Comedian and CNN host W. Kamau Bell's interview with network colleague Ashleigh Banfield on Friday closed on a grim note.
"She shouldn't be surprised if she comes home and finds out one day that daddy has been killed by a police officer," said Bell.
"Oh God," she replied. "I was hoping you weren't going to say that."
Benfield pointed out to Bell and fellow comedian Donnell Rawlings that Thursday's protest against police shootings in Dallas was done peacefully.
"Is the message damaged because of the carnage?" she asked.
"I don't think the message is damaged," Rawlings replied. "With every situation, you have people that have irrational thoughts. The shooter in the Dallas incident, he doesn't represent Black Lives Matter. But if you look at it and not be naive about the situation, he represents an underlying frustration in a community where you have situations where cops are taking people's lives. And some of these situations with cop encounters [are] justifiable. But in certain situations, there is no explanation for it."
Bell referred to his experience walking alongside officers in Camden, New Jersey for his show United Shades of America as an outlier.
"In a lot of communities in this country, the police aren't protecting the black community," he said. "They are protecting the white community from the black community. That's the problem we have run into -- black communities pay the salaries of police officers. They should work for the community. I don't want the horrible thing that happened in Dallas to distract from the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. Those deaths are also tragic. We have to change the whole narrative about policing in this country. It is not police versus black people. It is, but it shouldn't be that way."
Watch the interview, as posted online, below. Note: The segment opens with graphic video.
