W. Kamau Bell: Racism has gotten "way worse" since United Shades of America premiered in 2016

USA Today

When Bell's CNN docuseries premiered in 2016, he met with the people of the Ku Klux Klan. In Sunday's extended Season 5 premiere, Bell tackles white supremacy, including a conversation with four former white supremacists. Minutes into the premiere, a graphic of an iceberg is used as a metaphor for white supremacy, with genocide, hate crimes and the KKK labeled above the water's surface, according to USA Today. "But beneath that cold, dark water is actually most of the structure that keeps white supremacy rolling along," Bell says in the show, highlighting police brutality, mass incarceration and gerrymandering, to name a few. Lower on the iceberg lies unchallenged racist jokes, whitesplaining, tokenism and All Lives Matter. "If you just think white supremacy is the Klan or Neo-Nazis, you’re actually not dealing with most of it, and you’re not helping," Bell tells USA Today. "You’re actually, in a way, pro-white supremacy if you only show up when the Klan or neo-Nazis show up, because they don’t actually show up that often. Part of the ways in which white supremacy below the surface is allowed to thrive is because a lot of people just look at the worst offenders and go, ‘That’s white supremacy.'" ALSO: W. Kamau Bell unveils an animated YouTube series titled Talk Boring to Me.