Loading ...W. Kamau Bell explores Detroit's Arab community for CNN's 'United Shades of America'
(Photo: United Shades of America)
By: Julie Hinds
Source: Detroit Free Press
Sitting in Detroit’s Dilla’s Delights doughnut shop, W. Kamau Bell is talking to a friend days after Donald Trump was elected president.
They’re both comics and old pals, so the conversation should be relaxed and funny. But as Zahra Noorbakhsh, cohost of the podcast “Good Muslim, Bad Muslim” starts talking about how she feels, things get somber.
“When I texted you, I was worried … about my family,” says Noorbakhsh, breaking into tears as she recalls reaching out to her friend after Trump’s victory.
That’s just one scene from the episode of “United Shades of America” airing at 10 p.m. Sunday. The CNN docu-series takes Bell across the country to explore life in communities facing challenging circumstances.
This week, Bell visits Dearborn and Hamtramck to talk to members of metro Detroit’s large, thriving Arab-American and Muslim-American communities. They’re part of the fabric of the region, and yet they can face stereotyping that distorts the reality of their everyday lives.
Where others might come to metro Detroit to search out conflict, Bell is in search of basic understanding. He covers obvious facts: Not all Arabs are Muslims and not all Muslims are Arabs, for example. He also takes lessons in how to pray, attends a post-election rally in front of the Hamtramck Public Library, talks to a self-described feminist about her choice to wear a hijab and queries a Hamtramck resident who is upset about the sound of Muslim calls to prayer.
In a very “United Shades” moment, Bell brings up the ringing of bells at Christian churches, another religious-themed noise. There’s no arguing or disrespect as they talk it over, just an invitation to look at things from a different perspective.
In a phone interview, Bell says that the tone of his Emmy-nominated CNN series is about communicating, not pontificating. “Whatever we think, can we have a conversation? That’s what I’m trying to get to. Humor is a great way to lubricate a conversation. It keeps it going.”
Bell’s home base is Berkeley, Calif., but he’ll be back in Detroit on June 18 to perform stand-up at the Fillmore Detroit. He’s considered one of the best political comedians around, but that label is too limiting because Bell finds the humor in examining many aspects of life in a reflective, but hilarious, way.
The comic is also a busy podcaster and author. His first book hit stores this month, and the title gives some idea of his embrace of culture clashes and connections. It’s called “The Awkward Thoughts of W. Kamau Bell: Tales of a 6′ 4″, African American, Heterosexual, Cisgender, Left-Leaning, Asthmatic, Black and Proud Blerd, Mama’s Boy, Dad, and Stand-Up Comedian.”
Bell is not afraid to speak with those with whom he vehemently disagrees if it offers a way to expose reality. He interviewed members of the Ku Klux Klan in his first season. As he wrote about it on CNN’s website: “Many people still don’t get that the KKK is out there, today, in our country. Whenever I tell people that (I) visited the Ku Klux Klan for the show, many people’s first reaction is, ‘I didn’t even know they still existed!’ ”
But he’s not about creating false equivalencies or, like cable news, having vast panels of opposing viewpoints just for the sake of disagreement. For Sunday’s episode, filmed in November in the wake of Trump’s election, he admits that he left one interview on the cutting-room floor.
It was with an ideologue who spoke only in prepared statements. “It was just talking points and rhetoric and fake stats and fake news and opinion and sort of just demagoguery and hatefulness, and not fun. (He) didn’t like it when I laughed. Sort of, like, told me to stop laughing. It was like: ‘Well, then you’re not going to make the show. Good for you for lecturing me, but I have the control over the edit room.’ ”
Bell says he wasn’t prepare for Noorbakhsh, an Iranian American from California, to open up so quickly on camera about her fears of what a Trump administration could mean. He says he thinks it became a defining aspect of the episode.
He hopes the CNN series will show Arab and Muslim communities in all of their variety and complexity, along with a generous sprinkle of all of his humor.
“There’s a narrative in the country, of the scary Muslin blah blah blah blah,” says Bell. “And then you go (to Dearborn), and it’s one of the most boring places on the planet.”
Watch and learn how humor can make a serious point. “I would move there for the food, but not the nightlife,” Bell says with a laugh.
