# Kamau Bell and Racist Five Year Olds **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 2, 2017, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kamau-bell-and-racist-five-year-olds/785729 "2017-05-02T17:23:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Ambivalid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a5b964/32.png) [@Ambivalid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ambivalid)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kamau-bell-and-racist-five-year-olds/785729/61 "2017-05-03T03:38:14Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > I dunno, teach 'em? What does that mean though? You can’t teach a kid experience. Without adequate exposure to different types of people, this sort of thing will continue. Unless the structural racism is addressed and corrected. But how is that realistically achieved? ---
**Author:** ![Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hilarity_n.suze/32/6223_2.png) [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hilarity_N.Suze)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 9:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kamau-bell-and-racist-five-year-olds/785729/62 "2017-05-03T09:05:57Z")
First of all, Kamau goes around the country looking for racism, and I think he is disappointed when it doesn’t find it. Of course, sometimes he does find it. Second of all, five-year-olds need to be taught boundaries. But they often aren’t. People with all kinds of different hair have this problem, not just “out” hair whatever that is, or dreadlocks. It hasn’t been a month since I was wearing my hair in braids and somebody who had no right to touch me at all tugged on one of them, and I’m an old lady, and he was just as old. And finally, when I was pregnant, there were a certain number of people, usually acquaintances but on some occasions total strangers, who would come up to me and rub my stomach, for luck, or some shit. Roughly 75% of such women (always women) were black women. Usually the woman was middle-aged or older, but if she was younger, like about my age at the time, she was always a black woman. What was up with that? People thinking they have access to touch you is not racism. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 10:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kamau-bell-and-racist-five-year-olds/785729/63 "2017-05-03T10:51:42Z")
> [@MikeF](#): > > So, this is the logic, if I have it right: > > The reason those kids touched her hair is because they were curious. The reason they were curious is that they haven’t seen many black kids (no evidence of that, BTW). The reason they haven’t seen many black kids is because, historically, whites and black don’t mix much. The reason whites and blacks don’t mix much is because racist whites want it that way and have done everything in their power to make it so. Therefore, these white five year olds are racists. You don’t have it right, and a key reason is that a person who acts in a way that perpetuates systemic racism isn’t necessarily racist. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 11:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kamau-bell-and-racist-five-year-olds/785729/64 "2017-05-03T11:11:32Z")
> [@Richard\_Parker](#): > > To the extent that a black five-year-old is a novelty to white kids in a private school, that’s the result of racism. My school didn’t accept kids younger than five. Most of my kindergarten classmates did not go to preschool. We didn’t go to church. Most of my like-age social interaction before kindergarten was with cousins. \* Everyone\* was a novelty in kindergarten. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 11:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kamau-bell-and-racist-five-year-olds/785729/65 "2017-05-03T11:13:35Z")
> [@Hampshire](#): > > My son, who happens to be one of 3 white kids in his grade of very mixed children, likes to wear a crew-cut during the summer. He would like to wear it during the school year but prefers not to becuase “the other kids are always touching my head.” And the kids with the spikey hair that was popular in the 80s. And my most unfortunate mullet. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 11:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kamau-bell-and-racist-five-year-olds/785729/66 "2017-05-03T11:58:41Z")
> [@Ruken](#): > > My school didn’t accept kids younger than five. Most of my kindergarten classmates did not go to preschool. We didn’t go to church. Most of my like-age social interaction before kindergarten was with cousins. \* Everyone\* was a novelty in kindergarten. If you didn’t play with other non-family kids before age 5, you are quite unusual in the US. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 12:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kamau-bell-and-racist-five-year-olds/785729/67 "2017-05-03T12:24:43Z")
> [@Richard\_Parker](#): > > If you didn’t play with other non-family kids before age 5, you are quite unusual in the US. I didn’t write that. Family, school, and later, church, are the places where I had regular, long-term contact with large groups of the same kids that would dissipate novelty. And which incidentally breeds the sort of familiarity that lowers barriers we might have to grabbing a stranger’s hair. There were a whopping three boys my age on my street, which I wasn’t allowed to cross by myself. One was black, although I didn’t know that was a thing until we learned about MLK in kindergarten. But his mom​ kept his hair short. So yes, of the three black kids in kindergarten, the one who had his hair in a big flat-top fade was pretty damn interesting. Especially since we were spending 30 hours a week together. Dunno if I touched it without permission. If I did, sorry, Rusty. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kamau-bell-and-racist-five-year-olds/785729/68 "2017-05-03T15:34:18Z")
“Jimmy, don’t touch other people’s hair without permission.” “Why not?” “Because it’s rude, and people get to decide who touches them and who doesn’t.” “But Keisha has big hair and I never saw it before and I wanted to see what it feels like.” "The reason you never saw it before it is because of the systemic racism in our society, and perpetrates the white patriarchal power structure that keeps African Americans in a socially subordinate position that dates back to slavery. Even though that wasn’t your intent, you are fostering an atmosphere of Otherness that marginalizes instead of transforms. Now go to your desk and write ‘I will not disenfranchise historically Third World populations’ a hundred times." Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kamau-bell-and-racist-five-year-olds/785729/69 "2017-05-03T15:42:18Z")
Shodan, thank you for showing that it’s possible for parents to be incompetent. I was wondering if there’d be any way for a parent to screw up such a conversation, and you’ve shown us exactly how it could be done. What a useful contribution to the thread. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kamau-bell-and-racist-five-year-olds/785729/70 "2017-05-03T15:51:17Z")
Actually I was thinking of a teacher on the other side. Some incompetent grade school teacher who wants to drag systemic racism into everything. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kamau-bell-and-racist-five-year-olds/785729/71 "2017-05-03T15:55:59Z")
> [@snoe](#): > > Agree with the praise for LHOD’s post; I think “Racism on the kid’s part? I don’t think so. Systemic racism in action? Yeah, kinda” sums it up nicely. > > Jay Smooth’s 2008 videoblog referenced here [Jay Smooth’s Ill Doctrine is still the best](http://kottke.org/17/04/jay-smooths-ill-doctrine-is-still-the-best) is relevant. Calling 5-year-olds racist\* is moronic. Saying that something they did or said is racist (or, more precisely, is an example of systemic racism that pervades our society to this day) is obviously still controversial, but defensible and in many cases correct. _Not insignificantly, it shifts blame away from the individual and towards society._ > > - I’m reminded of asking my dad if it was okay for two different races to marry - I must have been somewhere between 7 and 10 years old. He stared at me like I was crazy and started babbling frantically about how it was fine, how some of my classmates had parents of different races, etc. > > I only asked because my elementary school friends and I were experimenting with Dungeons and Dragons, creating characters. I wanted to know if it was okay for an elf and a human (or whatever) to marry. When I clarified things, he was even more mystified. Where the fuck do you think Half-Elves come from? ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kamau-bell-and-racist-five-year-olds/785729/72 "2017-05-03T16:29:36Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > Actually I was thinking of a teacher on the other side. Some incompetent grade school teacher who wants to drag systemic racism into everything. > > Regards, > Shodan Sure. There are incompetent people everywhere–incompetent teachers who refuse to see systemic racism wherever it occurs, for example. I hope you’re not implying that I’m an incompetent teacher who wants to drag systemic racism into everything, first because that’d break forum rules, and more importantly because it’d show you hadn’t read the thread carefully and seen how I’ve explicitly demonstrated that not everything is related to systemic racism. Now, if you have an actual argument to make, rather than a self-satisfied smirking caricature to draw, I’m sure we’ll all waiting for that contribution! ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kamau-bell-and-racist-five-year-olds/785729/73 "2017-05-03T16:30:49Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > Where the fuck do you think Half-Elves come from? Greataxe crits. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kamau-bell-and-racist-five-year-olds/785729/74 "2017-05-03T16:46:41Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > …I’ve explicitly demonstrated that not everything is related to systemic racism. That’s funny - I could have sworn somebody posted > [@](#): > > Racism on the kid’s part? I don’t think so. Systemic racism in action? Yeah, kinda. But that’s kinda the point - everything \*isn’t \*related to systemic racism, and competent teachers don’t drag it in. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kamau-bell-and-racist-five-year-olds/785729/75 "2017-05-03T16:56:49Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > That’s funny - I could have sworn somebody posted Good fuckin lord. Yes, this particular incident is related to systemic racism. No, not everything is. > [@](#): > > But that’s kinda the point - everything \*isn’t \*related to systemic racism, and competent teachers don’t drag it in. All you’re doing is stating the completely fuckin obvious, and failing to connect it to this particular incident. It’s as if you post a thread about students attacking conservative speakers on campus, and I respond, “Not everything is a threat to free speech, and competent writers don’t drag ‘threats to free speech’ into every discussion.” Well yes, that’s technically true–but in that particular case, there IS a threat to free speech. Again, though, if speaking in insinuative platitudes is all you got, that’s all you got. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kamau-bell-and-racist-five-year-olds/785729/76 "2017-05-03T17:00:09Z")
Anyone else remembering that Beverly Clearly book where Ramona gets in trouble for boinging the curls of the girl with the boing-boing curls? ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kamau-bell-and-racist-five-year-olds/785729/77 "2017-05-03T17:10:30Z")
This incident is probably connected to structural racism–among other things, residential segregation. But I have acknowledged that it’s also possible that it’s not. It could be that this haircut was particularly interesting or different even for kids with lots of exposure to black girls. What strikes me as odd, and overly defensive, is attempting to take the position that structural racism could not have played a role. Or, alternatively, taking the position that we shouldn’t discuss the potential role of racism in the absence of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. For what rational reason would you take either position? I imagine that lots of people, perhaps **Shodan** among them, believe that residential segregation in 2017 is not the result of structural racism. If so, fine. Then I think you have the beginnings of an argument for how racism played no role here. But then that’s the proper topic of debate, and not these fatuous burdens of evidence before racism may be properly discussed. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kamau-bell-and-racist-five-year-olds/785729/78 "2017-05-03T17:22:06Z")
> [@Richard\_Parker](#): > > I imagine that lots of people, perhaps **Shodan** among them, believe that residential segregation in 2017 is not the result of structural racism. If so, fine. Then I think you have the beginnings of an argument for how racism played no role here. But then that’s the proper topic of debate, and not these fatuous burdens of evidence before racism may be properly discussed. If you are telling a child not to touch other people without permission, what does a mention of residential segregation add? That’s the part I don’t get. Jimmy touches Heather with no racist intent. That’s bad, but we don’t add anything with discussions of racism. Jimmy touches Keisha with no racist intent. Now we gotta start talking about redlining? Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kamau-bell-and-racist-five-year-olds/785729/79 "2017-05-03T17:31:24Z")
Segregation wouldn’t be part of my discussion with the kids. But I don’t see why that means we shouldn’t discuss it as adults. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kamau-bell-and-racist-five-year-olds/785729/80 "2017-05-03T17:56:15Z")
> [@Richard\_Parker](#): > > What strikes me as odd, and overly defensive, is attempting to take the position that structural racism could not have played a role. What strikes me as odd is to dismiss likely explanations that do match my personal experience for one that does not. We’re talking about five-year-olds. They’re not exactly out roaming the streets interacting with all their neighbors, regardless of what their neighbors look like. Especially not today. I totally expect a child to be curious about another child’s hair that is not like his or her own, regardless of neighborhood demographics. Whether the kid has mastered look with your eyes, not with your hands is a separate matter. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kamau-bell-and-racist-five-year-olds/785729.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kamau-bell-and-racist-five-year-olds/785729.md?page=5)