To promote his one-man comedy show The W. Kamau Bell Curve: Ending Racism in About an Hour, now running as part of the seventh annual soloNOVA Arts Festival at PS 122, stand-up comedian W. Kamau Bell is making a special offer: “Bring a friend of a different race and get in 2 for 1.”

Bell hopes that this bring-a-friend-for-free discount will help fill the theater with New York audiences who might not have heard of the San Francisco Bay Area comedian yet. “Although, I have selfish reasons for that, too,” Bell says. “It guarantees me a better crowd. You can’t end racism unless everyone is in the room at the same time.”

Yet to end racism, you have to discuss racism. And to discuss racism, you have to talk about race. And once the conversation turns to race, a lot of (white) people automatically worry about sounding racist. Or, as George Costanza would say, “I really don’t think we should be talking about this.”

Bell uses comedy, therefore, to broach a subject most people are simply too afraid to talk about. You might be thinking, The election of Barack Obama, our first black president, ushered in the era of “post-racial” America, right? Wrong. Bell utilizes a sharp mix of stand-up comedy, Powerpoint, audio and video clips, and theatrical solo theater to illustrate the ways racism just keeps making a comeback. “This show isn’t about post-racial America,” Bell says. “It’s about racial America.”

Even so, the idea of “ending racism in an hour” probably sounds like a joke. That’s because it is. Well, sort of. Read More…