Editor’s Note: W. Kamau Bell is a sociopolitical comedian and the author of “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” (Dutton). Watch “United Shades of America,” Sundays at 10 p.m. ET/PT. The views expressed in this commentary are solely his.
What do you think when you think “Alabama”? Extremely conservative politics? That’s true. One of President Trump’s biggest crowds during the campaign was in Mobile. And Attorney General Jeff Sessions is from Alabama.
Do you think a history of racism? Well, that’s true, too. As I said, President Trump had one of his biggest crowds in Mobile, and again, Attorney General Jeff Sessions (whom the US Senate once denied a judgeship over accusations of racism – among other things, he joked a little too much about the Ku Klux Klan – and who recently used the Bible as an excuse for his separating Latino parents from their children when they are seeking asylum) is from Alabama.
But one thing I’m guessing that you don’t think when you think “Alabama” is “W. Kamau Bell.” Alabama is my home – sort of.
Let me explain.
Everybody comes from somewhere. For most people, like my wife, it is fairly simple. She was born and raised in one area of the country. It makes going “home” easy for her. Apparently most people in the world live their entire lives in one small area of the world. Not me.
I was born in Palo Alto, California; quickly moved to Indianapolis; after a few years me and my mom moved to Boston; then Chicago; then Mobile with my dad; then back to Chicago with my mom; then Philadelphia for college; then back to Chicago; and then to the Bay Area where I’ve been since (minus a two-year “sabbatical” in New York).
When I was a kid my mom used to say that I could run for president someday, because I knew so many parts of the country. Apparently I was really just getting ready for my current job as a touring comedian and host of “United Shades of America.” And even though the city of Mobile appears on the above list of places that I have lived only once, it is the one place on my list that has been a part of my life consistently since I was born – even before I was born.
In a special episode of “United Shades of America,” which you can now watch on demand, I go home to Mobile. Mobile is my home because in addition to spending so much time there, Alabama – specifically, Monroe County – is where much of my dad’s branch of the family tree came from.
My dad was born in a simple shack – now a hunting cabin – in Vredenburgh, Alabama, a town so small it is unincorporated. But my dad’s parents moved my father and his older siblings to Mobile in the 1940s. At the time, it was a boomtown. Located off the Gulf of Mexico, it was a major port, and it had plenty of jobs – even for black people.
Most people I run into have not heard of Mobile. Even though it is the third-largest city in Alabama, in the north and out west, we tend to think of Alabama as one amorphous thing. All of the Southern states are thought of as just subsets of this region we collectively call “The South.” But recent political changes in Alabama (the election of Democrat Sen. Doug Jones and progressive Mayor Randall Woodfin) prove that if the South does rise again, it may be a different South.
This episode is maybe the most personal episode of “United Shades of America” that I’ve ever done. My dad is featured throughout the episode. My cousin, the award-winning fantasy author N. K. Jemisin, who I grew up with, is in it, too. Me and N. K. talk about growing up and the hours we spent in my grandma’s house talking about all the amazing things we were going to be when we grew up.
I think we have both surprised ourselves with how right on our imaginations were. And while my grandma is not in the episode – she passed away when I was in my early 20s – she still makes her presence felt, which would come as no surprise if you knew her. Her presence was as big as one of Mobile’s Mardi Gras floats.
I went by her old house, which I hadn’t been to since just after she died. No one lives there now, and no one will anytime soon. It is abandoned. I stood outside and talked about her for a few moments. I was so wrecked by emotions that I still can’t watch that scene in the episode without tearing up.
And for the sake of not sugarcoating everything about the South, I met up with Bree Newsome in South Carolina to talk Confederate flags. Bree is a real-life superhero who took it upon herself to remove a Confederate flag from government property in South Carolina. And to be fair and balanced, I also talk to a defender of the Confederate flag. Arlene Barnum, a black woman. Yup, you read that right.
It was very important to me to open up in this episode, because Mobile is very important to me. My family regularly vacations there. I took my oldest daughter to Mardi Gras – the first Mardi Gras parades in America happened in Mobile – just like my grandma had taken me to Mardi Gras when I was my daughter’s age.
And as much as I know people think of me as a typical Bay Area snowflake, bleeding heart liberal, sushi eater (which I am), I am also in large part a down-home, Baptist-church-going, “y’all”-saying Southern man who calls every adult male he doesn’t know ”sir,” and who wants everything that comes out of the sea to be deep-fried.
And while I open up to you in this episode, another opportunity has also presented itself. The good people at Ancestry.com gave me the chance to learn more about where I came from, on a family-tree level and also on a DNA level. And luckily for you, we filmed the results.
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For my parents, it was a chance for them to learn some surprising things about our family. Two very big long-term myths were disproved. To learn what they were, you should watch the three short episodes. How’s that for a tease?
I am really grateful for the opportunity to do this work. And even more grateful that CNN decided to air this one on Father’s Day, so I don’t have to get my dad anything else (he’s impossible to shop for anyway).
But it also feels right to air such a personal episode so shortly after the passing of Anthony Bourdain. If Tony taught me anything – and whether he knew it or not, he taught me a lot – it was to put yourself into the work you do. I couldn’t talk about Alabama without putting a lot of myself (and my dad) in it. So to honor that lesson, this episode is dedicated to Anthony Bourdain.
