Catch up with W. Kamau Bell as he tackles uncomfortable conversations on an all new season of #UnitedShades of America. Sunday at 10 p.m. ET/PT

2ºBill Estelle it would be real easy for me to come back at you with some dumb comment but instead let me say that we can’t be afraid to learn our full history… good and bad… for example: are you aware of Redlining? Are you aware of whyte folks filling up community pools with cement rather than let Black folks swim in them?! This happened only a few decades ago. Our kids need to learn things like that so they can have a chance to do better. We have to know our past in order to know where we’re going in the future. Here’s a great book to read: Lies my Teacher Told Me.

3ºGreat show always but this “woke” episode was especially good! Of course, because W is a nice guy, he took it easy on the whyte folks in the episode. Bottom line is: not one of them had facts on their side of the discussion. Plain and simple. Whyte folks that are upset or afraid of CRT feel that way because they don’t understand what it IS and don’t want things in this country to change in any way that makes them feel left out or disadvantaged….. you know, like they’ve made BIPOC folks feel for decades!! And by using “woke” as an insult, they can try to distract from the real issues we all face. The GOP does it all the time because they don’t have any plans for solving the issues we all face. And ya, this is coming from a whyte woman who’s tired of learning how much I have been misled by our education system in this country, among other things. Keep up the good work!! We all need it.

4ºRobert Pastuch no one is trying to make you do anything. Like you, I also paid for my right and everyone else's right to have and speak their own opinions. All I'm saying is you appear to have formed an opinion about this show probably without having watched it. I say that because the show is about people sharing their opinions and other people listening, which is exactly what you've said you do. I'm merely asking you to watch it if you haven't already, not to change your mind about anything at all, but to see people with different opinions actually talking and even laughing together while peaceably agreeing to disagree. America is too divided right now, and this show is proof that we don't have to let disagreements turn to hate. You actually get to keep your opinion without feeling as if someone is trying to change it or say that you're wrong for having it.

5ºRobert Pastuch that was the point of his last show. Think for yourself and respect when someone shares their opinions that are different from yours on things like CRT. It's about understanding someone else's opinion, and not about making them accept your opinion. He just presents their opinions, maybe shares his, and then continue with a friendly and funny conversation. He doesn't make anyone feel bad for having a different opinion, nor does he try to make people change their opinions. His goal is not to make anyone angry, but for everyone to better understand other people's opinions because the news typically only shows angry people shouting how wrong the other person's view is, which is really not helpful.

6ºSally Garcia have you ever watched? I mean he said in his last show that he wants to talk to people with different opinions for understanding of each other and not for shouting matches. He typically goes to where people are and shows them as human beings with opinions of issues impacting all of us. He gives them an opportunity to share why they have their opinions. It's his show so he does give his opinion. But more often than not, he and his guests usually find some common ground and they typically end with a laugh. If you have never watched this show, then you probably should.

7ºMark White I've noticed both. But I've also noticed deflection to those subjects when black people raise other cultural issues that white people don't want to talk about. It's as if black people can't express concern about other things because whites only want blacks to be concerned about inner city problems. Problems in suburbia also concern blacks. Politics in suburbia also concern blacks. Schools in suburbia also concern blacks. We're not all in the hood. We care about the hood, but we care about the suburbs, too. Thanks for being passionate about inner city issues, but if state governments pass laws based solely on suburban and rural constituencies, then inner city blacks will still be affected. Concern should not be limited to just inner cities.

8ºMany historians such as the late Carrol Quigley think that American civilization may become dominant culturally and it seems it has. Most world citizens dress and have the values of Anglo-Americans, even Europeans copy them. They just use the veneer of different languages.

When the French came to North America they made friends and basically went native in regards to the native “Indians” who are still around culturally and politically to this day (in Greenland or parts of the far North, new—or rather old states may reappear).

The Southern founders of the US were descended from the Norman conquerors of England in 1066, as opposed to the Puritan East English who populated New England and saw themselves as descendants of the original Celto-Anglo inhabitants, who lived across from Holland, the most developed area in Europe at the time, which rubbed off on the East English. Southern elites on the eve of the civil war wanted to enslave poor whites too in the spirit of Old World Feudalism they strived to emulate in America. That’s why the Appalachian pioneers of mainly Scots-Irish descent emigrating from the warring borderlands of Britain (i.e. Tennessee, western South Carolina, Kentucky areas etc) hated the Deep South. Greater Appalachia stretched to the Northern hill country of Texas (Dallas area).

During the English Civil War the North supported Parliament which was a Germanic tradition; The Anglican South were Royalist (transplanted Norman aristocracy). The oldest towns in America are in ‘El Norte’ in New México, North Mexico, California, etc. The oldest building in America in use is in New Mexico (ca 1606). Spanish of course. The North Mexican culture developed differently from South Mexico, which was Aztec.

The Royalist (Norman) South idealized the Greco-Roman slave states, especially Rome, while Northern Puritans (Anglo-Saxons) valued Germanic freedom and equality before all in the eyes of the law. The latter was the origin of town councils and direct democracy, local autonomy—every town was a small republic. Southern culture tried to emulate feudal Europe while New England sought to create a whole new utopian society.

Hare Krishna The Puritan element was responsible for public education financed by the government (everyone had to know how to read the Bible) but also fanaticism and the idea of manifest destiny, or that ideology must be forced upon others. New Netherlands ie New York and North New Jersey were founded by more liberal Dutch and thus less fanatic (the Dutch Republic championed religious freedom. There was even a Muslim Moroccan farming next to New York City in the 1760s.) The Bill of Rights descends from a Dutch New Netherlands prototype protecting the rights of cosmopolitan Dutch New Amsterdam once the English took over during the 1660s wars. The Dutch Republic was the most advanced state in Europe, especially regarding finance, like the first Western stock exchange (Japan being the oldest in the modern world). Its institutions of modern finance survive to this day in Manhattan NYC.

New Englanders (“Yankeedom”) were not religiously tolerant of the “other” despite early 20th century Yankeedom propaganda. Even Quakers were mutilated and killed. You still find that Northern ethos in the zeal of Democrats or Leftists who try to force their ideology on others by any means necessary, primarily through the instrument of the federal government, similar to communism and fascism (although today Republicans are the other side of the same coin). It’s why the other ‘nations’ of America were suspicious of them, like the Far-Westerners (Utah, Nevada, Idaho, etc.), who were colonies of and controlled by corporate Yankee New England interests. Mormons of Salt Lake descend from Northern NY (The Burn District). make ie Yankeedom, idealists like the Puritans. Yankeedom would also stretch to the Great Lakes area and into Canada, and Yankees founded the West Coast.

The Deep South’s charter by John Locke stipulated religious freedom and many Sephardic Jews and French Huguenots flocked there, but the provision was overturned by the feudal lords in 1700. There were nuances within the South too. The “Tidewater” area (as author Colin Woodard calls it) of lowland Virginia, Maryland, and northern North Carolina, had blacks whose ancestors having arrived before 1670, grew up free and had servants themselves—even slaves (some 500,000 may have been held by blacks). Slaves in Tidewater had more stable families, lived longer, and became anglicized, as opposed to the Caribbean-style plantation life in the rest of the South. The latter had higher mortality rates so slave society was more cosmopolitan. Resembling West Africa in climate, it was the slaves’ techniques and technology that was adopted. A more African-style culture developed in food and dance, religion, etc., as opposed to the more English Tidewater blacks. Hence it was said by one 18th century traveler that Carolina seemed like an African country rather than European (the ratio of blacks to whites in the Deep South was 5 to 1. In Tidewater Virginia area 1 to 1.5). During the Great Migrations of the 20th century Deep South blacks moved to Northern/Western cities.

Both New England and the South differed culturally from the “Midlands” as Woodward calls it, whose origin lies in the Quakers and Philadelphia, stretching westward to Kansas etc. including parts of Canada. They were antislavery and in many respects antiauthority and against deference to “superiors”. The first official endorsement of abolition took place ca 1700 in German Town, Pennsylvania (today a suburb of Philadelphia w/ a beautiful Victorian/Edwardian-era Hare Krishna temple). Many Germans migrated and brought their high level skills from the Palatinate (West Germany). They are the origin of the tidy & neat large barns of the Mennonites and Amish that were often said by visitors to be “bigger than our palaces at home (Europe).”

New England was hands down the best in personal liberties. It’s ironic it has embraced medical tyranny (Covid lockdowns etc.) and authoritarianism.

*The Roman Republic like the Greek city-states originally relied on citizen soldiers until, after many wars had turned it into an empire, became based on chattel slavery which in Greece was mainly isolated to silver mining. Otherwise slaves were usually indistinguishable from freemen. They could own businesses, be adopted, become very wealthy and powerful, and buy their freedom. Roman slavery was largely plantation-style. Southerners including the Caribbean used Roman slave manuals but were worse than the latter.