On Feb. 1, around 6 p.m., the Office of Inclusion and Diversity (OID) and the Cross-Cultural Center for Excellence (CCCE) hosted comedian and television show personality W. Kamau Bell in the Student Center Ballroom. Bell stepped onto the stage and lit up the room with his show “The W. Kamau Bell Curve: Ending Racism in About One Hour,” in which he discussed American society with an interrogating, comedic spin on common (mis)conceptions about race and racism in America.
The place was packed. By 5:40, the third level of the Student Center was filled with people ready to pile into the ballroom. Allen Sutton (pictured in below in the first picture), director of the CCCE, introduced the purpose of the talk, and was then followed by audience singing a song by James Weldon Johnson, lead by Harold A. Frank Society (HAFS) Treasurer Jarrel Fayer (pictured in the second picture below).
Then President of BSU Kayla Warner (pictured below) spoke wonderfully about equal rights and diversity on campus, a statement that appeared in The Plainsman on Thursday.
Finally, President of HAFS Jay Maye (pictured below) introduced Bell and the initiative of HAFS on Auburn’s campus.
The start was delayed because there had to be more chairs brought in to accommodate the large amount of people who attended Bell’s show.
And what a show it was. From the beginning, Bell created an environment in which he sought to challenge the majority white audience’s perception of race by questioning the comfort in which people discussed racism—and how that comfort blocked people from having honest and productive discussions about racism and how to challenge it.
Bell held no punches, and in a series of video, picture, and text slides brought to light common and often subtle instances of racism that occur throughout America on a daily basis. He discussed the importance of white people to recognize their whiteness and how it continues to affect and harm people of color in American society. His joking manner concerning racism was punctuated by harsh realities: discussing how cruel stereotypes of Native Americans and African Americans have led to their being used as offensive sports mascots or being killed by the police and civilians for existing, respectively.
One of his most effective moments was his breaking down of the importance of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and the rhetoric opposing and surrounding it. BLM, founded by Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi after teenager Trayvon Martin’s murder and the subsequent acquittal of his murderer, fights for the equal rights and equal treatment of black people within the American system of justice as well as within American society as a whole. As they say on their website, “We are committed to collectively, lovingly and courageously working vigorously for freedom and justice for Black people and, by extension all people” (BLM).
And yet, as many black activists and as Bell pointed out last night, the phrase “black lives matter” is often met with “all lives matter” or even “white lives matter”—and as Bell said, the phrase “all lives matter” didn’t come about until Garza, Cullors, and Tometi said, “Black lives matter.”
Overall, the show was a great experience—funny, critical, and a wonderful start to Black History Month at Auburn. Hopefully, this show can be one of the small steps to have a much needed discussion about racism on Auburn’s campus.
Throughout the rest of the month, BSU, OID, and CCCE will be hosting other events, like famous Blue Eye-Brown Eye speaker Jane Elliot, who comes Feb. 8.