Best known to CNN’s audiences as the host of its Emmy Award-winning program United Shades of America, W. Kamau Bell is about to join the ever-expanding group of comedians who have released a special on Netflix.
Bell’s follow-up to to his 2016 Showtime special, Semi-Prominent Negro, will drop on the streaming platform next week. Titled Private School Negro, the new hour features the comic’s takes on the racism within (and encouraged by) President Donald Trump’s administration and living in Berkeley during the 2016 presidential election.
Seeing as how Bell doesn’t want to overload the audience with chiefly political material, he also devotes some time to parenting and the Disney animated series “Doc McStuffins.” You know, because both go hand-in-hand with topics like Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ problematic past in Alabama.
Sarcasm notwithstanding, these various topics actually do possess multiple common threads, and Bell expertly manages to tie them all together into an hour of comedy that is as enlightening as it is funny.
When will the new W. Kamau Bell comedy special debut?
“I’ve got two daughters. They can tell that the country is in a hectic place,” he tells the crowd. “One time I was watching the news, and she came into the room and goes, ‘Are they still trying to figure out why Donald Trump is the president?’ You just synthesized an hour of CNN into one question!”
Of course political comedy isn’t for everybody, especially when the everyday politics currently engulfing American popular culture can seem like too much. Bell recognizes this caveat too, frequently joking about the surprise and shock his material may cause some viewers. Even so, as the comedians notes in Private School Negro, avoiding these topics out of distaste, difference or both is no longer a luxury we can afford to possess.
W. Kamau Bell: Private School Negro streams Tuesday, June 26, on Netflix.
