you go,
Oh, I can connect to this more than I realized that we're both sort of trying
to figure out how do I connect?
I have an American citizenship, but I'm not true, but I'm not given the full
(10:41):
benefits package of that American citizenship.
And how do I find myself in this America, in this vert, in this current era of America.
So a lot of that, I found a lot of like connection points, which I think is important.
And then also, you know, it's like you, there's also a lot that I don't have to experience.
A lot of, when I'm in situations like this, I feel like I'm not explaining this to you.
(11:02):
I mean, what I learned was the idea of living in a mixed status household.
Now that's not a thing that black people generally have to figure out, have to deal with.
And so to realize that like, I think to uninformed Americans will say that That
they just think of like there's undocumented people and there's people with
citizenship and that they don't understand that like, no,
there are there are single households where there's people of all different
(11:25):
levels of status of citizenship or no citizenship.
And they all have to work every day to provide for their family.
You know, so there's not I think we don't think of these things as being connected
and how it affects not that it should matter, but how it affects you think of
undocumented people as being over there.
No, they are actually living in spaces and in communities with people who are
documented or who are citizens, and they have to figure it out.
(11:48):
So I think that was one of the big things I learned.
And then the economics of immigration and how immigrants start more businesses.
You know, we think of like there's this narrative that has been very well sold
of immigrants stealing our jobs.
And really the fact is that immigrants, many immigrants come here and go,
I have to invent my job. You know, I have to if if I don't want to do the jobs
(12:08):
I'm being offered, I have to come up with a way to invent my job.
So I think that's something that isn't said enough that no immigrants,
you know, very fundamentally, you know, and I say this as someone who does not
have an immigrant background, you know, I want to be clear about that.
But America is only America because of immigrants coming here and doing a lot
of cool shit and inventing a lot of cool things that we then get to go,
(12:31):
that's America. Those things become American.
So I think that, what's more American than the restaurant Taco Bell?
You know what I mean? It's like, and that's now that was not invented by,
by immigrants, but it is like the Americanization of food that was brought here
from Mexico. You know what I mean?
So it's like, to me, it's like, I think the, the, as we've seen over the last
(12:55):
few days of the Democrat, of the Republican national convention.
People are defining America in a very narrow and violent way that isn't actually
an America that they want if you were to sit them down and talk to them about it.
Okay. If we take all those things away, this is the America you're left with.
Do you want that? I don't think they
would want that if they were thinking logically and not messianically.
(13:15):
Yeah, I agree. And by the way, thank you for the clarification on Taco Bell
because we are not claiming Taco Bell.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, wow, these tacos are good.
I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm a white man. I'm going to stop my own restaurant
and totally fuck up the recipes.
Yeah. But it is an example of like, we wouldn't, he wouldn't have the ability
(13:39):
to, I'm sorry, I'm swearing so much.
He wouldn't have the ability to mess up those recipes if he hadn't,
if there hadn't been Mexican immigrants going, would you like to try taco?
So like, you know. Yeah. Well, I, you know, I appreciate you,
you naming that there are a lot of similarities in our experiences, right?
They're not the same you know there are unique challenges and experiences
(13:59):
to to different communities but if we sit
down and talk with folks and listen as you said shut up
and listen we will see that there's just we have so much in common all of us
right yeah and the america part just to sort of i'm really going hard on this
taco bell thing the thing that makes it strictly american is that that business
isn't like a mexican immigrant doesn't have the it has the ability to start maybe a taqueria,
(14:23):
but they don't have the ability to turn it into a multi-billion dollar business
the way that a white man can.
So that's the part that, if I was going to say, that's the same that happens to Black people too.
We have lots of good ideas that America goes, we'll take that,
but we don't always get the credit or even more importantly,
the cash for that idea. Yeah.
Is there anything that you, in your observation, think that we can or should
(14:48):
be doing to be more welcoming of immigrants?
Me and you, I think, are doing a great job. But as a society, I think we just...
It's just really... The thing I wanted with United Shades was like,
look, most of this audience is not going to get the opportunity to travel to
the places I go or sit across from these people. And so I think it's actually about like...
(15:10):
Educate yourself. And it doesn't have to be, I'm not asking you to read all
the books, but like what taking in media that is not just by your,
your usual suspects in your life, you know, you can, you can learn more about this country.
So, or more about the world. Like I've spent a lot of time over the last month
or so paying attention to like the, the election they just had in England,
(15:30):
like, and I'm not planning on moving to England.
I don't want to, I don't want to go to England, but it tells me a lot about
how elections work all around the world, that they can inform my understanding
of America's electoral process.
And so for me, I think be more curious and less judgmental.
I think that's just the general, if you can, everything I do is based in curiosity.
(15:53):
Now, and people don't understand this, most of my curiosity is not about race
and racism and white supremacy.
That's just how I make a living because that's apparently the lane I fell into.
But I'm sort of like agnostically curious about everything. thing.
And I would encourage people to be more curious and get outside of your own
bubble more often. And that's one thing that the Bay Area does.
(16:14):
It's not that hard to get outside of your own bubble in the Bay Area.
I can just go out the street, go outside and take a left instead of taking a right.
And I will find a whole new version of this experience.
Now, some people live in places where there's just not a lot there physically,
but even there, you have a device in your pocket that can take you all over
(16:34):
the world and all throughout time that you can, if you are more curious about
the experience of immigrants.
You can actually Google what is the experience of immigrants and then find sources
that are actually immigrants talking and not some person who's not an immigrant
explaining to you the immigrant experience.
I think that's the thing that people do is like you let Tucker Carlson tell
(16:55):
you what it is to be an immigrant in this country instead of letting...
Immigrants tell you what it is to be an immigrant in this country.
And, you know, and not just one immigrant, because not every immigrant can have the same experience.
I think people go, I think that's where the Republican Party sort of builds their whole thing.
Look, we got this black guy named Tim Scott. He says there's no racism,
so there must be no racism.
Well, yeah, find some more black people to talk to about that idea.
(17:17):
And I say the same thing here, just because you heard Geraldo Rivera on Fox
News tell you what the experience is, doesn't mean you're getting a full picture.
Sorry, I'm just laughing at the mention of Geraldo Rivera.
Yeah. So, okay. So be more curious, less judgmental. I love that.
Get out of your bubble, I think is really important. And unfortunately,
(17:39):
I feel like people don't get out of their bubbles.
And then the last thing I heard, yeah, don't want to. I mean,
of course we want to stay in our comfort zones, right? But we have to challenge
ourselves and stretch ourselves.
And the last thing that you said that I really love is amplifying the voices
of directly impacted communities, right?
Amplifying the voices of people who are actually experiencing the thing that
(18:00):
you're sitting there and judging, which we try to do. And that's what this podcast is mostly about.
So really appreciate you highlighting that.
Let's shift now, if that's okay, because you've done so many things and I want
to talk about a number of them.
And so last year, you and your wife, I believe, put out a documentary called
1000% Me Growing Up Mixed. and you look at your own family and other families,
(18:22):
and you've said that a goal of the film was to spark discussion.
What was the reaction to the documentary, and did any of that surprise you?
Oh, yeah, there was a lot of discussion.
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, so, I mean, first of all, it is, you know,
there's a i think there's there's there's been i just talked
so i just talked to somebody last night who said that they
(18:45):
basically it was like a a dad who was
like thank you for that documentary i cried all the way through
it and so i've heard from a lot of people where and people who aren't even who
aren't in mixed families mixed race families that that hearing directly from
the kids just feels different than if it would have been like hi i'm w come
out but i'm going to tell you about mixed race people yeah which i'm not a mixed
race person so why would i do that but i I think the goal of the film was to like,
(19:08):
let the kids speak for themselves and which, and I think that was the strength of the film.
If there's any strength of the film is that we get, I get out of the way and
let the kids speak for themselves and then work to sort of highlight them in
their best version of themselves from down how we filmed it to all the B-roll
we used and to letting them,
letting them sort of go off into tangents and sort of reveal their personalities.
(19:28):
So, yeah. And, and the, I think my best advertisement for the film is it's just
an hour long. So it really does literally leave room for discussion because
after the after the hours up, you can turn to your people and have discussions,
which I hear happens a lot.
And it's the first time I've ever made anything that was really family centered.
So it's like appropriate for families to watch together.
I've heard a lot of families watching it together. And the great success of
(19:50):
the film is that it's actually on United Airline flights so that a lot of people
it's the greatest thing for people to stumble across on a United flight.
Oh, it's only an hour. I'll watch it. And then I get all these messages like
are tagged in things on Instagram.
I'm crying on this plane watching this film. So I think that it's weird to think
about accessibility and the fact that it's like, it is on HBO Max too.
(20:11):
But in fact, it's just available on planes and you sort of scroll through and
go, oh, and it's a thousand percent.
So if you're in the documentary section, it's the first thing you see because numbers are first.
That's how I found it was on a United flight. I went to the documentary section.
I was like, oh, that's my film. And I watched it on a plane because you got
to be your own best supporter.
But then there's a lot of people who have issues with it because it doesn't cover everything.
It just can't cover the full range of the mixed race experience.
(20:34):
And it's also not, it's really focused on kids.
So if you're a 50 year old who had, who did not have, who is not as optimistic
as these kids are and you're mixed race, I totally get it.
And it doesn't cover every version of mixed race parenting.
So I totally get that. Like it is not perfect, but I hope because it did win
an Emmy and it won some awards that other, that it is an opens the door for
(20:54):
more people to make films about the mixed race experience.
And hopefully most of those people will be mixed race people themselves.
I mean, the reason why I tried not to be on camera in the film is because it
was like, I'm trying to center the voices of mixed race people.
And I didn't want to look like the kind of person who's like,
my wife's not even on, you know, on like, she's not even people like,
why don't you interview your wife?
And it was like, we and me and her talked about that.
(21:16):
And I was just like, I don't want to look like we have made a film to center
our family, you know, that my kids, yes, but I don't want to be like,
and we're the ones who have figured it out.
I want to center other families who can talk about this. So it has definitely
opened a lot of discussion and I've heard from people and I've had discussions
that were like, I love it.
And I've had discussions that like, I hate it. And a little bit,
(21:36):
you just go, well, I guess that's the side of making an impact.
So, but overwhelmingly people have appreciated it.
That's great. And again, you're
centering the voices of directly affected individuals, which I love.
So, you know, you also have talked about Mobile, Alabama, which is where you're
from. And I think that's the place that you consider home.
(21:58):
Yeah, it's a little more complicated than that. But yeah, it's like,
so, and I didn't say this earlier.
One of the reasons that I've learned to be around lots of different people is
because I would live with my mom in like the north in Boston or in Indianapolis or Chicago.
And then every summer I'd go to the south and live with my dad for three months.
So I was really getting a very wide swath of the American experience from a
(22:18):
very early age. Yeah. And adapting to it all, right?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, but one of the things that you've said,
and this is from your, from the show, again, going back to the United States
of America, you've talked about the multiracial community there.
There's a lot of different perspectives. Is there an immigrant,
you know, population demographic there? And what's that like?
How has that changed over the years?
(22:39):
So, yeah. So I would say that when I was there, when I was a little kid,
we're talking about in the seventies now, because I'm very, very old.
I'm older than you. Oh, really?
Yes. Oh, good brown doesn't... Jeanette, right here. yeah good
look at this look at this good brown won't let you down as i say good black
will crack good brown won't let you down so yeah so in the 70s i really did
(22:59):
i'm not saying it was this but mobile felt very just there's black people and
there's white people there did not i did not see other types of people and then
as an adult when i would go back i did notice that there were,
now some of this is because i was adult but i do think literally there had been
more immigrants immigration to the south because you know how it is like the
idea of like Like, and I forget what the term is, and please educate me.
(23:20):
The idea of, like, if you're an immigrant and you go to a community and you
find out they are okay with you there, then you tell the other people of your
type, come to this community.
Like, hey. And sometimes it's, like, places where you're like,
why are there so many Indian people in this southern town?
It's because one Indian family went and was like, hey, they didn't hate us. Yeah.
So yeah, so there's a lot, there are, for example, my niece,
(23:45):
who's my stepsister's daughter is black and her dad is half black, half Korean.
So this kid is like a quarter. He's like, I don't know how the math all breaks
up, but she's a mixed race person and she has Korean grandparents. parents.
And so, and that's not a thing I met when I didn't know anybody.
I didn't know any Koreans when I was a kid in Alabama.
So the idea that there's now Korean people and there's also a big South Asian population.
(24:08):
So yeah, there, and sort of somewhat unproudly when Arizona did SB 1070 saying
that we're allowed to check the papers of, of Brown people, Mobile,
Alabama also put out a similar law.
Cause they're like, we don't like somebody being more racist than us.
So there are certainly a lot more Mexican immigrants and Central American immigrants
(24:28):
there than when I was growing up.
So yeah, there's definitely, but like, you know, there are, and some of it you
see, like when I grew up in Mobile, there was one Chinese restaurant, that was it.
And now there's a lot, there's a lot more, the sign of more immigrant,
of more immigrant population being there is a lot more restaurants that are not just fried fish.
Yeah. See, I would never have have thought that i
(24:51):
mean i've never been to alabama but i just i
wouldn't have thought that there was a you know i'm going
to introduce you to some to some some people who have southern
accents you wouldn't expect to have southern accents yeah there's definitely yeah
and you know some of it is like yeah there's just lots of reasons why people
move to different communities and so and yeah so there's like my my step my
(25:13):
so my my my stepsister's husband was was his sister was married to a South Asian
man whose South Asian family had moved to the South.
So there's just... It's funny. It has changed dramatically in my lifetime down there. Yeah.
That sounds beautiful. Okay, so I'm going to shift again because I want to talk
about this book. Oh, yeah. There we go.
(25:34):
Anti-Racist Activity Book. Do the work. I love this. I think...
I think, is it true that you're doing a children's version of this? Yeah.
Me and Kate Schatz, who's my co-author, or I'm her co-author,
however it goes, we're working on a children's version of the book.
That is going to be very different because kids don't want to hear do the work.
And also, we really worked hard to make adults feel like they had,
(25:58):
like basically do the work adult book is like, hey, you probably haven't done enough of the work.
And some of this is about shaming you into doing the work. Whereas you don't it's not with kids.
It's about here's some information that you should have and that you're going to be find interesting.
Not not about like you haven't been enough of an anti-racist 11 year old. Right.
(26:19):
Well, I love it because it's I mean, there's paper dolls in here.
There's crossword puzzle. I mean, it just it's it's very user friendly.
I'll put it that way. We try to like approach it from like once we decide to make it a workbook.
The idea was to do make the activities as diverse as possible because there
are going to be the super nerds who i love who are going to start from the beginning
and go straight to the end and there's going to be people who we want to make
(26:41):
it so you could flip through and be like oh i like crosswords i'm going to do
this crossword you know so and we made it diverse in the fact that like
all there's like 15 or 16 all the graphic designers and artists in the book
are artists of color and black artists so so we really even like it's not even
just one we didn't just hire one artist of color. We hired 15,
(27:02):
16 different artists of color.
And Diane Holton is the black woman who was the art director of the book who pulled it all together.
So it's really like we wanted to do the work while we were actually telling people to do the work.
That's very well done. I love it. And, you know, I have this reflection as I'm
looking at this book that.
There are parallels between systemic racism and anti-immigrant dehumanization
(27:24):
and the systems of oppression that target immigrants in this country were born
from the systems of oppression that historically have targeted Black Americans in this country.
So why aren't we all working together? Why don't we all come together,
right? Black, brown, let's bring in everybody.
(27:45):
Like, why are we not working together to fix these issues? I mean,
I think you have to, I think, first of all, I think more of us are working together than we think about.
I think there's more in as general in America, as always happens in America,
there's more focus on the division than the coming together.
So like, you know, I mean, to be quite honest, when, when you reached out for
me to do this podcast, I was like, Oh, Las Carpinteras, they're okay.
(28:07):
Like, it was like, they're cool. This podcast is cool people.
I'm cool with, I should do that. Like, it was just like, that's,
I should do this because this is because this is doing the work,
you know? So, you know, so I think the more you start to recognize that,
like, it's easy to say no when you're outside of your comfort zone.
And I'm just always like, it's better to say yes, generally, if you can.
So I often say yes to too many things as my people around me tell me.
(28:29):
And I think that, like, I will acknowledge that, like, the only reason I know
more about this than I would is because my friend Fabiano Rodriguez,
who didn't know me, we weren't friends at the time.
And Jeff Chang and other activists invited me and a delegation of artists to
go to the border with an organization called Culture strike at the time now
it's a center for cultural power And that's the first time I went and that up
(28:51):
that experience led me to do the episode of United States years later
and I even have the United States at the time when I went with them and I brought
Fabiana back into the episode because I was like I have to credit the person
who brought me here who had shared this with me and so I.
I think in the Bay, there's really a tradition of like people working across
cultural and racial lines in ways that doesn't exist all over this country.
(29:13):
And, you know, it does that, you know, the Black Panthers were working with
the Young Lords who were working with the I think it was the Young Americans,
the white lower class economic group.
And so I think there's just a tradition of the Bay Area of like,
if you can work across these cultural and racial lines that I'm that I also
has really helped me and has helped me in my life, too. to I'm glad I moved
(29:33):
here is all I'm saying. Like it really has helped me in ways I could not have imagined.
But yeah, you know, so I think that like certainly we need more of it and we
just need more generosity of spirit and forgiveness around the times when we
come together and there's rough edges and it doesn't work out the way we want to.
I think that's the other thing. It's like it's not I think we sort of,
you know, during 2020 when at post George Floyd's murder by the Minneapolis
(29:54):
police and there's all these Black Lives Matter protests around the country,
those were multiracial protests. process.
Then later that year, when there sort of became a focus on stop anti-Asian hate,
I became clear that like, I need
to step up and make sure the Asian community knows I'm a part of this.
And then there were some people online who represented themselves as Black,
I don't know if they were, who were like, they never show up for us,
(30:15):
why should we show up for them?
And I think you have to go like, well, if we show up for them,
won't they learn to show up for us?
Let's say they haven't showed up for us, which is not true. Yuri Kochiyama was
in Malcolm X's kitchen or he was in her kitchen building solidarity back in the day.
But also like who cares if they haven't shown up for us? Don't we need to,
again, this is all tied into this thing called white supremacy.
(30:35):
So the more we all show up for each, for ourselves and each other,
the more we will all show up for ourselves and each other.
Yeah, true. Thank you. And, and I'll just share one, you know,
fact that, you know, a lot of people think about immigration,
they think about Mexicans, right?
They think immigration is a Latino issue.
There are 619,000 undocumented Black Americans in this country.
(31:00):
And a lot of people don't think of immigration as a Black issue,
right? But it's a significant population in this country.
So yeah, again, I just think there's so many commonalities and things that if
we shut up and listen, as you said, we will start to see. So thank you for that.
Last question I want to ask you is, it's all over the news right now.
(31:22):
I keep hearing about this East Bay Film Collective. It sounds so exciting.
Again, another one of your hustles, right? Like, what is it?
Tell me, tell me what was behind creating it and what are you hoping to achieve?
So, yeah, I mean, this is definitely like a hustle that is about the community
less than it is about feeding my family.
I would say that because it's about like the Bay Area has given me so much.
(31:43):
It's time for me to think about how do I help? How do I help give back?
So, so I would say it started with me about a little over a year ago,
last summer, the mayor of Oakland reached out to me and said,
I want, what can I do to help the filmmaking community?
Cause there's like the, as small as the Oakland and the East Bay is, there are a lot of like.
Nationally known internationally known filmmakers here you know
(32:06):
there's more than you would expect who still live here so like you
know wherever i am i'm here ryan coogler lives
here boots riley lives here cheryl dunye lives
here there's just a lot of people who've who who have shifted culture and and
and there's people who are from here who used to live here who still always
come back to do things here rafael casal and david diggs being the most popular
(32:26):
so when the mayor reached out to me the first thing i did before i met with
the mayors i called my friend pastor michael mcbride who's a local activist.
Like he says, I don't say what would Jesus do? I say, what did Jesus do?
So he's, he's a social justice. He believes that part of being a pastor is social
justice out of the Martin Luther King jr. Tradition.
(32:46):
So, and the Malcolm X tradition. So he, I reached out to him.
I was like, I'm only meeting with the mayor if he's there.
Cause he's, he knows the community better than I do. And I don't want this to look like I'm,
I'm, I'm a fancy filmmaker and I want to i want
to get money from the city i'm like i bring him in to go how do
we make sure this helps the people and then we met with the mayor
and the mayor was like what do we do next and we said let us get some people together
(33:07):
and we reached out to all those people i just mentioned and more and and
unfamous filmmakers who live here and said hey we have an opportunity here if
we can and people have tried to do this before there's a moment when the wayans
brothers wanted to come up here and start a studio but the political operatives
of that day some of whom were still in office here didn't understand it they're
like why are we giving money to hollywood they didn't understand the fact that it was an investment.
(33:28):
And those people who, many of whom still work in politics here,
are like, understand it now. They get it. Because in that interim, Atlanta has happened.
Atlanta went from a place where like, why would you film there to like,
Tyler Perry has the biggest movie studio in the country in Atlanta now.
Yeah. So we were sort of, the model has been successful outside of LA now many times.
And so we, and Oakland has a tradition of arts and culture.
(33:50):
So it just makes sense here more than it makes sense in places like Oklahoma,
where they're also trying to do it. Right. So, yeah.
We spent the last year organizing. We decided to call ourselves the East Bay Film Collective.
And it is just, if you're a filmmaker or an artist maker here and you want to
be in, you're in. There's no application process currently.
And it's just, and we got Steph Curry and his company to join.
And so, which was great because Steph really believes, he really loves Oakland
(34:14):
because this is where he started his career.
And so, in the last year, since we started it, we got the city to pass this
tax incentive. And last night we had a party to celebrate it with all these
like local filmmakers to be like, now the hard work begins.
And it's just about making Oakland a more accessible and equitable place.
That's the key part that they're not going to do in other places.
(34:35):
They're not worried about equitable.
We want to make Oakland more accessible and more equitable for local filmmakers
and for filmmakers out of town.
And part of that is about tax incentives and rebates and incentives plans.
And the city passed it. And now the fun begins.
How do we make this happen? But yeah, it's just about for me,
it's about giving back to the community that has given so much to me.
(34:55):
That's incredible. Congratulations.
I mean, that's going to be a game changer, really. That's the goal.
That's the goal. And luckily, jobs and investments.
Yeah. Right. The way I think about it is like it's really a jobs program because
most of making film isn't being a director or a screenwriter or an actor.
It's catering. It's driving. It's truck driving. It's it's it's being an electrician
(35:17):
or a carpenter. Like, it's just a jobs program.
Hair and makeup, right? It's hair and makeup. Yeah, it's like it's not – it's
a lot of behind – and when you make films, a lot of those are union jobs.
So, like, the jobs pay better than if you were –.
If you were just doing hair and makeup at a salon, it'll pay you better if you
do it for a movie. So, yeah.
So, and are there specific stories that you're hoping to tell or that you're
(35:38):
hoping come out? Or is it just like agnostic?
You just want people to come make films? I mean, I think we really do want to
make sure the core of this is that it is not specific stories,
just specific types of stories.
So, yeah, I want somebody who's like, I want to be a filmmaker in Oakland to
to have a path to that goal.
So like right now if you're a kid going to
school in oakland and you want to be a filmmaker you sort
(36:00):
of still think the path is moving to la even though ryan coogler lives
here you know so we're saying oakland you have all the people here how do you
create infrastructure so that kid can go oh if i want to be a filmmaker i go
to the oakland film center and i fill out and i fill out a profile and i submit
my name and i go to a workshop there and i volunteer like what do you know and i get a summer job?
(36:22):
Like, how do you create the same way that if you back in the day,
if you lived in Detroit, you just got to, you know, at some point I'm,
I have an opportunity to get a job at making cars.
Cause that's what we do here. So how do we create, how do we have that here
in Oakland? It's like, we're, it's just the industry.
One of the industries that the town runs on. And if you're a kid,
it's accessible to you. It doesn't mean you're going to get an Oscar,
but maybe you can get a job. You know what I mean?
(36:44):
So yeah. Yeah. That's really important and exciting.
Kamau, Mal, thank you for spending time with me today. It's been such a pleasure
and a privilege to just have this time.
Thank you for sharing your story and thank you for the important and impactful work that you do.
I wish you incredible success with the East Bay Film Collective and everything,
all your other hustles too. I wish you incredible success with everything.
(37:06):
And I hope we have an opportunity to connect again. And I promise next time
I will not bring up Taco Bell once.
I really went too far down that Taco Bell hole.
Can we also not bring up Parola Rivera again? Yeah, no, I just,
I just, I just, I started yapping.
I promise I will never bring up those two names ever again. I appreciate it,
(37:27):
Kamau. Thank you so much. Thank you.
I want to thank our listeners for spending time with us. For more immigration
truths, visit us at nilk.org and freedomtothrive.com.
And make sure you subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes.
I look forward to continuing this conversation with all of you.
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