# 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:** 1\ **Showing post:** 133
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2017, 11:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kamau-bell-and-racist-five-year-olds/785729/133 "2017-05-05T11:47:11Z")
> [@MandaJo](#): > > How “black” she chooses to wear her hair will always be taken by some as a political statement to be agreed with or objected to. The people who are making this political are the adults, particularly her father. > [@](#): > > Is your real priority to make sure she sorts out exactly which people are generally socially clueless and which ones are clueless and kinda racist? Because I think that would be really far down my list. Far down mine too, but Bell apparently disagrees. He labels it “little kid racism”. Some in this thread label it systemic racism, or structural racism. > [@](#): > > I would not wait for the smoking gun of unambiguous racism before I started contextualizing this. And it seems to me that this is exactly what this guy did. What Bell did was to teach his daughter that anything that happens to her is racism. You can call it not waiting for a smoking gun. You can also call it teaching her how to play the race card. > [@even sven](#): > > Has anyone considered that the racism under discussion is primarily internal? That this is the story of a little girl learning to be uncomfortable in her own skin, and a fathers wish to at least delay that? It doesn’t appear he wants to delay it - he just wants her to label it as racism. I don’t see how that helps her be more comfortable in her own skin. Regards, Shodan --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kamau-bell-and-racist-five-year-olds/785729)._