Kristen Bell, who just this week appeared in the star-studded #ITakeResponsibility front-facing video response to police brutality, is promoting her new children’s book, The World Needs More Purple People, co-written with Benjamin Hart. The title of the book, which was published on June 2, has raised red (purple?) flags, as it sounds a lot like the white proverb, “I don’t care if you’re purple,” which is often said when black people, not purple people, are facing extreme oppression. In a video posted by the AP Entertainment Twitter account, Bell explained the rationale behind her new book. You can watch the full video in the tweet below:
“Similarities exist. And now that we know that we’re a safe group, we can hear each other out on our differences. That’s not explained to kids,” Bell says in the video. “So we thought, What if we create a road map of a purple person who looks for similarities before differences? And hopefully that will allow kids to have a little more of a social identity and see similarities, and through that have their mind opened by some people they thought were different.” Bell’s approach to children’s questions about different people is about affording respect on the basis of similarities, rather than respecting differences in their own right. But we don’t want to judge Kristen Bell’s book by its cover. Here’s a video of Jeremy Lin reading it in full, so you can judge for yourself.
