Mick Unplugged
W. Kamau Bell & Glenn Singleton: Confronting Race: Courageous Conversations That Matter
17 Jun 2025
Chapter 1: What drives W. Kamau Bell's commitment to racial justice?
We have to do the first work of looking inward, right? And we have to ask that simple question of, you know, what impact does race have on my life? And what impact does my race have on my life? And as I look around my community, how is race playing out there?
Welcome to Mick Unplugged, the number one podcast for self improvement, leadership and relentless growth. No fluff, no filters, just hard hitting truths, unstoppable strategies and the mindset shifts that separate the best from the rest. Ready to break limits? Let's go. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another exciting episode of Mick Unplugged. And today I've got a special moment.
I've got two guests and we're going to talk about it all. One is an Emmy and Peabody winning storyteller who uses comedy to confront culture. And the other is an education equity architect, redefining how we talk about race in America. Together, they're pushing past comfort to spark the real change that we need today.
Please join me in welcoming the brave, the brilliant, the uncompromising, two guys that I look up to the most, W. Kamau Bell and Glenn Singleton. Gentlemen, how are you both doing today?
I mean, I know Glenn's used to those kind of intros, but I'm still getting used to them. So I know Glenn is like, that's exactly as it is.
Glenn actually sent me everything to say about him ahead of time. He was like, it has to be these, do not sway from the text. Exactly. This is not a suggestion. Right. If it doesn't go down this way, it's not going down at all. Yeah. So, Glenn, I'm actually going to start with you. I like talking about Your because that thing that's deeper than your why. Right. Like Simon Sinek wrote a book.
Start with why. And I think everybody got stuck there. Right. You start with why. But it's your because that really keeps you going. So, again, Glenn, I'll start with you, man. If I were to say what's your because today, what's that purpose, that passion behind what you do? What is that?
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Chapter 2: How does Glenn Singleton's framework address race in conversations?
You know, what is so clear to me is that everybody who's looked like me has had this journey before me. And when I think about, you know, coming all the way across, you know, the grounds of West Africa through the transatlantic slave trade, up through slavery, Jim Crow, you know, all of these moments of oppression for people like us,
when we get to, to, to my generation and we have more than we've ever had. And, and so I just feel like it can't fall apart with me. Wow.
Wow. I love that. I love, I'm taking some notes cause I have a follow up question on something you said, but come out, man, I'm going to give you the floor now. What is your, because why do you continue to do what you do?
I mean, the, uh, the flippant and probably truest answer is cause, uh, me and my wife have three kids and I can't just be like, good luck. I feel a responsibility to, to make sure that, uh, the world is as easy a place to navigate for my three daughters is my three mixed race black daughters as possible. Um, and you know, and I sort of think of it as the black baton. Like when my,
grandparents handed the black baton to my parents. It was lighter than when they got it because they had gotten it from people who hadn't been that disconnected from enslavement.
And then when my mom passed it to me and my dad passed it to me, it was much lighter because they had gone through the civil rights movement and everything that that entailed there and pushed the black people forward, black folks forward. And now I got it and I'm like, it might be heavier than when I handed it to my daughters. And so my goal right now is to sort of make sure
that I do everything I can to make sure that when I hand them the black baton, that it's not heavier than it was when I got it, which is going to be a lot, but it, but looks like I got Glenn and you and other people working on that too.
So, and then I think the other thing is like, I grew up in a household where you sort of knew as a, you had two jobs, the job to put food on the table and the job to make it easier on all the people who look like you, who couldn't get what you got. And, there wasn't really a choice there. It was, no, it was just, it was just, it's what we do.
So this is just, I think if I was a car mechanic, I'd be an anti-racist car mechanic. I just think this is just a part of the deal.
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Chapter 3: What is the significance of the 'Black baton' in family legacy?
How do you have that conversation about the baton internally with your children?
Let's see. My seven-year-old hates the president and will say it out loud. So and I'm in and, you know, and while we may we can have a grown up discussion about hate, I think it's it's very savvy of her to understand that this person is not on my side, you know, and so therefore I put that person into the hate camp along with like, you know, lima beans, whatever you want to say.
So, for me, the idea that my 7-year-old is aware of the state of the world and aware even in sort of a 7-year-old way is really important to me because it means that, like, if you ā because some people grow up not being aware of the state of the world, and then when they're full-grown adults, you've had conversations with them, and they're like ā they say something like, well, you know, how many senators are there?
And you're like, oh, no. You know what I'm saying? And it's fine. And I will tell you and we can have a conversation. But I think the more that in my house I grew up as an only child, I heard my mom having every conversation. And so with my kids, they seem they're hearing me have a lot of conversations. They're also seeing my work. They're also seeing how people talk to me in the street.
So they're aware that like. Data does things where he has to talk to people about the state of this country regularly. And they've heard me speak enough to know which sides we're on and that we want to be on the side of the people. And the people is not just people who look like us. And we live in Oakland, so they can see those people.
And so then you have like my 14-year-old who just graduated from eighth grade, who as part of her graduation celebration, her advisor said, and Sammy Bell, who thanks to her and the administrator who talked to her, Now every kid in this school knows the words to lift every voice and sing because my daughter sang it at every like school, you know, function. She was like at every school.
And there was a black woman who works in school who asked her to and Sammy did it. And I said, Sammy, you got to learn the words. You got to like me. You can't fump her through any of it. We're probably not going to do the second verse, but learned it anyway.
And so that's a kid who is like, just through the power of her voice, because she has a good voice, is engaging in a little bit of activism by teaching some white kids in her school and some non-black kids about the words of their voice and saying. And so for me, there's more than one way to do this, but I think it's important that my kids learn. are aware of what's going on in the world.
And my 10 year old who's pretty shy, like I was when I was her age, I go, look, you're never gonna get in trouble with me if you're defending yourself or somebody else.
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Chapter 4: How can parents effectively discuss race with their children?
So that we could have the conversation to move a society, the movement of society, to that place of the elusive, yet tangible sometimes, equality.
Man, so I'm going to tell you this. You don't know this, Glenn, man. I'm going to try not to get emotional. I don't get emotional, but I'm going to hold it in, man. So, you know, been a huge fan of yours for a long time before the internet and all that. Like, I knew who you were. And I was one of those kids, I can call myself a kid then, that you were talking to, man.
Like, I had to be the best at everything I did, right? Like, my graduating high school, if I didn't have a scholarship, Mike could have gone to college, but I couldn't have gone to the college I wanted to go to. Right. And so I genuinely had to be the best so that I could get either an academic or athletic scholarship.
But then when I got to college, University of North Carolina, by the way, when I got to college, that same mentality was there because I knew that I had a purpose to show everybody that looked like me. that we can be excellent, right? That we don't have a ceiling and the ceilings that we have are the ones we put on ourselves. Now, not saying the world is fair, never gonna say that.
There are things we're gonna have to fight for that other people don't have to fight for, but damn it, I'm going to fight. Right. And so Glenn, I wanted to tell you, thank you for, for being that for me when you never knew that you were a man.
Thank you. Thank you for that. And those skills that all three of us have developed, you know, and, And Kamala and I carry this special pressure of being the only one of the next generation and families, right? This only child syndrome. But we learn to be excellent. And the world would be a great place if people had that skill of a desire to be excellent, right? So it's nothing wrong with that.
It's just that when you have to be excellent and you might not be noticed as that. As you look around and we think about the conditions which we're living in right now, the irony of the challenge to DEI where we have just installed an entire government of people who are not excellent. That's the nicest way to say it.
An entire cupboard of people who are not excellent. Not excellent, right?
Not excellent in the way that you needed to be at Chapel Hill, right? Not working over in the high school district right beside you, where this is a community of excellence. And and a resource community, but we couldn't get the black children and the brown children to the top of the class so that they could continue to walk right on over to that university, right?
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Chapter 5: What practical advice is offered for engaging in race conversations?
And suddenly all the DEI people got fired. I had a lot of meetings with a lot of black women who were in charge of DEI, some of these corporations who then weren't there months later. You'd send an email that said, does not work here anymore. And then I had a deal go through. And then the strike happened, the writers and the actors strike.
And although we won, I mean, both those unions, we won a lot of what we wanted. What they did was, we're just going to stop employing you. We're just going to stop. So we're going to stop making content. Famously, Warner Brothers, who owns CNN, where I used to work, stopped the post-production on the Batwoman movie in post-production.
So they were already $90 million in, and it was like a black Batwoman, which I don't know if that's why they stopped it, but didn't help it, I'm sure. But they were just like, we'd rather use this as a tax write-off than release this as a film. Even though the directors were in the edit bay, two Egyptian directors, I believe. Again, who knows if this is all connected.
We're in the edit bay, editing, finishing the movie, and they're like, stop your work. It's never coming out. And so not only, so there came a point where like, there's people I know in Hollywood who haven't worked since the strikes. And that's when I had this moment and I, a lot of projects I thought I was gonna do just sort of disappeared. And I'd stopped doing standup comedy.
And I had this moment of like, wait a minute, I was raised by Janet Cheatham Bell. I was raised by Walter Alfred Bell. And sometimes people would ask me, what did your parents do for a living when you were growing up? And I wanted to go, they're hustlers, but not in the way you think. And my mom's father, Smith Cheatham, was one of those guys who would walk onto a job site and just start working.
And they're like, you don't work here. But wait, you did better than everybody else. You work here now. He was just like, I'm going to get a job. And so I chose this as an opportunity to start to really like, okay, what can I do? Well, I know I can write. Where can I take my writing? So I went to Substack and was able to go, okay, now that I can do whatever I want to do, what is the goal here?
And the goal is to find out who's with me. You know what I mean? Literally, it's that simple. Who believes me? 88% of the things I do, and we can talk about the other 20%. Who believes very little of what I believe, but seems like I'm making some good points, and I want to at least work through this.
And so for me, that's where the, you know, it's sort of, I always feel like it's like a flip on Kendrick Lamar's way of saying it is, they're not like us. My way of saying it is, who's with me? It's a Kyler Gentler way of saying, they're not like us. And so, and I know that for my CNN train, like the work, the work I did on CNN, I got a lot of people who are with me who don't look like me.
A lot of older white conservative folks who just liked the way I said stuff and came to realize some things they never thought about before. And then because I've done podcasting things, I got a lot of younger folks with me, a lot of black and Brown activists who have been inspired by my work.
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Chapter 6: How does the concept of racial justice impact workplace dynamics?
you know, a lot of this is like these politicians putting their fingers in the air and seeing which way the wind is blowing. And right now I'm in the middle of a lot of online back and forth, uh,
with people because there's a lot of excitement in some parts of California about Gavin Newsom basically standing up to Trump and putting out some videos saying, hey, if you want to treat California this way, we're going to stop paying into this American system since we're the fourth largest economy in the world. If we just stop paying into the system, the country falls, the country collapses.
And a lot of people got excited. And I think that's great. But I'm also don't talk about it, be about it. And And I was sort of seeing some Californians who I know be like, we got to be careful with Newsom because he's not always on our side. He's not always clearly on our side. He's not always ā he just started a podcast where he's interviewing right-wing people.
He also made gay marriage legal. He also won a universal health care, but he didn't want $35 insulin. There's just a lot. There's just a lot. There's just a lot. He has many pictures of him like dismantling homeless encampments but looking good looking, so it gets confusing.
So I've just been here to say, hey, guys, like, let's not get ā yes, he's saying the right thing, but let's also not forget who he is. And the number of people who are like, this is why the left can't ever win. This is why Democrats can't ever da-da-da. This is why we're ā just basically let him cook, basically is what they're saying.
Like, let him ā and I brought up the example of, like, do you think LBJ signed or pushed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 because he was excited about it? No, he pushed it because Martin Luther King Jr. wouldn't stop showing up in his office. And he was like, I got a lot of people outside who are marching this way. Like he was pushed into doing that.
And at some point realized I want to be on the right side of history, whether or not he had a moral thing or not. That's for him. That's for his biographers to talk about. But from the outside, it was clear without MLK, it doesn't happen. It doesn't happen. And so it's because, so my feeling is like, we, you know, we have, politicians only exist to be pushed into the right forms and functions.
Even if you support them 99% of the time, there's gonna be 1% of the time you're gonna be like, hey, and look, my mayor's Barbara Lee. I don't know when she's been on the wrong side of history, but when she is eventually, like, I will be there to say, hey, Barbara, I need you to. So, but I think that like, we really, we, so many of us,
We're so scared that we're looking for a hero instead of looking at ourselves and going, what can I do? So you want Newsom to handle it and hope that he just handles it and takes care of it so you can get back to Pilates. And I'm saying like, hey, maybe you can have an anti-racism Pilates session and figure out what that is.
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Chapter 7: What role does coalition-building play in racial equity?
that we're all the same and all of those things, red, black, yellow, green, or white, all the stories that you're told. No, no, no. There is a hierarchy of power, right? And you've got to understand this principle of whiteness. You've got to see white supremacy and you've got to see anti-black racism, these two parts of that continuum, right?
And as you can step into those three levels, it's about me, definitely. There are multiple understandings and experiences existing. And there is this system of power race that is about a hierarchy that holds power at white. When you get that, we're ready to go. Everything can change.
Yes, sir. It's not that hard. Not that hard. Absolutely. Absolutely. So Kamau, for you, man, one, congratulations on Celebrity Jeopardy. Absolutely. I jumped up when you won.
I jumped up. For all the smart Negroes who were bullied, I'm here for you.
I know DonorsChoose was happy about that, too. I'm a big supporter of school systems, so I know that was amazing. So my question for you that I want you to be able to give insight to the viewers and listeners. So for that person that's listening or watching right now that's afraid to say something wrong... Right. What's some advice?
What's some courage, some power you can give that person or those people today?
I would say if you're afraid to say something wrong, I would first say you need to do an audit of your friend group and see who you're surrounding yourself with that you can't be honest with who you are sitting near and who you are regularly in conversation with.
So it doesn't mean that I don't think I'm going to say something wrong, but I feel like if I do, I am surrounded by people who want to go, hey, come out, come here for a second. And And they're going to do it with love unless I keep doing it, unless I keep saying it. You know what I mean? They're going to, you know, it's Adrian Brown taught me the difference between calling in and calling out.
They're going to call me in. And if you haven't figured out a way to have a friend group that is also smart enough in different areas and have enough different experiences and backgrounds that you don't feel like you can be lovingly called in and you don't have people who can do that, then you need to look at yourself and go, who did I surround myself with? This goes back to the Lil Wayne album.
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