Trump vs. Media; Trump's Twitter Attack; Exploring Chinese-American Community
WARD: Sunday is the season finale of CNN's "United Shades of America." W. Kamau Bell tries to understand the modern Chinese- American identity and society's misconceptions about the community versus the country, China.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Their books over and over again with dragons, you know?</s>KAMAU BELL, CNN HOST, "UNITED SHADES OF AMERICA": With dragons? It's always with dragons?</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Always something about, you know, the rising dragon. You know there - it - it inspires a lot of fear. It's really disturbing because then that gets sort of mapped on to Chinese- Americans here and people begin to have these fears of Chinese- Americans and they see them as one in the same -</s>BELL: Yes.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Without, you know, distinguishes. China is China as a political economic, geopolitical kind of entity. And you have Chinese-American, whose have really been here for a long time. Who have adopted the ways, you know, of American culture and kind of becoming part of this multicultural, multiracial society.</s>WARD: Kamau Bell joins us now live. And I just wanted to ask about this idea. You know, Chinese-Americans, what's their feeling of connection, or is there a strong feeling of connection, to China, which has become this kind of looming force on the world stage?</s>BELL: Well, I mean, I think that, you know, often America's politicians and then also Americans in general who are not Chinese assume there's some sort of strong connection to China. But when it comes back down to it, for many Chinese people, they've been in this country for maybe several generations. So they may have been to China, but they don't have - they are Americans. They just happen to be Chinese-Americans. But we often force them to sort of answer for China's sins because that's how we work in this country. You are like those people, so you must be those people. So when really the show tonight - the show on Sunday is about how there's a Chinese-American identity that is wholly - that is in some ways wholly separate from China.</s>CUOMO: And let's talk about that because, you know, you make a very good point that will pop some eyes. The Chinese predate just about every other ethnic group - I guess the English could make a good case that they're in there as well. But certainly, you know, my wave of ethnics, you know, the Italians and when the Jews came over, they were here long before. They dug a lot of the infrastructure, built a lot of the infrastructure in this country. And how does that play. What does it mean to the Chinese-American today in terms of their affinity for this country?</s>BELL: It means that many of them, you know, feel like very proud Americans and feel like they have contributed to the country's history and yet they also know that part of that history of Chinese people in this country was the Chinese Exclusion Act, which happened right here in the Bay area where I live, that said that Chinese people couldn't live here, that they had to go back to China. So it's that same thing where, like, you know, as you say, Chris, Italians, when they got here, weren't necessarily considered white the way the British people were white, but you guys eventually graduated, whereas some of us, we don't get to graduate to whiteness as we know.</s>WARD: You had now two seasons of "United Shades." I'm just curious, is there kind of a take all or a takeaway, rather, of what you've learned about the state of race relations in this country?</s>BELL: I mean, this season a lot was framed by the election. We started filming right before the election and then we filmed after - after the election. And so it really felt like it was - it was framed by a lot of those issues. And, for example, this episode, President Trump, when he was a candidate, demonized China a lot. Then once he became president, he became sort of friendly with China. Now he's starting to demonize them again. But I - really what I've learned is that, if we can get away from the two-party system of team politics, we all care about the same stuff. Everybody wants better schools, everybody wants more jobs, everybody wants to be able to live safely where they live. If we can get away from the team sport of electoral (ph) politics, we could get - we could actually solve these problems, I believe.</s>CUOMO: You know, Kamau, we always hear that. You say is very eloquently and you demonstrate it in a really unique fashion on your show. I enjoy watching it. So what happens? How does it go from people who are like, it doesn't matter what color you are, what creed you are, where you're from. It's like, I worry about my kids and what kind of quality education they get, what kind of world are they coming up in and making sure that I can make ends meet. And then we wind up somehow capitulating to a tribal culture, like what we're seeing break down with the latest Trump tweets. How does that happen?</s>BELL: I mean this is - it's on us. We allow people to appeal to our basic fears a lot of times and I think that that's why President Trump is in office because he appealed to some of the basic fears of Americans, of some Americans. And so when you start to sell the fear, you forget the fact, you're like, wait a minute, I actually do like my neighbors. I do like the undocumented Latino family across the street. They're very nice. They've very helpful. But we have to stop letting politicians appeal to our most based fears is what I believe.</s>WARD: Al right. Well, W. Kamau Bell, the season finale of "United Shades of America" airs this Sunday, 10:00 p.m., only on CNN. Don't miss it. Thank you so much.</s>CUOMO: A smart guy. A funny guy. A good show.</s>BELL: Thank you.</s>CUOMO: New technology - this is a great story - inspired by "Star Wars," OK, is now helping our wounded veterans. The Luke Bionic Arm is not your average prosthetic, and it is really here and going to be put into effect. You're going to get its demonstration live. It is our "Good Stuff" and for good reason.