Chappelle talks: Why I walked away.

Great Debates
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The raindog. I do not mean to dismiss or belittle the experiences of you and your wife, but some of the things you with the face says and what you say are essentially in agreement. But a co-member of Generation X I have directly been subjected to racial hostility by whites, which I have talked about before on these boards, though as I grow older these kinds of incidents grow much less common. My generation is quite attuned to racial incidents happening to other people, if only because we still have a “this shit is still happening!” attitude that is not quite “embedded victimization” although I can see how you might think so. It’s more of a “heads up!” deal.

In that respect, I’d say that our generation is probably the first to expericence more or less “hassle free” social interracial dating, although yours was probably the first to challenge and overturn miscegenation laws. Fair enough?

I think for the most part people are politer now, and more likely to say niceties to your face, and better equipped to hold their fists and tongues. But the hatred and disapproval behind the practiced smiles is still racism, just a more insiduous and quieter kind. Well, it’s demonstrably bigoted if not racist.

As a member of Generation X, I’m 35. My mother (55) and father (64) were both subjected to “Colored Only” segregation well into in their teens and twenties, respectively, in South Carolina and Tennesee, respectively, particularly since they both lived in small southern towns with segregated schools, parks, motels, stores and churches.

My own racial incidents are pretty unremarkable and MIGHT just be chalked up to “growing up.” When I was 5, I bloodied the face of a white kid who called me a “stupid monkey” in kindergarten. When I was fourteen, I got in a fistfight with three white guys, one of whom who called me a “nigger” from his front porch, and I dared them to come over here and say that to my face. I was 18 when a carload of white boys called me “nigger!” from a passing car and threw a Coke bottle at my head, causing me to fall off the bike; I was around 23 when I was riding another bike out in the country and ran into, of all people, David Duke.

In my own teens and twenties, I’ve felt “free” to apply for housing and higher education, but make no mistake: I have been discriminated in housing applications before, and simply decided it was not worth my time or money to pursue legal recourse. I’ve had a few minor racial incidents at USC. I’ve participated in the democratic process without fear of personal retribution, but have seen where others like me have been quite legally disenfranchised in national elections in 2000 and 2004, and see where my votes in Ohio may be dispute, too. I do feel “free” to date or marry a white woman if I choose and she so consents, but I’ve made a conscious decision a long time ago that the hostility, bitterness and disapproval from some blacks with my just being with a white woman wasn’t really worth looking outside my race for love. I’m not exactly losing sleep over this, but prehaps you look at me and see someone cowed by the opinions of others. If I have every expectation that I will receive fair treatment in the justice system, that’s only because I’ve never really run afoul of the law. If something did happen, I wouldn’t be surprised if my tune changed. I’ve bailed out friends on seen how the cops treated them. Despite my faith, I have very low expectations, almost always reinforced, almost every time I deal with the cops, that I will ever be treated fairly by them. I have been subjected to some boneheaded foot-dragging, rough treatment and callous indifference that I’m not sure I can attribute to my race or socioeconomic class or both.

I have it better than my parents did and a damn sight better than my grandparents. Major Civil Rights battles have been won, that’s mostly true, and life’s better. But the price for freedom, as I recall, is eternal vigiliance. Reminding yourself of the worst is not self-victimization.

raindog, I believe you and I are essentially on the same side and I imagine we’d have a lot to talk about IRL. There are some major fundamental differences in our worldviews, however, typified by your oft-repeated assertion that the fight for freedom for blacks in America began only 150 years ago. :dubious:

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I have to note that that wasn’t written by Dave, it was written by that columnist.

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We’ve already noted that a couple times.

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By God did we note that.

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Wow, I honestly didn’t realize that there were so many people who don’t believe in institutional racism.

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So, I actually wandered into this thread trying to figure out why it was in Great Debates. Needless to say, it only took me about half a page of posts to figure it out.

I would first like to address the people who feel that BET would have been a better place for Chappelle if he truly had issues with racism. Personally, it would seem like a joke to me if an entertainer complained about being exploited and then preceded to take his talents to BET. IMHO, BET is a waste of a station. I do not like their claim of providing being a channel for “us”. They are simply an overrated music video channel that “goes to church” on Sundays. Surely educated blacks across the country must love watching Negroes dance around and tell jokes. Before anyone responds to this comment, browse the website yourself and explain to me why the news section is so brief. Then explain to me why I have read more informative book reviews in Maxim. Finally, tell me why the biggest link on the community page is focused on rims and bling. If Chappelle, said what he did, and then took his show to BET, he would have lost all of the respect that educated people have for him. As can be seen here, he has already raised quite a few questions from his fan base. While I do not think he needed to give any reasons for his actions, I believe that once you publicly announce such strong feelings, you should at least attempt to stand by them.

I agree that the statement you were referencing is pretty meaningless. However, it is pretty meaningless for those who have responded to Chappelle’s comments by saying that there are lots of poor whites. Of course there are plenty of poor whites, there are plenty of poor everything. The wealthy in this country do not have large numbers. They have most of the money distributed amongst very few so statistically someone has to be on the bottom. Even if all blacks were poor, the numbers would not match our current poverty count.

People need to get over this. I do not mean black people or white people; I mean *everyone *needs to get over this. Most of the people running this country are white. Would you all like a cookie for pointing that out to us? Black folks need to stop using this as a catchall excuse and white people need to stop getting so damn defensive about it. No one is saying that all rich people are white so come off of the nonsense.

A lot of folks here really jumped on this statement. In this situation, I can only blame ignorance. I am not going to tell you that you cannot possibly understand this unless you are an ethnic minority or poor. It may be more difficult for you to find a concrete example, but everyone should be able to relate to “selling out” their own kind. If you cannot, I want your life.

I absolutely agree with you.

This is indeed, a very serious problem that has caused numerous issues in the black community. It has caused us to accept the role of victim and to run with it. Personally, I hate the fact that lazy people exploit the unfortunate experiences of others in order to move up in the world. Still, the world is full of opportunists so I do not see this going away any time soon.

For the record, both my mother (58) and father (66) experienced “Colored Only” well into their adolescence while growing up in South Carolina and Mississippi, respectively.

This is about where I begin to lose you. My maternal grandparents were both college educated and both of my parents have graduate degrees so I feel safe in claiming the role of “successful black.” I am only 21 but I have had more than my fair share of “nuisances.”

Upon my transfer, into the middle class suburban school district from which I graduated, I was forced to take 6 entrance examination series. Everyone else takes one series. The administrator in charge was not willing to accept my advanced credits until I proved my proficiency. A board investigation later determined that there was discrimination on the part of the administrator in charge. Three of my high school years were spent on a Varsity football team where my predominantly white team delighted in making me the brunt of their racial humor. If you want the jokes, message me. I may not see every traffic stop as a racist out to do me harm, but it gets to be pretty obvious after being stopped at least once a month. Especially when the cop walks up to the car and lets me go after realizing that he just pulled over the town’s “black scholar”. I have found Carnegie Mellon to be a real blast when I am excluded from organizations because students “just don’t think that you’re people would be comfortable with us.” I also enjoy being denied entry from the gymnasium I work in when my id card fails to scan for the desk attendant, and then watching a generic white guy walk in and use his drivers license to gain entry. The only physical racism that I have experienced has been due to an inter-racial relationship. Of course, you may interpret that as you choose because I am visibly bigger than most people and very non-confrontational.

As much as I agree with most of your sentiments raindog I cannot pass off my experiences as a nuisance. I do not think that I dwell on them, but it absolutely influences my life. If nothing else, it influences me to be a better person. I look forward to hearing more from you in the future.

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I’m not sure it’s a case of believing in it or not but questioning it’s affects. That is, can you blame racism for all the problems bedeviling black America? I say no. And I question the notion of active institutional racism. That is, an active conscious effort to hurt black people.

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And the amount of discrimination they faced fifty years ago (when we had finally suppressed routine lynchings) was less than they faced fifty years earleir (when lynchings were not only common, but popular). Based on an argument that “it’s been worse,” we should have done nothing fifty years ago. (In fact, forty years ago, I actually heard that argument.)

You note that people in the suburbs also get busted for drugs, yet there is no indication that drug usage is lower in the suburbs and the enforcement is much different in the two neighborhoods. Following the death of Len Bias, (ironically, for doing powder), Congress stampeded to make the laws governing crack ten times harsher than the laws governing powder–depite the fact that the claims that one was more addictive than the other were nonsense. As a result, the DEA concentrates on going after the “big bang for the buck” convictions for crack while ignoring a lot of powder transactions as not worth their time.

As to the people in the Superdome: I too saw maybe three persons interviewed during the crisis, all black, who reported violence and murders. I also was reminded of the claims of those few (frightened and confused) people on a half-hour basis throughout the week. On the other hand, I also saw the interviews with one white guardsman and one black cop after officials had made it back in there, each of whom said that conditions were horrible, but that the violence was greatly exaggerated. Those interviews were played once, each, and then no mention was made of them again. Later, when the actual death count of six was reported–none by murder–it got a back page story on a couple of papers and no big play on the electronic news–particularly not on an hourly basis throughout the day. This despite the fact that the news media had to have been aware of the huge number of blogs and talk radio shows going on at length about the “savages” in New Orleans.

That is the institutional racism that you with the face (and you?) believes does not exist. It is not the deliberate change from wards to at-large voting to ensure that growning numbers of black voters cannot get representation on city council. It is not Jim Crow or unfunded segregated schools, but it reinforces an attitude that all the problems blacks face are of their own making while supporting actions and attitudes that interfere with their ability to improve their lot.

And, as I noted briefly earlier, you have concentrated on the problems faced by the poorest of the urban poor. Racism continues to harm all blacks. Only about one in four blacks are classified as poor according to the U.S. Census, but racism affects many more. It is harder to find and prosecute examples of discrimination, these days because the racists are less blatant in their actions and the courts have interpreted the laws to mean that one must demonstrate discrimination to a level that is nearly impossible to prove in the everyday work place, but it is still there and active.

In the post from which I took the quote at the beginning of this response, you actually mioved from a postion that racism is not harming the black community to a claim that the only racism that is hurting blacks is the racism of black leaders. Yet, your only evidence of this is that when some black leaders (most often entertainers) get caught screwing up, they play the race card. It is not the whining of the Jacksons or McKinneys that keeps middle class blacks from getting the housing they seek or the jobs they have earned.

My position is not that racism is at the root of all problems faced by any black individual. My position is that racism continues to be one (and perhaps not the most serious) issue that faces the poorest of blacks and that it is one issue that continues to interfere with the lives of middle class blacks. We are doing better than we have. I simply dismiss your fairly simplistic claims that racism is irrelevant to and harms no one in current society.

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By definition, institutional racism is NOT the active attempt to harm blacks. It is the underlying assumptions, often wrong, that presume that some things “just are that way” when the reality is that they originated in racist practices that are no longer reconsidered or have come to harm blacks in unforeseen ways that people do not want to exert the energy to change.

The nonsensical laws regarding crack vs powder cocaine are such an example. There is no reason why either form of the drug should be more heavily regualted than the other. As it happens, crack is more frequently used in the inner city and powder more frequently used in the suburbs. No one sat down and said, “Let’s make a law that will punish blacks more than whites.” The initial discrepancy was based on a misunderstanding of the addictive properties of each. However, medical science disproved the addictive fallacy within 11 months of the death of Len Bias. The law has been up for review on several occasions since that time. Congress, however, has chosen to simply let the laws stand the way they are, which has the net effect of focusing the DEA’s attention on the inner city while ignoring the suburbs, resulting in far more arrests and convictions of people in the inner city than in the suburbs for what is, effectively, the identical crime.

It is not that anyone set out to harm blacks; it is that no one really cares about the actual effects of the drugs. They simply want to look “tough” on crime and they look a lot tougher making sure that “those people” are being inspected than if they were spending the effort to break up drug rings in college prep schools or golf clubs (where more money for campaign funds is found).

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Um, tom? I certainly believe in institutional racism. My position, if anything, is that the kind of present-day racism that affects black Americans most significantly is indeed institutional, not the kind of the KKK type of racism that everyone always thinks of and conveniently can say is neglible. Institutional racism is the kind of racism that leads to tracking in schools, the promulgation of certain messages in the media (like the Katrina coverage you mentioned), and disparate attention by law enforcement which leads to increased scrutiny of black offenders and an unwarranted gift of the benefit of the doubt to white ones.

Individuals who harbor racist opinions are a nuisance when you encounter them, but when one has to worry about whether their resume will be rejected because the name on it sounds too “black”…that’s a little bit more than a nuisance. It’s that kind of stuff that can wear on not just the lower-class but also the middle-class.

[to the room, not just to tomndebb ]

There was nothing in my earlier post that suggested victimization. The ironic thing is that when I went out of my way not to make it about me and my own experiences with racism, I still got accused of trying to be a victim. I even called myself successful. So why should I be accused of self-victimization simply for trying to share my perspective in response to someone treating 50 years like ancient history? I just don’t understand the attitude, and I’m starting to feel like its pointless to have these kind of discussions anymore.

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Sorry. I misunderstood an earlier comment.

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Just to quickly respond to this point, I do think current black leadership is racist insofar as their sole plank appears to be blaming white people for all of their ills whilst encouraging a victimhood mentality. And it’s not just the entertainers but prominent black leaders such as Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and the Black Congressional Congress who continously return to this stance regardless of the situation. So no, entertainers in troble are not my “only evidence” (your words) and I would hope that you are not so myopic as to believe that it is.

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I agree that several black leaders have promoted de facto racism–certainly Sharpton and McKinney, probably Jackson. However, in terms of the Black Caucus and similar state organizations, I see no difference between their rhetoric and the rhetoric of all the ethnic leaders of other groups who preceeded them–groups who were not then accused of bigotry but simply acclaimed for looking out for their own.

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I simply disagree. They are almost entirely single-issue and there is never a situation that they don’t see or find racism as a factor whether it exists or not.

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I do, however, agree with your point about the classification of crack cocaine. It’s a disgrace. I am surprised, however, it hasn’t been changed. Surely the Democrats could muster up enough votes to get the classifications changed?

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If you really believe this, then there is no point in further conversation with you on this topic. Your confirmation bias is off the charts and nothing said in this thread or anywhere else is going to convince. You seem to be deeply invested in your view that racism only exists anymore from black to white, which is so absurd I’d laugh if it wasn’t so damn horrible.

Because black people don’t want to help themselves, of course. If they changed that, then so many of them wouldn’t go to jail, and then what would they have to complain about? :rolleyes: Don’t you get it that institutional racism is what caused the classification of crack cocaine and the resultant prison terms? It can’t be made any clearer to you.

This thread has been very educational for me, in so many ways. Can’t say it’s changed my opinion of the uselessness of debate in this forum, though.

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What politician wants to come out in favor of crack? Sure, I know that’s not what you mean but that’s but most people in office are going to be worried about appearing soft on crime or to show any approval of drug use. It’s the same reason you won’t find many politicians working to legalize prostitution. Who wants to appear to the public as an endorser of prostitution?

I remember when crack started hitting the news and we saw images of young black thugs with guns plastered on magazines, newspapers, and the televised news. Oddly enough back in the 20’s and 30’s they used similiar images to make marijuana and cocaine illegal.

Marc

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Stupid question-why is crack more associated with blacks than powder?

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Interestingly enough just finished watching Boondocks which was a rerun of the Martin Luther King episode. Never saw it the first time. Funny. Sad. Meaningful. Brilliant.

Just seems timely to this thread is all.

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You are aware, I hope, of the definition of a straw man argument? Assigning a position to another person in an argument that they have not actually expressed, themselves, is not conducive to moving the discussion forward.

Even if we all fail to agree on every point discussed, there is no reason to imply bad faith on the part of one’s opponents before they have demonstrated that bad faith.

I am in strong disagreement with raindog and it should be clear that I disagree with much that Lockdale has posted, but I see no reason to mischaracterize their arguments.

Consider:

  • either one actually hopes to persuade one’s opponents to change their positions (in which case, erroneously assigning them positions they have not expressed will only irritate them and make them less likely to listen to your arguments or change their positions),
  • or one realizes that one’s opponents have (through differing life experiences) come to positions that are radically different from one’s own and are unlikely to change–meaning that the arguments one puts forth are intended to sway some number of readers who have not made up their minds, (in which case, displaying a flaw in one’s own presentation by attacking a straw man of one’s opponents will simply peresuade the uninvolved readers that one has poor debatiing skills or, perhaps, is attacking one’s opponents on a personal level to distract from the poverty of one’s own arguments).

Either way, you are better off demonstrating respect for one’s opponents than mischaracterizing their arguments or putting words in their mouths.