August 25, 2017

That Time a Klansman Shoved Skittles in Comedian W. Kamau Bell’s Face

It wasn’t the first time the rainbow candy inadvertently played a role in racial controversies.

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Comedian W. Kamau Bell showed up at a Ku Klux Klan rally in Kentucky in 2014 fully expecting to face steely stares and racist comments. (Bell is African American.) He was there to film an episode of his CNN TV show, United Shades of America, but even so, “I had been worried that some of the guys there would really not be okay I was there,” he writes in his 2017 memoir, The Awkward Thoughts of W. Kamau Bell, “and that someone was going to run up and attack me.” But when one of the masked Klansmen did approach Bell, it was to hand him iced tea and Skittles—the snacks Trayvon Martin purchased the night he was killed by George Zimmerman in 2012.

“In that moment, I knew they were trying to get me, they wanted to see if I would crack,” Bell told us on our most recent episode of Bite podcast. Bell told a joke instead, and watched the “phalanx of Klan members” laugh nervously. “Comedy is a way to stop the bigger guy from hurting you,” Bell says. “If you laugh, I have power over you in that moment.”

It wasn’t the first time Skittles inadvertently played a role in racial controversies. Last September, Donald Trump Jr. tweeted a campaign poster for his father that compared Syrian refugee children to the rainbow-colored candy. Trump Jr. has since taken the image on his own tweet down, but you can see it in Wired editor Nicholas Thompson’s disgusted reaction, below:

Trump Jr.’s tweet wasn’t just offensive—he also had his math wrong, argued Washington Post reporter Greg Sargent who posted a video debunking the claim. Data suggests that the “risk of a refugee killing an American in a terrorist attack is 1 in 3.64 billion,” Sargent reported. “Refugees aren’t candy in a bowl, of course—they’re people fleeing war, forced from their homes, trying to save their kids,” he added, akin to Skittles’ maker Mars Inc.’s retort to the offending tweet:

Then, in June, Skittles decided to sell all-white packets of its candy in Europe in support of LGBTQ rights: “During Pride, only one rainbow matters. So we’ve given up ours to show support,” the special edition’s packaging read. But the campaign seemed to have missed the mark—some people saw it as supporting white people, rather than the queer community.

On Bite, Bell talks more about how food can become a cultural symbol, racist or otherwise. He also reveals the key to the most savory gumbo, and who would land an invite to his fantasy dinner party in this trying time in American history.

Bite is Mother Jones’ podcast for people who think hard about their food. Listen to all our episodes here, or subscribe in iTunes or Stitcher or via RSS.

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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