Last night, I finally finished watching the Chappelle special, named "The Closer." As with Chappelle's previous Netflix special, "Sticks and Stones," progressives, liberals, and non-Trumpists, are revealing their poor comprehension levels and are too quick to harshly judge Chappelle based upon a few lines in an hour long show. This is not to say Chappelle doesn't fall into JK Rowling's transphobia in two particular lines he uttered, and it is not to say that Chappelle is somehow so wise as to make for no criticism of his assumptions behind his humor. What makes Chappelle's argument or arguments particularly problematic is his continued conflating of trans people with white trans people, though, at least in two or perhaps three points, he acknowledges there are black trans and black gays and lesbians. However, he does so in a way that deflects from his continued basing of the jokes and comedic insights that highlight "trans" or "LGBTQ" when he is talking "white trans" or "white LGBTQ." I was so pleased when Chappelle finally said, and I paraphrase, "Hey, I am not really talking about trans people or the alphabet people. I'm talking about white people!"
On the positive side, Chappelle's comedic commentary moves us toward Irami Osei-Frimpong's great points in Irami's video and FB commentary*--and the video is worth watching all the way through, especially if one watches the Chappelle special. At some point, we white folks, whether we are straight, cis, LGBTQ, or otherwise, have to understand what drives the frustration of Chappelle, Irami, and other sharp minds (Adolph Reed, Jr. comes to mind), which is how these oppressed communities, still largely white, getting civil rights protections ends up diluting and even undermining the ability of African-Americans to overcome the far more systemic and violent racism they continue to endure as Americans. And in fact these "alphabet people," when they feel normalized into society, reify white settler-colonial patterns as they say things, "Well, I'm gay, but I'm against raising the minimum wage," as if there are no gays or lesbians in service sector jobs who are being exploited. Or they still utter grandma style racism towards blacks.
But, wait!, you may say. It is not a zero-sum game. Oh, sorry, but it often is. And if we white folks of any ethnicity, any gender, any sexual orientation or status, don't acknowledge that, we better check that level of privilege. It is sad to admit there is a zero-sum game against black people in various real life situations. Here are two quick examples: (1) A white employer would rather hire a white lesbian or w white trans man or woman than a black man. (2) A white neighborhood will be more welcoming to a white gay or trans couple than a black family. Etc.
Got that, my fellow white and semi-white folks? Look carefully at those two examples again.
Irami's video also makes powerful points beyond Chappelle, starting with these two points: (1) the history of lynching often involved, as part of the lynching process, castrating black men, so there was a psycho-sexual murder going on, and (2) scientists of the time were often enlisted to "prove" black men are prone to rape white women in order to support that castration (same source link). Irami then enlightens us about the rate of black men becoming women being twice the rate of black women becoming men and wonders, late in his video, whether a black man wants to become a woman in fact wants to really become a "lady." If so, that black man is confused because he is actually saying he wants to be white, and doesn't understand how disrespectfully and horribly black women and women of color have been treated and continue to be treated. It is part of Irami's overall point about white feminism being at best uncertain allies, and often aligned against black people's progress. And that point needs to be understood as a way in which "intersectionality" can expose limits in particular oppressed group's level of oppression, and where they are themselves fine with oppressing other oppressed groups.
It is important to recognize, when discussing Dave Chappelle's recent specials, is that Chappelle is primarily after mischief, intending to needle and provoke people in a Lenny Brucian way.** Nearly every time Chappelle said something that would warm a liberal's or progressive's heart, he followed it with a punch line designed to expose pretzel logic, or play to a cultural conservative's point of view--while still being anti-cultural conservative. In attacking Chappelle, liberals and progressives sound not too dissimilar to conservatives who suddenly love Chappelle for "owning the libs." Most of those conservatives saying that are not even watching Chappelle, and miss out on why their new hero is not who they think he is. They simply see how upset liberals and progressives are and think, "That must mean Chappelle sees what we see! Yay!" Meanwhile, libs and progressives are outraged for Chappelle playing into conservatives' arguments, when he is actually making fun of most, but not all, of those arguments.
Chappelle ultimately wants us all to see how our moral logic of tolerance, anti-sexism, and anti-racism can turn in on itself, and sometimes miss truths of how those in minority communities can themselves become oppressors. That was most exemplified by his semi-long joke about the actual black man in the antebellum South who ended up owning and mistreating (terribly) black slaves of his own. This is why one must treat Chappelle's hour long monologue as an essay, and not a series of random bits. If one just turns off the tv when thinking "That is enough of that crap," and doesn't watch all the way through to hear his story about Daphne Gorman, then one misses an important contextual explanation for what Chappelle is after beyond mere mischief.
What has been highly amusing to me is how Chappelle's two "Jew related" jokes are not being discussed in most social media. I won't spoil the jokes, but I jumped for joy, and with laughter, as Chappelle hit Jewish Zionists square in the face on both occasions. I stopped the video not long after the first joke, when Chappelle said to a shocked audience member, "Don't worry, it's gonna get a whole lot worse," and said to my wife Chappelle is going to provoke anyone and everyone on purpose, and will continue to "go there" till it hurts. Chappelle was indeed just warming up. I should note Chappelle's "Jewish" jokes did the same thing he was doing with the trans and LGBTQ communities, where he did not stop and say, "Oh, I only mean Jewish Zionists, and maybe Christian ones, too." Nope. He just said "Jew." As I say, it is Lenny Brucian in that he is demanding the audience figure out the subtleties--and even question themselves whether they laugh or were outraged.
Chappelle called the show the "Closer" because he is definitely dropping the mic at Netflix--and he physically and defiantly dropped his mic at the end of the hour plus show. Yes, I wish Chappelle would understand the role political-economy plays in what he is saying (i.e. how racial stratification was a key element in the development of capitalist hegemony). If he had better understood political-economy, I believe it may have tempered his worst and least defensible lines--both sadly in the context of the JK Rowling situation (saying he was on Team TERF and that there are only two sexes at least.*** However, as usual, the outrage against Chappelle remains based upon some seriously low comprehension levels in our entire discourse. Overall, Chappelle may still make it easier to understand what Irami and others are saying, though I am the first to admit those voices--and mine--are not heard such that the outrage from the progressive left and joy from the petulant right drowns out the potential for enlightenment.
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* On FB, on Oct 12, Irami introduced his video stating: "America likes its Black males without nuts. That looks like a lot of things, including the 6' 2" dude who stoops and whispers because he doesn't want to appear threatening. It also looks like castrating Black folks like George Washington Carver."
** I wish Lenny was right that if we all used the n-word as an everyday statement, then it would lose its ability to demean and hurt. He wasn't. It was a hope circa 1961, but, in 2021, we unfortunately know better. It is noteworthy how much Chappelle used the n-word in his "Closer" show, in a way that brought the late Richard Pryor to mind. However, later in life, after touring Kenya, Pryor said he would no longer use that word as he saw how destructive it is as a word that undermines African-Americans' positive sense of themselves. Chappelle loves irony, as did Pryor and Lenny Bruce. However, their irony was based in their hope for a better world that has not yet arrived. Chappell, meanwhile, seems to have ingested their hopeful, ironic observations, but has done so in a manner that reifies the ironies into established ways of thinking that may ultimately be destructive to future hopes.
*** In Chappelle's defense, he did acknowledge biologists can tell us about hermaphrodites and other situations in biological understanding that go beyond total male and female, though, again, that is a dodge designed to throw us off his intentional conflating of trans with white trans, without saying white trans, or even whether there can be progressive, anti-racist white trans people. Again, though, I think people need to acknowledge African-American pain and frustration here as the LGBTQ and trans communities get to straight America's heart more deeply and faster than black Americans have ever gotten to white people's hearts.
