US comedian still taking shots at police
THE US criminal justice system has long been comedic fodder for Dave Chappelle. But with his new Netflix specials released this week, we get to hear how Chappelle discusses policing and race as the nation debates the relationship between law enforcement and the communities they police.
He has gone on tours since he walked away from a $50 million deal with Comedy Central in 2005 and his show went off the airwaves, but it’s been more than a decade since he’s presented so much instantaneously accessible new material.
In Deep in the Heart of Texas, filmed in 2015, he defers on delving too deeply into police brutality. But he had plenty to say about the criminal justice system in his second special, filmed a year later in LA.
Chappelle’s fame also provides him a perspective about interacting with police that’s different from what we’ve heard before. In the Austin special, Chappelle tells the story of filing a police report in his Ohio town after white teens in a car throw snowballs at him and yell a racial epithet. Police ask Chappelle if he wants to press charges. “Huh? Sorry about that officer, I’m a little flustered,” Chappelle says. “I’ve never been in a position before where I can decide the fate of white children.”
In the The Age of Spin, Chappelle cites the Netflix series Making a Murderer about Steven Avery – a white man convicted of sexual assault, exonerated, and then convicted of murder – and declares “everybody’s mad at police now”.
Past Chappelle specials contain now-iconic riffs about being a black man who feared police. In 2000, he joked about being too scared to call 911 after his home was broken into. In his 2004 special For What It’s Worth, he tells jokes about racial profiling and how black and white teens are treated differently.
Chappelle continues to turn to tragedy as a vehicle for humour, and he still doesn’t shy away from drawing shocking parallels in the process. In The Age of Spin, he tells the story of police filmed beating a black woman on the side of a California road.
It was so bad, he says, she received a $1.5m settlement. “Not bad,” Chappelle says, who compares it to the payout from boxing star Floyd Mayweather.
“And this woman obviously hasn’t trained a day in her life. You can see it on the tape.” – The Washington Post