Redacti posted an update in the group
Race, Ethnicity and Power 2 years, 11 months agoI already posted my opinion of Dave Chappelle without regard to the content of his most recent Netflix special. I also commented on the favorable posts of others and was roundly criticized by heterosexual men in the 50-65 age group for having not done my “research”. Was I talking to Q followers? Obviously, I don’t need to research the artists I do or don’t like. More work in the same vein as the past does not inform my opinion very much.However, after being challenged multiple times that my opinion was not valid if I hadn’t watched “The Closer”, I did. As expected, it was 1:12 hrs of my life I’ll never get back. If anything, I feel even more strongly about what Chappelle referred to as his “body of work” on Netflix.I’ve now seen all of it and it is more than problematic. Chappelle himself resents being misquoted, so I took the time to watch twice to make sure all my quotes are precisely correct. If you prefer not to watch, you can get the highlights here. If you did watch, please allow me to put the focus where it should be. His recent work has nothing to do with racism. It’s all about his rabid sexual insecurities. Know upfront that the ending doesn’t justify any of the rest of it.Per Chappelle, at 9:36 in, “This is my last special because I have an objective tonight”. He then launches into a full one-hour defense of his previous misogynistic, anti-LGBTQ+, and specifically, highly transphobic remarks in prior specials and throughout his act for many years. Chappelle states repeatedly that he is transphobic during the special as if stating the obvious might excuse it. He also maintains that it is worse to be Black in America than it is to be LGBTQ+.Despite the horror of police killings of Black people, if he means that it is more dangerous, the statistics tell us otherwise. LGBTQ+ people are dying by suicide at a rate much higher than the rate of police killings of Black people.He has a right to his opinion and he has a right to share it. I don’t think he has a right to a large platform to spread his bigotry, misunderstanding, and hate speech. At least some of what he says, if said to an LGBTQ+ person on the street, would be actionable hate speech. Many people don’t share my strong opinions, but I don’t have a platform and in the 21st century, might be obliged to censor myself if I did. I believe he should be canceled.So let’s start at the top.Perhaps some thought that a joke about Jews early on was OK. I didn’t, primarily because it just wasn’t funny – and offensive. However, it is generally still considered correct usage to refer to “Jews” as well as “Jewish people”. I assume the joke was used as a way to underscore that he takes down everyone. But again, if you are a non-Jewish, hetero man – particularly a White man (the vast majority of his audience) you emerged completely unscathed.From the outset and throughout the special, Chappelle repeatedly says LBGTQ instead of the correct acronym: LGBTQ – add the “+” if you like
Everyone understands it’s quite the alphabet soup, but Chappelle is obviously plenty smart and could easily refer to the community by the generally agreed-upon acronym. I take this as a deliberate sign of disrespect that he is fully aware will resonate primarily with the community and will be missed by many others. Is it OK because the number of people knowingly offended is relatively small at about 7% of the population?Is referring to remarks by DaBaby as “punching the LBGTQ community right in the AIDS” even remotely funny or appropriate?He continues with a variety of statements about how much admires “the gays” because, “…look at all the progress they’ve made” and that slaves would have been freed 100 years earlier if they had “baby oil and booty shorts” and mimics MLK, saying “I want everybody to get up on those floats – and make your bodies good and shiny” instead of conducting the March on Washington to listen to the “I Have a Dream” speech. Appropriate? Hmmm…He claims to admire “old school gays”, saying, “Them glory hole n***as, them the ones I like” and “What if MLK had to integrate the glory hole?” Appropriate? Funny?We proceed to his encounter with a lesbian who claimed he beat her up. He protests, stating “Bitch, I didn’t even know you was a woman”, acknowledging that “I did beat the shit out of her, it was her fault, I had no choice”. His defense is that in a conversation with another woman, “this lesbian fellow stepped between us” and relates his persistence in referring to her as male and eventually said “softly, sweetly, like a pimp might say – Bitch, I’m about to slap the shit out of you”, that “he tenderized those titties like chicken cutlets” and that “I whooped the toxic masculinity out of that bitch”. Are we all still OK with this?In referencing the small “hippie” town in Ohio where he lives he states that he “Loves White bitches with dirty feet” claims that if he had a strip club, he would “only hire girls with long titties and long vagina head that looks like they slept on it”. He also contends that a woman “following him” was a “Mean lady too…even if she’s smiling it would look like it would hurt…this bitch looked terrible”. She confronts him saying, “It sounds to me like you hate women”. He acknowledged that this happens often. His defense for his outrageous misogyny is that it is “art” and calls himself a “feminist” after allegedly checking the dictionary, saying “All these years, I thought it meant frumpy dyke”. Are you all still good?When Chappelle says he, “supported the Me Too movement, but…” it is the same as saying “I’m not a racist, but…”. He continues with, “That was a silly movement”. When criticized by female actresses this married man said, “Fuck y’all too, you canceled. I’m not jerking aff to none of your pictures again” and continues that “What the feminist movement needs to be successful is a male leader”. He says he’ll do it for us and all he asks for in return, “is that you suck my dick”. Irony or sarcasm, I’m sure. Does that work for you?Or, perhaps consider the repeated and fairly consistent use of the word “bitch” or “bitches” to refer to women in general. The word “woman” does not make an appearance until we are 16:43 minutes in. Some take this as him being an equal opportunity insulter of everyone; as if that makes it alright. I’m not sure about that, but I do know that he is highly selective about who he insults and that heterosexual males are consistently excluded from his rants.Chappelle thinks the NC “bathroom” law was bad because he imagines that if enforced, it might mean that a “woman” could walk into the restroom as he is at the urinal, walk up, and “…pull[s] a real live meaty dick out!” and he couldn’t handle it. Of all the different bathroom possibilities, THAT is the one he is fixated on, not the danger to the transgendered or cross-dressing person.Chappelle also seems unwilling to acknowledge that LGBTQ+ people occur with the same frequency in the Black community as any other race or ethnicity, stating “Gay people are minorities, until they need to be White again”. If it’s rough to be Black in America or in the LGBTQ+ community, how hard does it suck to be both? This fact is completely ignored because it doesn’t serve his contention that LGBTQ+ people have captured the attention of the US to the disadvantage of Black people.In discussing a free Black man who became a cruel and vicious slave owner and breeder, he sees it as a tragedy and wonders “How can a person who went through slavery perpetuate the same evil…” Indeed, how can a person who has experienced oppression and discrimination in any form, “perpetuate the same evil”, Mr. Chappelle? To paraphrase his words, he is invested in a construct of success that the rest of us know as the world run by White heterosexual men. The Black slave owner followed an incentive, just as Chappelle is following the money paid by largely White, heterosexual men.I suppose that as a Black comedian, he is free to use the N-word all he wants. I would simply not that other Black people I know, especially Black women, do not feel it is appropriate, I have been told that if the Black community wants people to stop using that epithet, that Black folks should be the first to stop and model more correct word usage. And the correct usage is “Black people”. We don’t generally call people Blacks or Whites, just as we don’t call women “bitches” or gay people “gays” or “the gays” and we certainly don’t call transgendered people “transgenders”. But he is somewhat chastened and no longer refers to “trannys” claiming when was using the word routinely years ago he didn’t know it was offensive. Are we giving awards for such baby steps in 2021?He makes reference to some encounters with transgendered women that he wants us to believe at first were not negative. One woman at a bar seemingly entrapped him by showing him a picture of her daughter, working in “Hollywood” and he claims he said that she “is very beautiful”. When she reveals that the daughter was a transgendered woman he said, “Well if you had said that from the start, I would have, said, “Look at that big chiseled jawline and big thick Joe Rogan neck. Is that a dude? Is your daughter a man?” and adds that it is “really annoying” that “you can’t say that shit”. He also makes a comment about his “fear” as a highly paid celebrity, going on stage with security everywhere, because the “transgenders” might attack him. So, to get a sense for the room, he does a quick search for “Adam’s apples and big knuckles”.Note that Chappelle appears to be completely unaware that there are also transgendered men. Apparently, he believes in their existence even less than he believes in the existence of transgendered women. In a rare moment of potentially legitimate ignorance or stupidity, he rambles a bit about the “fact” that there are “two genders”. So, we’ve got someone opining at great length on this topic without understanding that what he probably means to say is that there are two biological sexes, which is also untrue.There are multiple genes that express biological sex. They are expressed and interact much more like dimmers on a light than switches. As such, there is a very broad continuum of biological sexes that tend to group into clusters that we generally label as male and female. But these are not, and never have been polar and exclusive opposites. Everyone expresses both male and female aspects of biological sex.We can’t deny the obvious intelligence of Chappelle so how can we explain that he can’t seem to process how this works? Biological sex (typically assigned at birth), gender (your experience), and sexual orientation (your choice of partners) are completely different things that bear no relationship to each other. While the majority of people are assigned male or female, perceive themselves in a gender that conforms, and are attracted to the putative “opposite” sex, this correspondence is merely the bulge in the bell curve. These three attributes, all expressed on a continuum, interplay in countless variations in every possible combination.Chappelle’s central “thesis” is: it is better to be LGBTQ+ in America than to be Black. Despite ongoing structural racism and discrimination, that is manifestly untrue. I’m not aware of one single person who has lost their job, for instance, for “coming” out as Black. But the LGBTQ+ community knows full well that there are still many places where their right to work, live, receive health care, and more is not guaranteed.The SC recently ruled that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act covers LGBTQ+ people with regard to discrimination in employment. Great news! Who is enforcing that? Isn’t the problem precisely the same as it is for Black people who may be passed over at any point in the hiring process without any explanation, while an employer looks for someone, “more suitable”? How would one even document that the discrimination occurred without explicitly setting a trap of some kind for the employer?It is also great news that the Biden administration reversed the explicit decision of the prior Fascist administration to strip transgendered people of their rights to health care without discrimination under the ACA. Two problems. First, that only applies to about half of the hospitals, clinics, and physicians’ offices that receive some form of federal funding. The other problem is that it was restored by Executive Order so the next Fascist can, and likely will, reverse the policy. Unfortunately, there are no federal protections for LGBTQ+ people in many other matters.Chappelle touches on the danger of police to Black people. That remains a tragic reality. However, if we look at the numbers, it is statistically more dangerous to be LGBTQ+ than to be Black in America. In 2019, 47,511 suicides were reported in the US. At that time, 5.6% of the population self-identified as LGBTQ+, somewhat lower than the generally accepted rate of about 7%. Suicide deaths among the LGBTQ+ population are difficult to quantify because sexual orientation and gender (as opposed to biological sex) are typically not noted in coroners’ reports. However, in a study of suicide among US veterans, the rate of suicide among LGBTQ+ individuals was 2.19 times the rate of the overall veteran population.Some quick arithmetic might suggest that of 47,511 suicide deaths, multiplied by 5.6% of the population, 2,600 of these were LGBTQ+ individuals. However, if the suicide rate is over 2 times the general population, that would suggest that over 5,800 suicide deaths in 2019 were LGBTQ+ individuals.In 2019, the number of suicide deaths of Black people was approximately 3,500, of which some were LGBTQ+, and are double-counted. During this same period, 1,021 fatal shootings of Black people were recorded. While most of us remain horrified at the deaths of George Floyd and Freddie Gray, the manner of their deaths was unusual and would not meaningfully change these statistics.Taken together, the estimated 5,822 suicide deaths of LGBTQ+ people in 2019 is about 1.7 times the rate of the overall Black population and 5.7 times the rate of fatal police shootings. Taken together, and realizing that suicide deaths of Black LGBTQ+ people are counted in both groups, the combined number suicide deaths and fatal police shootings of Black people was 4,484.Statistically, it is certainly more deadly to be LGBTQ+ in America than Black. This does not diminish the horror of police killings of Black people. It merely means that one cannot make the case that the shootings and suicides of Black people do not make it more dangerous to be Black in America than to be LGBTQ+.At 53:45 in Chappelle says, “I am team TERF (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist, cis-women who deny the possibility of transgendered women). I agree.” He continues with, “I am not saying trans women are not women. But those pussies that they got…you what I mean?” and “Tastes like pussy but that’s not quite what it is, is it? It’s not blood, that is beet juice”.At 55.50, with about 16 minutes left, Chappelle tries to cleanse his odious and unsalvageable reputation. Important, I guess, because he believes he is the GOAT. He suggests that a few less negative interactions with a transgendered woman named Daphne Dorman who he allowed to open for him as a comedian in San Francisco somehow undoes all the other things he has said and done. Sadly, her interactions with Chappelle provoked a strong reaction from the transgendered community and she was “dragged all over Twitter”.Sadly, Daphne subsequently committed suicide six days later. He claims he set up a trust fund for her daughter. If so, that is nice. But even in this case, he can’t avoid ridiculing the manner of her death, jumping off the roof of a building, saying, “Clearly, only a man would do some gangster shit like that”. Wrong. Clearly, only someone determined to succeed in the attempt would do that. After putting words in her mouth and claiming insights that can never be known after her death, Chappelle ends the story by saying he wants to present the money to her daughter when she is 21, accompanied by the statement that “I knew your father, and was a wonderful woman”. One final swipe! All of which still glosses over the fact that Daphne was yet another LGBTQ+ suicide casualty.He states that “It is over. I’m not telling another joke about you until it is clear that we are laughing together.” In other words, “The singular target of my hate must come around to my point of view”. He concludes with yet another false equivalency between the experience of Black Americans and the LGBTQ+ community.Here’s my conclusion, which is substantially more different and more accurate than Chappelle’s: Ancient peoples didn’t even have a word for “race”. Obviously, some ethnic groups treated others with more or less respect. Slavery was widespread but you certainly didn’t need to be Black to be enslaved in ancient Greece, Egypt or Rome. Racism is a fairly modern invention. Correspondingly, the history of Black people in the US from 1619 on has been reprehensible. There is no question about that.However, LGBTQ+ people have been targeted, discriminated against, and killed for many thousands of years in almost every culture. Today it is, in fact, more deadly to be LGBTQ+ in America than it is to be Black.Discrimination is bad. Being discriminated against as a Black Man offers absolutely no license to discriminate against the LGBTQ+ community. However, that is precisely what Chappelle is doing. If he is that concerned about the safety and progress of Black people in America, perhaps he should have done a series of Netflix specials that would advance that goal. Instead, he took out his insecurity and hate on a different marginalized population.It is grotesque, vile, and unacceptable behavior.I will never watch any Chappelle show or special again. I’ve seen and heard quite enough.I hope you have too.
