CNN’s W. Kamau Bell said that white people need to get “used to saying the word white” Tuesday.
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“To African-Americans, we’re like really? You didn’t know that?” host Don Lemon first posed to Bell. “So that’s why it’s so shocking to me but it’s not shocking to a large percent of the population. And then you’re like why are you so…like you had this epiphany all of a sudden and this life-changing thing and I feel bad for him.”
“I feel bad for him, but if you just swapped him out and made Ava DuVernay the new CEO of Starbucks, then Starbucks would change overnight,” Bell said.
“It’s not about — he has to own his own whiteness,” he continued. “He said the thing that white people do, ‘You have to understand, We all…’ No, no we are talking about white people generally in this issue and I think that he has to — white people all in this country have to be more conversant and used to saying the word white when it refers to more than wallpaper colors.”
Morgan Caplan contributed to this report.