26 REDS & A BOTTLE OF WINE

So now it’s all come out and it looks like David Chappelle’s unceremonious absence was due to him feeling more like Rockchester and less like Richard Pryor.

It’s understandable. A large portion of Mr. Chappelle’s audience are white males in their late teens and early twenties. The demographic most likely to use the word nigger in personal conversation without the least concern of it’s history or etymology. I’ve had, in the last two years a number of members of this key demographic describe to me in vivid language sketches from Mr. Chappelle’s Comedy Central show involving racial stereotyping that (with the exception of my last post) would even make me blush. Well, not blush, but out of a “black” context funny turns to questionable in a heartbeat. A side effect of Mr. Chappelle’s show may have been to legitimize, or at least to green-light some of the most racist and debasing of modern black stereotypes. More after the Jump!


In an interview on Oprah’s show several years ago Chris Rock was asked by a white man in the audience why black people could say nigger (or nigga, I see no difference, personally) but white people couldn’t. Mr. Rock’s answer may be the most pointed and interesting statement about modern American race relations: “Why do you want to?” Mr. Rock goes on to point out that white men (I say men because this seems to be a white male bastion. In my 30 years on Earth I have never heard a woman use the word) seem never more than a stones throw from screaming “Nigger” from the mountaintop. Quoting it in conversation and from the stand up routines of a dozen black comedians whenever chance permits (Even recently to great comic effect on an episode of NBC show The Office, where a Chris Rock routine was quoted verbatim by a white boss to his multicultural underlings).

But self-debasing humor among black comedians has been in vogue for nearly as long as the form itself. Has Mr. Chappelle really crossed that line? Let’s see. Among modern black comics (we shall leave aside minstrel shows and the like) Richard Pryor and Paul Mooney are considered both the most innovative and offensive of black comedians. Mr. Pryor (who we lost no December 10 2005) wrote much of Blazing Saddles, a sharp and intelligent comedy that is also, at times, sexist, racist and anti-Semitic. Yet it would be hard to argue that the film reinforces black stereotypes. The plot (about a erudite modern day black man sent to play sheriff to a town of wild west whites hicks) may provide a piece of our solution. Cleavon Little (himself a Tony winning Shakespearean actor), as our sophisticated hero, is the cultured and intellectual superior to the white towns people, and yet THEY reject HIM, not the other way around (Mr. Little says to himself in one scene “Baby, you are soooo talented. And they are soooo stupid!”). The film about a black man replacing a town’s white leader during a time of crisis was released in February of 1974, nearly 6 months to the day before embattled President Richard Millhouse Nixon resigned the office. Perhaps simply interesting historical coincidence but it jives with the film’s message. A racist culture rejecting it’s cultural, intellectual superior (Bart rides into town to the Count Basie Orchestra, Count Basie himself slaps Bart five. In many ways Mr. Little’s character is a Count Basie stand-in ). A beautiful allegory for an American culture disinterested in the disenfranchisement of the rich cultural and intellectual black communities of the late sixties and early seventies. Blazing Saddles’ message would play a stark counter image to the black out riots in New York City three years later. Those images would serve as a flash point in New York City race relations for the better part of 15 years.

But is Dave Chappelle’s message that far off from Mr. Brooke (I have to give Mr. Brookes his due) and Mr. Pryor’s cultural allegory?

No. Mr. Chappelle often deals with issues of black stereotypes on television and the role blacks play in the media. His points, however, are often confusing and his delivery misleading. In one sketch he images a world where the U.S. Government pays black Americas slavery reparations. What do blacks do with the money? They buy fried chicken, Escalades and truck loads of Kool cigarettes. Mr. Chappelle may be taking his fellow black Americans to task for poor saving and investment power (an epidemic in this country, which further disenfranchises communities) but the far more base takeaway (especially for a young white male audience predisposed to see it) is the message that niggers like fried chicken, kool cigarettes and rolling dice. No wonder Mr. Chappelle felt conflicted.

Yet interestingly, and ironically, Mr. Chappelle’s show, a runaway hit and the best selling television show on DVD (the 2nd season) may be totally out of touch with black America. African American Homeownership is at it highest level ever with a larger black middle class than ever before. A far cry from Mr. Chappelle’s character of Tyrone Biggums, the homeless crack addict. In fact blacks seems sharply closer to the character played by Bernie Mac on The Bernie Mac Show. Mr. Mac, either knowingly or unknowingly has reinvented the radio era character of The Great Gildersleeve, a middle ages man forced to care after his orphaned niece and nephew. Mr. Mac show is part of a trending in many corners of black media towards the middle class. While films in the eighties and early nineties trended towards gritty urban drama, heavy on drugs violence and despair (New Jack City, Beat Street, etc.) more recently the trend has been away from ghettos (anything Taye Diggs or Vivica Foxx). While Brown Sugar (2002) may not be as popular as New Jack City (1991) with our young white male demo, that may not be a bad thing.

Black comedians, especially those who attain “cross-over” appeal walk a delicate line between entertaining a new broader (whiter) audience and alienating their black base who have come to expect socially and politically charged material.

David Chappelle will return to television. He is talented, charming and smart and his recent escape to Africa for sabbatical demonstrates an inner conscience. The vision of mainstream black comedy capable of calling both white and black America to task on issues of race and class is a dream a posse ad esse. What he will look like when he returns is anyone’s guess. Who knows, maybe Sheriff Bart.