In 2011, before launching his acclaimed FX/FXX TV program, Totally Biased With W. Kamau Bell, W. Kamau Bell did his first stand-up show in Pittsburgh. Fans packed the unlikely confines of Downtown restaurant Papa J's Centro, and Bell still calls it "one of the most fun shows that I've ever had in my life." Today, Papa J's is gone, Totally Biased is off the air, and the Bay Area-based Bell is on tour. In advance of his Nov. 21 gig here at another nontraditional comedy venue, Garfield Artworks, the socio-political comic spoke to CP while driving from Oklahoma City to Austin, Texas, "just like Jay Z and Beyonce do it," he notes.
How has your relocation to California been?
I just moved back to Berkeley. The People's Republic of Berkeley. Which is so far to the left, sometimes I'm like, "Jesus, let's pull back a little bit." ... I lived in the Bay Area for like 15 years, so this is a return to the way I like things. I like being pulled further to the left. Berkeley just voted to tax sugar!
Any thoughts on the mid-term elections?
In this country, we like the pendulum to swing back and forth. After about six years, the people go, "We're just tired of looking at 'cha." And I think the problem with the left is we tend to only want to come out and vote when something exciting or cool is going to happen, something Instagrammable or Twitterable is happening in an election.
As I get older, I try not to get caught up in that pendulum, because it can drive you a little bit crazy.
Utah elected the nation's first black female Republican Congressperson.
Mia Love! I'm in that weird position where I'm still proud of her accomplishment even though I disagree with everything she probably believes. "I'm so proud of you — your politics are horrible! I couldn't be more proud of your horrible politics!"
Some say the Republican Party will tout her as proof of its diversity.
Name me the last time that has worked for a black Republican. Somewhere there's a room, and in that room sits Michael Steele, Allen West, Alan Keyes. Talking about, "But I was told ..." Herman Cain. "But they said I was going to be ..." Yeah, they sure did, didn't they? Ben Carson, he's actually probably going to be in that room shortly.
I understand intellectually you being a black Republican, because you might be fiscally conservative — and you might be socially conservative, even though as a black person, when has that ever worked out for us? But the minute you sort of want to allow yourself to become the face of Republicans as a black person? That's not even as long as you get to be Miss America. 'Cause after about six months, the party goes, "You know, that's enough of that black person. Let's get back to the white guys we like so much."
It was a rough mid-term for progressives in Congress, but a few red states did approve minimum-wage referendums.
The other night, Rachel Maddow — who I should note, is my patroness: when I get in trouble, I think of Rachel Maddow, and that makes me feel better — she did a whole show the other night about all the good things that happened on Tuesday that people were ignoring. Yes, the Republican Party has the House and the Senate, that is true. But things like the minimum wage passing, she said — even Republicans want these things.
There's a lot of good things that will come out of this that ultimately will help us way longer than who is in charge of the Senate and the House right now. John Boehner and Mitch McConnell — [sings] bah dah bam pa dah bup — that's a temporary thing. The minimum wage being raised, that's not gonna change.
Progressives have long looked to the federal government for change. Does it make more sense to work at the state level?
It's that old "think globally, act locally." You're always gonna have more power in your community than you have in the White House. That's probably even true of Barack Obama. He has more power in the bedroom than he has in the government.
Who would have thought when Barack Obama was elected that by his sixth year in office there'd be 33 states where gay marriage was legal? And that's not something that happened in the halls of the White House. Although when they asked, he said, "Ah, I'm not that bothered by it." ... And that actually gave people a lot of power to go out and fight the battles.
I think maybe his greatest accomplishment is maybe that, and "Maybe people should be paid more." He can't raise the minimum wage himself, but just by giving people permission to fight that battle, minimum wage is going up.
My days of being in love with Barack Obama are long past. [I like him,] but there's a lot of other stuff I wish he should have done, had done, would do differently. But I do think that his greatest accomplishments are going to be social movements that he doesn't actually do anything, but they happened on his watch, and he should get credit for that stuff.
It still amazes me how fast public opinion changed on same-sex marriage.
I think a lot of people thought they were against gay marriage but hadn't actually thought about it. Like as soon as you sat down and had a conversation with someone who was for marriage equality, they were like, "Oh! Yeah, I'm for it."
It's like a kid: "I-don't-like-carrots!" You ever had a carrot? "No." Exactly. Once you sat down and experienced talk of marriage equality, and what that means to people, you'd be like, "Why would I be in the way of that? Why would I want to be that asshole?"
There's certainly people in the country who want to be that asshole. But as progressive movements always work, those people eventually die off and their kids are a little bit less of assholes.
Last time you were in Pittsburgh, you had one infant daughter. Now you have two little kids.
My oldest daughter's 3-and-a-half, and my youngest daughter is two-and-a-half weeks old. Me being on the road right now is my first act of being a bad father. You want to knock that first bad-father thing out of the way, so they can't remember it.
How does being a father affect your act?
I kinda have to limit how much I talk about being a parent. I'm still talking about it from the perspective of race and gender — 'cause I have a daughter and I'm a man — but it's about my kid. It's not like suddenly just talking about something cute my kid did. It's from the perspective of, my wife's white, and I'm black, and we have two mixed-race kids, and what does that mean? What does it mean for her [the kid], and what does it mean for us, and for the world that we live in?
I find it to be a truism that comedians always get funnier when they have children. Because it sort of anchors them to the world in a different way. ... Funny comedians also don't have children. But any comedian that's funny is going to be funnier with a kid.
How's the tour going?
It's going really good. We did Columbia, Missouri, which even though it's two hours from Ferguson, Missouri, I said, "This is my Ferguson-area gig, it's as close as I want to get." And last night we did Oklahoma City, which was fantastic.
These are places that I wouldn't have been, "These are places I absolutely have to go as a comedian." But I'm really pushing my own limits to go to places that I wouldn't normally think to go, because I might find cool things happening. Like in Pittsburgh, nobody could have told me the corner of an Italian restaurant would be one of the most fun shows I ever did. So I've learned, just go out there and see what happens. I'm a black without borders.
Your Nov. 21 show here is also in an unconventional venue, an art gallery that hosts indie-music shows.
I like doing shows in places like that. I think you always get a very similar crowd in a comedy club, 'cause comedy clubs have their own audiences. Comedy fans will go anywhere for comedy. People who like you who aren't really comedy fans are more likely to go to a place that doesn't sound like "Chuckleheads." Amongst the progressives and liberals I hang out with, comedy clubs kind of have a bad name.
You're involved with a group called Race Forward.
They have a website called colorlines.com. They're a racial-justice organization. ... It's a really accessible, interesting way to read. ... It's a great way to go, "I like this Kamau guy. What is all this he's talking about?" Go to colorlines.com.
You also work with Hollaback, the group that fights street harassment.
I'm on their advisory panel, mostly because of a video I did when we did Totally Biased, about street harassment. A lot of [their interest is] because [the video is] a man talking to other men about street harassment. There's women in there too. But you just don't see that conversation happen a lot. Which is a lot of what we tried to do on Totally Biased: model conversations you don't see in a humorous way.
Hollaback was involved in some controversy recently over its hidden-camera video of a young woman walking through Manhattan.
I posted [the video] on Twitter. It was right in the middle of having a kid. I was unaware of the controversy. ... Suddenly I'm embroiled in the controversy.
The funny thing for me is, I'm the guy that thinks about race and racism all the time. I'm the guy who brings that up and people are like, "Why are you bringing that up now?" And nothing occurred to me about the fact that there was only men of color in the video. Because I think, as much as I'm a black man, now I'm probably 50 percent black guy and 50 percent dad of two daughters.
So I was watching that video as a dad of two daughters going, "Oh my God, the world is horrible, we're just going to have to burn the whole thing down and start over."
I felt like the people's need to critique that part of the video overwhelmed the pressing need to talk about street harassment. But I'm having that race discussion all the time. The street-harassment discussion isn't being had all the time.
