Latest / National Immigration Law Center Freedom to Thrive Podcast / Ep. #105: All Around Super Cool Human | W. Kamau Bell

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Ep. #105: All Around Super Cool Human | W. Kamau Bell · National Immigration Law Center Freedom to Thrive Podcast

• 0:00
  There are 11 million undocumented Americans living in the U.S.
• 0:04
  Today, give or take a couple hundred thousand at any given time,
• 0:07
  but that's a number that has held steady over the past 15 years,
• 0:10
  despite what the cable news programs might lead you to believe.
• 0:14
  And 80% of these 11 million have lived in the U.S. for 10 years or more.
• 0:19
  So these are our longtime neighbors, coworkers, fellow parishioners,
• 0:23
  taxpayers, friends. ends.
• 0:26
  In spite of this, we're hearing promises from the right of mass deportations
• 0:30
  of immigrants, which, according to a couple of polls, a majority of Americans now support.
• 0:36
  The last time the U.S. carried out mass deportations, people were racially profiled,
• 0:41
  including U.S. citizens.
• 0:43
  Communities were devastated, families separated, people died.
• 0:48
  Yet we've accepted the dehumanization of immigrants and are now okay with seeing
• 0:52
  them ripped from their homes, families, and communities.
• 0:55
  And let's be clear, when we allow for this kind of dehumanization,
• 0:59
  our own humanity is eroded.
• 1:01
  And when society accepts the dehumanization of a people, atrocities follow.
• 1:06
  That's not hyperbole. That is historical fact.
• 1:10
  We have got to bring down the anti-immigrant rhetoric and find our compassion
• 1:14
  and humanity for people coming to this country, seeking the freedom to thrive.
• 1:19
  My guest today is a master at getting to the heart of things and building bridges
• 1:24
  through his curiosity, dialogue, and understanding.
• 1:28
  That's something I think we can all learn from.
• 1:31
  And that is why I'm thrilled to be talking with W. Kamau Bell.
• 1:36
  Kamau started his career as a stand-up comic. He's done several comedy specials.
• 1:41
  In 2022, he made waves with his Showtime series, We Need to Talk About Cosby.
• 1:46
  He's an author of several books, including a memoir, The Awkward Thoughts of W. Kamau Bell.
• 1:51
  He's a four-time Emmy Award winner. He's just launched a film collective,
• 1:57
  which I can't wait to hear more about.
• 1:59
  He's a culture maker, a dad, and all-around super cool human.
• 2:04
  This is the NILC Freedom to Thrive podcast, powering pro-immigrant narratives, one story at a time.
• 2:11
  I'm Victoria Ballesteros, Executive Vice President of Narrative at the National
• 2:15
  Immigration Law Center.
• 2:18
  Kamau, welcome to the Freedom to Thrive podcast.
• 2:21
  It's so nice to see you. Thank you for having me. I'm going to add super cool
• 2:25
  human to my bio. I love it.
• 2:28
  You are a busy man, so I really appreciate you making time. You've got like
• 2:32
  seven hustles going on right now. Thank you for joining us.
• 2:35
  Yeah, you know how it is for us people of color, Black folks,
• 2:39
  Indigenous folks, you have to work twice as hard to get half as much.
• 2:41
  So figure out how to work seven times as hard.
• 2:44
  That's right. That is absolutely right. And I love how I'm just going to jump
• 2:47
  right in, in, in your memoir, you talk about both of your parents, right?
• 2:51
  Your mom and your dad with their, the inside hustles and the outside hustles, which I really loved.
• 2:55
  But, you know, so for me, you're a natural storyteller and someone who clearly
• 2:59
  isn't afraid to speak truth to power. Where does your courage come from?
• 3:05
  That's funny. When I hear that, I'm not afraid to speak truth to power.
• 3:07
  I think of the people that I admire who are way, way less afraid than I am.
• 3:12
  So I'm like, I'm always like, Ooh, I got to do a better job.
• 3:14
  If I'm going to, if I'm going to be associated with all these other folks,
• 3:17
  like I think about like my friend Fabiana Rodriguez,
• 3:19
  who I'm sure we'll talk about later, but like I'm surrounded by people in the
• 3:23
  Bay and in my life and who I follow online who are way more fearless than I am.
• 3:28
  And so those people, and you know, and also, you know, Angela Davis is from
• 3:32
  here. So I can't, you know, I got to meet and do an event with Angela Davis and I can't compare.
• 3:40
  Yes, I speak truth to power when it's like this lady was on the FBI's most wanted list.
• 3:44
  So if I can't be if I can't speak up, who am I? You know, well,
• 3:48
  you've done some really incredible things.
• 3:50
  And especially, you know, now with our country being so fractured politically,
• 3:54
  you know, I think it's a superpower what you do. You're so good at breaking
• 3:59
  through and creating conversations with people from all sides of the political spectrum.
• 4:03
  And even in the most tense of situations, you find a way to connect.
• 4:08
  We need more of that. How did you learn to do this?
• 4:12
  It's funny. I think a lot of it. So, you know, I write about this book.
• 4:15
  I think the first step is being an only child with a single mom who took me
• 4:21
  a lot of places that like kids wouldn't probably go if they had babysitters.
• 4:25
  Like my mom didn't always have money for a babysitter. So I was always around
• 4:28
  adults having conversations and I quickly learned that if I was quiet,
• 4:32
  I would hear more than if I tried to interrupt or sort of be the cute kid who's
• 4:36
  like, look at me dance, you know?
• 4:37
  So I learned from an early age that like, you know, I talked to my oldest daughter,
• 4:41
  both my kids, my oldest daughter about the art of ear hustling.
• 4:44
  Like when adults are talking, just be quiet.
• 4:46
  You'll hear a lot of interesting things, you know? So a lot of it will be boring,
• 4:48
  but you'll hear some interesting things. That's the first part. And then I think.
• 4:53
  As a stand-up comedian, your job is to sort of keep the ball up in the air,
• 4:56
  but also you're really paying attention to the audience because it's not just
• 4:59
  about the audience laughing.
• 5:00
  You can really tell how much they're paying attention and what they're responding
• 5:03
  to because there's also a lot of mm-hmm or mm or ooh or ah.
• 5:08
  So you're sort of always engaged in paying attention to people's reactions.
• 5:12
  Yeah. And I was lucky that I decided to move to the Bay Area just to be a part
• 5:17
  of the San Francisco comedy scene.
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  But once I got out of here from Chicago, Chicago at that point and still,
• 5:22
  but as a very segregated city, but even not just racially segregated,
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  but like culturally segregated and segregated by by lifestyles.
• 5:29
  And so, like, you only knew who you knew.
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  And once I moved out here, the Bay Area is just not that it's not as segregated
• 5:36
  across culture and race. So you you can stay with your own group.
• 5:39
  But if you just sort of move around a little bit, you'll bump into all sorts
• 5:42
  of different types of people. And I would say I learned from being around all
• 5:45
  sorts of types of people that the more I listened, the smarter I got.
• 5:50
  So if I'm hanging out with a bunch of East Bay vegan lesbians,
• 5:55
  and I'm not a vegan lesbian, and I was living in San Francisco,
• 5:57
  so I'm not even from the East Bay, there's a tendency to be like,
• 6:00
  here's my opinion on what you're talking about in this country.
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  And I learned that if you just shut up, you're going to learn a lot that you
• 6:06
  can then use when you talk to other people.
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  I love that. If you just shut up, you're going to learn a lot.
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  I think a lot of us need to pay attention to that. And it's so interesting.
• 6:16
  So you've been exposed to a lot from an early age.
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  And shout out to your mom and shout out to single moms everywhere,
• 6:25
  right, who are hustling and doing whatever they need to do for their kids.
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  Single mom right here, by the way.
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  Thank you for your service. Thank you. And side note, you know,
• 6:34
  I just want to say when you, and now I'm thinking about your show,
• 6:38
  The United Shades of America.
• 6:41
  When you pulled up and when you were meeting with the Grand Poobah of the KKK
• 6:45
  and you pulled up and, you know, and it's nighttime and it's almost like a scene
• 6:50
  from a movie that doesn't end well, right? And he's flashing his headlights at you.
• 6:54
  I was praying to the Virgen de Guadalupe that you would be okay, right?
• 6:57
  I was like so terrified for you. again that's that's
• 7:01
  courage that's that's not fearlessness to me that's courage right
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  or am i wrong again i want to you
• 7:07
  know the thing that i always thought that week first of all there's two things
• 7:11
  happening it was also a guy who needed a job so i guess so there's a part of
• 7:15
  me was like the courage of like i need to feed my family hey and this is my
• 7:18
  best shot so yeah you know there i don't have a lot of opportunities so i gotta
• 7:22
  make the most of this opportunity even if it's It's a crazy idea.
• 7:25
  And then the other thing I thought, and I actually said this in the episode,
• 7:30
  that it's kind of an immense privilege to be a Black man who goes to visit the Klan,
• 7:37
  he mostly knows he's going to be okay now sure anything could have happened but generally.
• 7:43
  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.
• 7:50
  Who got jumped by the kkk and pulled to the and pulled to into the forest and
• 7:55
  saw a burning cross i'm not the guy i'm not the black guy from oh from oh brother
• 7:58
  where art thou the black guitar player who gets to who is like about to be lynched
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  and so many black people who when they confronted front of the Klan,
• 8:06
  that was the last image they were going to see in their lives.
• 8:08
  So I was very aware of like, this is, yes, there's a, there's a,
• 8:12
  there's a risk here, but it is nowhere near the risk that black people took
• 8:15
  just be walking the streets in, in the South and Indiana in a pre 1970s America.
• 8:22
  Yeah. Yeah. But that, that is still there though. Right. In some places.
• 8:25
  No, it's still there. I'm just thinking specifically the KKK risk.
• 8:28
  No, there's still, I'm still a black man in America.
• 8:31
  I risk my life every time I leave my house and I don't, and I,
• 8:33
  you know, just on some like who knows what can happen as a black man in America.
• 8:37
  And even though I live in the Bay Area, there have been many black people assaulted
• 8:40
  by police officers and killed by police officers here.
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  So there's no there's you're still a black man in America.
• 8:45
  But I also don't want to act like
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  I'm I don't want to put too much on me meeting the Klan in 2016 or 2015.
• 8:52
  Right. Yes, it was crazy. Yes, I was nervous. But also like it's it's you have to also go.
• 8:58
  This is this is actually weirdly a privilege that I'm allowed to do this,
• 9:01
  you know, and then walk away. And then walk away. As you said, yeah.
• 9:04
  Well, let's talk about your show a little bit more. You won three Emmys.
• 9:08
  Actually, I won three Emmys for that show. I have four, but I was trying to
• 9:13
  remember. Oh, nice. I won three for that show, yeah.
• 9:14
  So you're a four-time Emmy Award winner and three Emmys for United States of
• 9:18
  America, which, by the way, is now streaming on HBO Max.
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  Yes, it is. On that show, you visited the U.S.-Mexico border.
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  You spent time with immigrants and refugees.
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  You talked with Venezolanos in Florida. You focused on immigrants and their
• 9:32
  experiences And then walk away. experiences in a number of different episodes.
• 9:35
  What did you learn from meeting with those communities and those visits?
• 9:39
  So I learned a lot. First of all, I, you know, I mean, I think the first episode
• 9:43
  we did, we did an episode in, in, that was in, in, in East LA and where we talked
• 9:49
  about where it was the first episode we did in season one. I got to hang out
• 9:52
  with the band Las Cafetaras.
• 9:53
  That's right. I saw you dance. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They got me to dance.
• 9:57
  That was the first episode where we learned if Kamau dances, people pay attention.
• 10:01
  Not that I I dance well, but my wife's a dancer, so I've got,
• 10:04
  I picked up some steps maybe.
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  But so, you know, I remember in that episode when I was talking to Hector from
• 10:10
  Las Cafeteras and he goes, there's this sort of, Denise, there was this moment
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  where they were explaining the experience of being Chicano. And I was like, wait.
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  Am I a Chicano? Now I'm not, but just the immigrant there, you know, yes,
• 10:24
  the immigrant experience is different than the experience of being the descendants
• 10:27
  of slavery of enslaved Africans, but there's also overlap where you go,
• 10:31
  Oh, I can connect to this more than I realized that we're both sort of trying
• 10:35
  to figure out how do I connect?
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  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.
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  And how do I find myself in this America, in this vert, in this current era of America.
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  So a lot of that, I found a lot of like connection points, which I think is important.
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  And then also, you know, it's like you, there's also a lot that I don't have to experience.
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  A lot of, when I'm in situations like this, I feel like I'm not explaining this to you.
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  I mean, what I learned was the idea of living in a mixed status household.
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  Now that's not a thing that black people generally have to figure out, have to deal with.
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  And so to realize that like, I think to uninformed Americans will say that That
• 11:15
  they just think of like there's undocumented people and there's people with
• 11:18
  citizenship and that they don't understand that like, no,
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  there are there are single households where there's people of all different
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  levels of status of citizenship or no citizenship.
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  And they all have to work every day to provide for their family.
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  You know, so there's not I think we don't think of these things as being connected
• 11:34
  and how it affects not that it should matter, but how it affects you think of
• 11:38
  undocumented people as being over there.
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  No, they are actually living in spaces and in communities with people who are
• 11:44
  documented or who are citizens, and they have to figure it out.
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  So I think that was one of the big things I learned.
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  And then the economics of immigration and how immigrants start more businesses.
• 11:55
  You know, we think of like there's this narrative that has been very well sold
• 11:58
  of immigrants stealing our jobs.
• 12:01
  And really the fact is that immigrants, many immigrants come here and go,
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  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.
• 12:11
  So I think that's something that isn't said enough that no immigrants,
• 12:14
  you know, very fundamentally, you know, and I say this as someone who does not
• 12:19
  have an immigrant background, you know, I want to be clear about that.
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  But America is only America because of immigrants coming here and doing a lot
• 12:27
  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.
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  So I think that, what's more American than the restaurant Taco Bell?
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  You know what I mean? It's like, and that's now that was not invented by,
• 12:44
  by immigrants, but it is like the Americanization of food that was brought here
• 12:49
  from Mexico. You know what I mean?
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  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.
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  People are defining America in a very narrow and violent way that isn't actually
• 13:03
  an America that they want if you were to sit them down and talk to them about it.
• 13:06
  Okay. If we take all those things away, this is the America you're left with.
• 13:09
  Do you want that? I don't think they
• 13:11
  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
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  because we are not claiming Taco Bell.
• 13:21
  No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
• 13:24
  no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
• 13:26
  no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, wow, these tacos are good.
• 13:28
  I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm a white man. I'm going to stop my own restaurant
• 13:31
  and totally fuck up the recipes.
• 13:35
  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.
• 13:40
  He wouldn't have the ability to mess up those recipes if he hadn't,
• 13:44
  if there hadn't been Mexican immigrants going, would you like to try taco?
• 13:48
  So like, you know. Yeah. Well, I, you know, I appreciate you,
• 13:52
  you naming that there are a lot of similarities in our experiences, right?
• 13:56
  They're not the same you know there are unique challenges and experiences
• 13:59
  to to different communities but if we sit
• 14:02
  down and talk with folks and listen as you said shut up
• 14:05
  and listen we will see that there's just we have so much in common all of us
• 14:10
  right yeah and the america part just to sort of i'm really going hard on this
• 14:13
  taco bell thing the thing that makes it strictly american is that that business
• 14:17
  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
• 14:28
  the way that a white man can.
• 14:29
  So that's the part that, if I was going to say, that's the same that happens to Black people too.
• 14:33
  We have lots of good ideas that America goes, we'll take that,
• 14:36
  but we don't always get the credit or even more importantly,
• 14:39
  the cash for that idea. Yeah.
• 14:42
  Is there anything that you, in your observation, think that we can or should
• 14:48
  be doing to be more welcoming of immigrants?
• 14:51
  Me and you, I think, are doing a great job. But as a society, I think we just...
• 14:56
  It's just really... The thing I wanted with United Shades was like,
• 15:01
  look, most of this audience is not going to get the opportunity to travel to
• 15:05
  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
• 15:13
  the books, but like what taking in media that is not just by your,
• 15:16
  your usual suspects in your life, you know, you can, you can learn more about this country.
• 15:22
  So, or more about the world. Like I've spent a lot of time over the last month
• 15:27
  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.
• 15:33
  I don't want to, I don't want to go to England, but it tells me a lot about
• 15:36
  how elections work all around the world, that they can inform my understanding
• 15:40
  of America's electoral process.
• 15:42
  And so for me, I think be more curious and less judgmental.
• 15:47
  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
• 15:57
  and racism and white supremacy.
• 16:00
  That's just how I make a living because that's apparently the lane I fell into.
• 16:03
  But I'm sort of like agnostically curious about everything. thing.
• 16:06
  And I would encourage people to be more curious and get outside of your own
• 16:11
  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.
• 16:16
  I can just go out the street, go outside and take a left instead of taking a right.
• 16:20
  And I will find a whole new version of this experience.
• 16:23
  Now, some people live in places where there's just not a lot there physically,
• 16:27
  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
• 16:38
  the experience of immigrants.
• 16:41
  You can actually Google what is the experience of immigrants and then find sources
• 16:45
  that are actually immigrants talking and not some person who's not an immigrant
• 16:51
  explaining to you the immigrant experience.
• 16:52
  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...
• 16:59
  Immigrants tell you what it is to be an immigrant in this country.
• 17:01
  And, you know, and not just one immigrant, because not every immigrant can have the same experience.
• 17:05
  I think people go, I think that's where the Republican Party sort of builds their whole thing.
• 17:09
  Look, we got this black guy named Tim Scott. He says there's no racism,
• 17:12
  so there must be no racism.
• 17:14
  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
• 17:22
  News tell you what the experience is, doesn't mean you're getting a full picture.
• 17:25
  Sorry, I'm just laughing at the mention of Geraldo Rivera.
• 17:31
  Yeah. So, okay. So be more curious, less judgmental. I love that.
• 17:36
  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.
• 17:43
  And then the last thing I heard, yeah, don't want to. I mean,
• 17:46
  of course we want to stay in our comfort zones, right? But we have to challenge
• 17:49
  ourselves and stretch ourselves.
• 17:50
  And the last thing that you said that I really love is amplifying the voices
• 17:54
  of directly impacted communities, right?
• 17:57
  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.
• 18:05
  So really appreciate you highlighting that.
• 18:07
  Let's shift now, if that's okay, because you've done so many things and I want
• 18:11
  to talk about a number of them.
• 18:12
  And so last year, you and your wife, I believe, put out a documentary called
• 18:17
  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.
• 18:27
  What was the reaction to the documentary, and did any of that surprise you?
• 18:32
  Oh, yeah, there was a lot of discussion.
• 18:34
  Yeah. Yeah, I mean, so, I mean, first of all, it is, you know,
• 18:39
  there's a i think there's there's there's been i just talked
• 18:41
  so i just talked to somebody last night who said that they
• 18:45
  basically it was like a a dad who was
• 18:47
  like thank you for that documentary i cried all the way through
• 18:50
  it and so i've heard from a lot of people where and people who aren't even who
• 18:55
  aren't in mixed families mixed race families that that hearing directly from
• 18:59
  the kids just feels different than if it would have been like hi i'm w come
• 19:02
  out but i'm going to tell you about mixed race people yeah which i'm not a mixed
• 19:04
  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.
• 19:12
  If there's any strength of the film is that we get, I get out of the way and
• 19:15
  let the kids speak for themselves and then work to sort of highlight them in
• 19:18
  their best version of themselves from down how we filmed it to all the B-roll
• 19:22
  we used and to letting them,
• 19:24
  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
• 19:32
  an hour long. So it really does literally leave room for discussion because
• 19:36
  after the after the hours up, you can turn to your people and have discussions,
• 19:40
  which I hear happens a lot.
• 19:41
  And it's the first time I've ever made anything that was really family centered.
• 19:44
  So it's like appropriate for families to watch together.
• 19:47
  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
• 19:54
  it's the greatest thing for people to stumble across on a United flight.
• 19:57
  Oh, it's only an hour. I'll watch it. And then I get all these messages like
• 20:00
  are tagged in things on Instagram.
• 20:03
  I'm crying on this plane watching this film. So I think that it's weird to think
• 20:07
  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
• 20:14
  go, oh, and it's a thousand percent.
• 20:16
  So if you're in the documentary section, it's the first thing you see because numbers are first.
• 20:19
  That's how I found it was on a United flight. I went to the documentary section.
• 20:22
  I was like, oh, that's my film. And I watched it on a plane because you got
• 20:25
  to be your own best supporter.
• 20:26
  But then there's a lot of people who have issues with it because it doesn't cover everything.
• 20:31
  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.
• 20:36
  So if you're a 50 year old who had, who did not have, who is not as optimistic
• 20:40
  as these kids are and you're mixed race, I totally get it.
• 20:42
  And it doesn't cover every version of mixed race parenting.
• 20:45
  So I totally get that. Like it is not perfect, but I hope because it did win
• 20:50
  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.
• 20:56
  And hopefully most of those people will be mixed race people themselves.
• 20:59
  I mean, the reason why I tried not to be on camera in the film is because it
• 21:02
  was like, I'm trying to center the voices of mixed race people.
• 21:05
  And I didn't want to look like the kind of person who's like,
• 21:07
  my wife's not even on, you know, on like, she's not even people like,
• 21:12
  why don't you interview your wife?
• 21:13
  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
• 21:19
  our family, you know, that my kids, yes, but I don't want to be like,
• 21:23
  and we're the ones who have figured it out.
• 21:24
  I want to center other families who can talk about this. So it has definitely
• 21:28
  opened a lot of discussion and I've heard from people and I've had discussions
• 21:32
  that were like, I love it.
• 21:33
  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.
• 21:39
  So, but overwhelmingly people have appreciated it.
• 21:42
  That's great. And again, you're
• 21:43
  centering the voices of directly affected individuals, which I love.
• 21:48
  So, you know, you also have talked about Mobile, Alabama, which is where you're
• 21:55
  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,
• 22:01
  so, and I didn't say this earlier.
• 22:02
  One of the reasons that I've learned to be around lots of different people is
• 22:06
  because I would live with my mom in like the north in Boston or in Indianapolis or Chicago.
• 22:11
  And then every summer I'd go to the south and live with my dad for three months.
• 22:14
  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?
• 22:21
  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, but one of the things that you've said,
• 22:24
  and this is from your, from the show, again, going back to the United States
• 22:28
  of America, you've talked about the multiracial community there.
• 22:31
  There's a lot of different perspectives. Is there an immigrant,
• 22:34
  you know, population demographic there? And what's that like?
• 22:38
  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,
• 22:42
  we're talking about in the seventies now, because I'm very, very old.
• 22:45
  I'm older than you. Oh, really?
• 22:48
  Yes. Oh, good brown doesn't... Jeanette, right here. yeah good
• 22:50
  look at this look at this good brown won't let you down as i say good black
• 22:54
  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
• 23:03
  there's white people there did not i did not see other types of people and then
• 23:07
  as an adult when i would go back i did notice that there were,
• 23:10
  now some of this is because i was adult but i do think literally there had been
• 23:13
  more immigrants immigration to the south because you know how it is like the
• 23:17
  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
• 23:24
  find out they are okay with you there, then you tell the other people of your
• 23:27
  type, come to this community.
• 23:30
  Like, hey. And sometimes it's, like, places where you're like,
• 23:33
  why are there so many Indian people in this southern town?
• 23:36
  It's because one Indian family went and was like, hey, they didn't hate us. Yeah.
• 23:40
  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.
• 23:52
  So this kid is like a quarter. He's like, I don't know how the math all breaks
• 23:55
  up, but she's a mixed race person and she has Korean grandparents. parents.
• 23:58
  And so, and that's not a thing I met when I didn't know anybody.
• 24:01
  I didn't know any Koreans when I was a kid in Alabama.
• 24:04
  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
• 24:14
  that we're allowed to check the papers of, of Brown people, Mobile,
• 24:18
  Alabama also put out a similar law.
• 24:20
  Cause they're like, we don't like somebody being more racist than us.
• 24:22
  So there are certainly a lot more Mexican immigrants and Central American immigrants
• 24:28
  there than when I was growing up.
• 24:30
  So yeah, there's definitely, but like, you know, there are, and some of it you
• 24:35
  see, like when I grew up in Mobile, there was one Chinese restaurant, that was it.
• 24:38
  And now there's a lot, there's a lot more, the sign of more immigrant,
• 24:42
  of more immigrant population being there is a lot more restaurants that are not just fried fish.
• 24:48
  Yeah. See, I would never have have thought that i
• 24:51
  mean i've never been to alabama but i just i
• 24:54
  wouldn't have thought that there was a you know i'm going
• 24:57
  to introduce you to some to some some people who have southern
• 25:00
  accents you wouldn't expect to have southern accents yeah there's definitely yeah
• 25:03
  and you know some of it is like yeah there's just lots of reasons why people
• 25:07
  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
• 25:20
  man whose South Asian family had moved to the South.
• 25:23
  So there's just... It's funny. It has changed dramatically in my lifetime down there. Yeah.
• 25:27
  That sounds beautiful. Okay, so I'm going to shift again because I want to talk
• 25:32
  about this book. Oh, yeah. There we go.
• 25:34
  Anti-Racist Activity Book. Do the work. I love this. I think...
• 25:39
  I think, is it true that you're doing a children's version of this? Yeah.
• 25:43
  Me and Kate Schatz, who's my co-author, or I'm her co-author,
• 25:46
  however it goes, we're working on a children's version of the book.
• 25:49
  That is going to be very different because kids don't want to hear do the work.
• 25:54
  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.
• 26:05
  And some of this is about shaming you into doing the work. Whereas you don't it's not with kids.
• 26:11
  It's about here's some information that you should have and that you're going to be find interesting.
• 26:14
  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.
• 26:23
  There's crossword puzzle. I mean, it just it's it's very user friendly.
• 26:27
  I'll put it that way. We try to like approach it from like once we decide to make it a workbook.
• 26:31
  The idea was to do make the activities as diverse as possible because there
• 26:35
  are going to be the super nerds who i love who are going to start from the beginning
• 26:38
  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
• 26:43
  this crossword you know so and we made it diverse in the fact that like
• 26:47
  all there's like 15 or 16 all the graphic designers and artists in the book
• 26:53
  are artists of color and black artists so so we really even like it's not even
• 26:59
  just one we didn't just hire one artist of color. We hired 15,
• 27:02
  16 different artists of color.
• 27:03
  And Diane Holton is the black woman who was the art director of the book who pulled it all together.
• 27:07
  So it's really like we wanted to do the work while we were actually telling people to do the work.
• 27:12
  That's very well done. I love it. And, you know, I have this reflection as I'm
• 27:16
  looking at this book that.
• 27:18
  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
• 27:31
  from the systems of oppression that historically have targeted Black Americans in this country.
• 27:38
  So why aren't we all working together? Why don't we all come together,
• 27:42
  right? Black, brown, let's bring in everybody.
• 27:45
  Like, why are we not working together to fix these issues? I mean,
• 27:47
  I think you have to, I think, first of all, I think more of us are working together than we think about.
• 27:52
  I think there's more in as general in America, as always happens in America,
• 27:56
  there's more focus on the division than the coming together.
• 27:58
  So like, you know, I mean, to be quite honest, when, when you reached out for
• 28:03
  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.
• 28:10
  I'm cool with, I should do that. Like, it was just like, that's,
• 28:13
  I should do this because this is because this is doing the work,
• 28:15
  you know? So, you know, so I think the more you start to recognize that,
• 28:19
  like, it's easy to say no when you're outside of your comfort zone.
• 28:22
  And I'm just always like, it's better to say yes, generally, if you can.
• 28:25
  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
• 28:34
  more about this than I would is because my friend Fabiano Rodriguez,
• 28:37
  who didn't know me, we weren't friends at the time.
• 28:40
  And Jeff Chang and other activists invited me and a delegation of artists to
• 28:45
  go to the border with an organization called Culture strike at the time now
• 28:47
  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
• 28:55
  and I even have the United States at the time when I went with them and I brought
• 28:58
  Fabiana back into the episode because I was like I have to credit the person
• 29:01
  who brought me here who had shared this with me and so I.
• 29:04
  I think in the Bay, there's really a tradition of like people working across
• 29:08
  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
• 29:16
  the Young Lords who were working with the I think it was the Young Americans,
• 29:19
  the white lower class economic group.
• 29:22
  And so I think there's just a tradition of the Bay Area of like,
• 29:24
  if you can work across these cultural and racial lines that I'm that I also
• 29:29
  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.
• 29:36
  But yeah, you know, so I think that like certainly we need more of it and we
• 29:40
  just need more generosity of spirit and forgiveness around the times when we
• 29:43
  come together and there's rough edges and it doesn't work out the way we want to.
• 29:47
  I think that's the other thing. It's like it's not I think we sort of,
• 29:49
  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,
• 29:57
  those were multiracial protests. process.
• 29:59
  Then later that year, when there sort of became a focus on stop anti-Asian hate,
• 30:04
  I became clear that like, I need
• 30:06
  to step up and make sure the Asian community knows I'm a part of this.
• 30:09
  And then there were some people online who represented themselves as Black,
• 30:13
  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?
• 30:16
  And I think you have to go like, well, if we show up for them,
• 30:18
  won't they learn to show up for us?
• 30:20
  Let's say they haven't showed up for us, which is not true. Yuri Kochiyama was
• 30:24
  in Malcolm X's kitchen or he was in her kitchen building solidarity back in the day.
• 30:29
  But also like who cares if they haven't shown up for us? Don't we need to,
• 30:32
  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,
• 30:39
  the more we will all show up for ourselves and each other.
• 30:41
  Yeah, true. Thank you. And, and I'll just share one, you know,
• 30:46
  fact that, you know, a lot of people think about immigration,
• 30:50
  they think about Mexicans, right?
• 30:52
  They think immigration is a Latino issue.
• 30:54
  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,
• 31:02
  right? But it's a significant population in this country.
• 31:06
  So yeah, again, I just think there's so many commonalities and things that if
• 31:11
  we shut up and listen, as you said, we will start to see. So thank you for that.
• 31:17
  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.
• 31:26
  Again, another one of your hustles, right? Like, what is it?
• 31:30
  Tell me, tell me what was behind creating it and what are you hoping to achieve?
• 31:33
  So, yeah, I mean, this is definitely like a hustle that is about the community
• 31:37
  less than it is about feeding my family.
• 31:39
  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?
• 31:46
  So, so I would say it started with me about a little over a year ago,
• 31:51
  last summer, the mayor of Oakland reached out to me and said,
• 31:54
  I want, what can I do to help the filmmaking community?
• 31:57
  Cause there's like the, as small as the Oakland and the East Bay is, there are a lot of like.
• 32:03
  Nationally known internationally known filmmakers here you know
• 32:06
  there's more than you would expect who still live here so like you
• 32:09
  know wherever i am i'm here ryan coogler lives
• 32:11
  here boots riley lives here cheryl dunye lives
• 32:14
  here there's just a lot of people who've who who have shifted culture and and
• 32:19
  and there's people who are from here who used to live here who still always
• 32:22
  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
• 32:30
  the mayors i called my friend pastor michael mcbride who's a local activist.
• 32:34
  Like he says, I don't say what would Jesus do? I say, what did Jesus do?
• 32:39
  So he's, he's a social justice. He believes that part of being a pastor is social
• 32:44
  justice out of the Martin Luther King jr. Tradition.
• 32:46
  So, and the Malcolm X tradition. So he, I reached out to him.
• 32:49
  I was like, I'm only meeting with the mayor if he's there.
• 32:51
  Cause he's, he knows the community better than I do. And I don't want this to look like I'm,
• 32:56
  I'm, I'm a fancy filmmaker and I want to i want
• 32:58
  to get money from the city i'm like i bring him in to go how do
• 33:02
  we make sure this helps the people and then we met with the mayor
• 33:04
  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
• 33:10
  unfamous filmmakers who live here and said hey we have an opportunity here if
• 33:14
  we can and people have tried to do this before there's a moment when the wayans
• 33:18
  brothers wanted to come up here and start a studio but the political operatives
• 33:21
  of that day some of whom were still in office here didn't understand it they're
• 33:24
  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,
• 33:31
  are like, understand it now. They get it. Because in that interim, Atlanta has happened.
• 33:36
  Atlanta went from a place where like, why would you film there to like,
• 33:38
  Tyler Perry has the biggest movie studio in the country in Atlanta now.
• 33:42
  Yeah. So we were sort of, the model has been successful outside of LA now many times.
• 33:47
  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,
• 33:53
  where they're also trying to do it. Right. So, yeah.
• 33:56
  We spent the last year organizing. We decided to call ourselves the East Bay Film Collective.
• 34:00
  And it is just, if you're a filmmaker or an artist maker here and you want to
• 34:03
  be in, you're in. There's no application process currently.
• 34:06
  And it's just, and we got Steph Curry and his company to join.
• 34:10
  And so, which was great because Steph really believes, he really loves Oakland
• 34:14
  because this is where he started his career.
• 34:17
  And so, in the last year, since we started it, we got the city to pass this
• 34:21
  tax incentive. And last night we had a party to celebrate it with all these
• 34:25
  like local filmmakers to be like, now the hard work begins.
• 34:29
  And it's just about making Oakland a more accessible and equitable place.
• 34:33
  That's the key part that they're not going to do in other places.
• 34:35
  They're not worried about equitable.
• 34:36
  We want to make Oakland more accessible and more equitable for local filmmakers
• 34:40
  and for filmmakers out of town.
• 34:42
  And part of that is about tax incentives and rebates and incentives plans.
• 34:46
  And the city passed it. And now the fun begins.
• 34:50
  How do we make this happen? But yeah, it's just about for me,
• 34:52
  it's about giving back to the community that has given so much to me.
• 34:55
  That's incredible. Congratulations.
• 34:58
  I mean, that's going to be a game changer, really. That's the goal.
• 35:01
  That's the goal. And luckily, jobs and investments.
• 35:04
  Yeah. Right. The way I think about it is like it's really a jobs program because
• 35:07
  most of making film isn't being a director or a screenwriter or an actor.
• 35:12
  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.
• 35:19
  Hair and makeup, right? It's hair and makeup. Yeah, it's like it's not – it's
• 35:23
  a lot of behind – and when you make films, a lot of those are union jobs.
• 35:27
  So, like, the jobs pay better than if you were –.
• 35:30
  If you were just doing hair and makeup at a salon, it'll pay you better if you
• 35:33
  do it for a movie. So, yeah.
• 35:34
  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?
• 35:40
  You just want people to come make films? I mean, I think we really do want to
• 35:43
  make sure the core of this is that it is not specific stories,
• 35:46
  just specific types of stories.
• 35:47
  So, yeah, I want somebody who's like, I want to be a filmmaker in Oakland to
• 35:52
  to have a path to that goal.
• 35:54
  So like right now if you're a kid going to
• 35:57
  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
• 36:03
  here you know so we're saying oakland you have all the people here how do you
• 36:08
  create infrastructure so that kid can go oh if i want to be a filmmaker i go
• 36:11
  to the oakland film center and i fill out and i fill out a profile and i submit
• 36:16
  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,
• 36:25
  if you lived in Detroit, you just got to, you know, at some point I'm,
• 36:28
  I have an opportunity to get a job at making cars.
• 36:31
  Cause that's what we do here. So how do we create, how do we have that here
• 36:34
  in Oakland? It's like, we're, it's just the industry.
• 36:36
  One of the industries that the town runs on. And if you're a kid,
• 36:39
  it's accessible to you. It doesn't mean you're going to get an Oscar,
• 36:42
  but maybe you can get a job. You know what I mean?
• 36:44
  So yeah. Yeah. That's really important and exciting.
• 36:47
  Kamau, Mal, thank you for spending time with me today. It's been such a pleasure
• 36:51
  and a privilege to just have this time.
• 36:53
  Thank you for sharing your story and thank you for the important and impactful work that you do.
• 36:58
  I wish you incredible success with the East Bay Film Collective and everything,
• 37:02
  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
• 37:09
  I will not bring up Taco Bell once.
• 37:11
  I really went too far down that Taco Bell hole.
• 37:14
  Can we also not bring up Parola Rivera again? Yeah, no, I just,
• 37:18
  I just, I just, I started yapping.
• 37:22
  I promise I will never bring up those two names ever again. I appreciate it,
• 37:27
  Kamau. Thank you so much. Thank you.
• 37:30
  I want to thank our listeners for spending time with us. For more immigration
• 37:34
  truths, visit us at nilk.org and freedomtothrive.com.
• 37:38
  And make sure you subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes.
• 37:41
  I look forward to continuing this conversation with all of you.