W. Kamau Bell

speaker

1,269 appearances 5 recordings 5 series first heard Mar 2025 last heard 14 Oct

W. Kamau Bell’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Oct 2025 with 1.

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Nobody Should Believe Me · Introducing: At Liberty · 22 May 2025 podcast

Like, it seems like we would already have been on top of that. And to find out that even though I lived through it, wasn't aware of it, that was a Clinton era policy just really shows how slow America has been to understand this community. Can you, anything you want to say about that? I'm happy to.

It's just, that's something that always sort of strikes me is how little we know about this and how little we even know the history, most of us.

And yeah, and thank you. I didn't realize it was George Bush. I don't want to look like I'm not giving Republicans credit. That was just, again, shows my ignorance around these things. So as somebody who I think is learning and knows more than I think many people do because of the community I'm around with Alice and Imani Barber is another person. Yeah, still, I don't have access to all of it.

So let's just start at the basic. What, and we'll start with you, Zoe, and Nicole, please fill in. What would you like people who don't engage with this stuff every day like you two do? What is the basics you would like people to know about disability in this country? Even down to like, and I think this is important too, and I've talked about this before, like the preferred terms.

You know, I think right now we live in a time where there's a real push to like take away everybody's preferred use of language and everybody's preferred identifier. So I think, and this is a community that hasn't had that much access to that. So please-

I'm sorry. Let me correct you.

Yeah. I just want to point out for people who can't see this, who are listening to this, Nicole, you're nodding along. There's like a sort of a silent amen choir over here about like a lot of the things that Zoe's saying. So yeah, it would be different if you were like looking like, no, no, no, everything she's saying wrong, but you're actually like, that would be a different podcast.

Extreme agreement. That's the new name of it. Extreme agreement. So, yeah. So, Nicole, feel free to fill in any there or say or restate it or however you want to put what are your thoughts on what you want people to know about the disability community and, you know, anything.

This wouldn't be the ACLU without questions of legality. Because as you just said, Zoe, you know, people may fit the definition of having a disability without even knowing it. And I think about myself sometimes, like, let's see, I got asthma. Yep. If I don't have my contacts and glasses on, I can't really see much. I have high blood pressure. I'm black.

There's all these things I have, and I'm joking about the last one. But the idea of, am I? And not that I even need to know. I'm living my life. But it's also like, but maybe there's something I am not getting in my life because I don't define myself that way. So can we talk about the legal definition of disability?

You get a prize. I actually mean that. I actually do mean, yeah. I like being accepted in new groups. I like having new communities.

experience of whether there's a choice about like being out about being disabled or not but it's a very broad definition let's talk about the care side of this nicole and the side of this that like people don't often think about about like there is the there is the person living with a disability and depending upon the disability there is the community around them that that sort of is also a part of that person's life and how they interact with the world and

and how we don't necessarily always have a good, as a government, I'm not trying to put it on society, we don't have a good system set up for care. Can we talk about the care side of this, Nicole?

Yeah. Can we focus a little bit more? Because I think it's something I would imagine, and I feel this way, that the people who are doing it for free almost wouldn't even understand that it's unpaid labor. 100%. Because it's also just part of it. You define it as like, this is what a good family member does. Without understanding also, this is also work.

100%.

All right. So I'm going to, here we go. I know we're going to get into the Medicaid thing soon or next, but I don't want to, right now I'm handing you a magic wand. so you can create the system that you would like to see of care in this country.

And you can feel free if there's other countries that do it better, which of course there are, or if there's other, or if there's, or if there's just a thing that you as a person who does this work knows we could need, even if it's not necessarily possible, what would that, what would the system look like?

Yeah, it's interesting because I'm at the age now of like me and a lot of my friends are like basically into like, what do you do with your parents?

And I think one thing that has changed significantly in the history of this world, and maybe just in this country specifically, but certainly history, is that there was a time where all those things you said about taking care of people, you all would have lived in the same village. So at least you were going across the village to take care of somebody and not like getting on flights, right?

My mom's 87 and she's the healthiest 87 I can imagine. She will Facebook friend you if you want her to. She's engaged, she's in a dance crew, but she's also 87. We're at the point now of like, okay, me and my wife, we need to find a house where she can be with us. And we're at a level of privilege where we can actually do that, although Oakland is still crazy expensive.

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