“The W. Kamau Bell Curve: Ending Racism In About An Hour” show uses stand-up comedy, technology and brute honesty to address the topic.

Comedian W. Kamau Bell has been performing “Ending Racism in About an Hour” since 2007. He created the show so that he would be able to address topics like racism in ways he couldn’t in comedy clubs.

“They didn’t want me to talk about race and race relations and racism,” he said. “… I wrote this show that I could take to the theaters where people came to see a racism show, they’d get a show about racism,” he said. “That’s really helped me hone what I was trying to do.”

“The W. Kamau Bell Curve: Ending Racism in About An Hour” will be presented for free at both Miami University Hamilton and Miami University Middletown as part of Black History Month events.

After comedian Chris Rock saw “The W. Kamau Bell Curve,” he began the process to turn the live show into a television show. “Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell” premiered last summer on the FX network following the same basic format.

“The solo show was me in front of a screen, playing video clips and showing funny pictures,” Bell said. “So we basically took that and tweaked it for a half-hour late-night format, which meant we added a guest interview and the production values are way, way higher.

“We opened up the scope so that it was more than about race, but about events of the day,” he said.

“A big part of the show is letting white people reclaim whiteness,” Bell said. “I try to give the white people some white pride, but the good kind.”

He said that one of the barriers to really ending racism is even the white people who would work toward that end tend to be overly apologetic about their whiteness, like it’s not their fault.

“We all have to claim our part of racism to end it,” he said. “We have to clean up our own area, so if a white person says something racist, it’s better for other white people to call them out on it because it’s usually the black people calling them out and that makes us look bad.”

Bell said that both the “Bell Curve” and “Totally Biased” owe a lot to the Internet, so if it looks like a public scroll through a Facebook feed, it sort of is.

“Thanks to the technology you can take screen grabs of things and download videos and throw it all in the show,” he said. “I don’t know how I would have done my solo show or this show without the Internet.”

“With the Internet, you can also get things quickly. Something happens in the morning, you can have it on the show that night with a fully-produced video and graphics package,” Bell said.

And even while working on “Totally Biased,” the stage show continues to evolve as the world and Bell’s own personal life continue to change.