LogFAQs > #960634298

I will make this brief, and when I say "make this brief", I mean I wrote with pen and paper for forty minutes venting thoughts about it first, then spent half an hour typing a revised and condensed version, and now I'm chopping it down to size in a more whimsical way. I just had to get all that out of my system so I could get it into fewer words.

My take on the Chappelle special, which I've since watched from start to finish, is that the majority of people offended by it lack a sufficient amount of empathy for Dave Chappelle as a person (as a comedian, as a black man, as someone who's experienced a person they know taking their own life) to even see his perspective when he's talking. I don't mean cheap empathy, either. Not the kind of empathy where you just think to yourself "I don't wish for anyone to suffer, therefore I have empathy for all people" I'm talking about real, deep, like, "this person is my tribe, we grew up and fought wars together, they've seen the warts" kind of empathy. (Nothing wrong with the cheap stuff, just saying I'm talking about something different.)

The man outright says in the special that his problem is with white people, and observation of the public reaction confirms this. Anecdotally by me watching several reaction videos, the number one predictor for whether someone is offended is whiteness, and still the topic of conversation has somehow not centered on white people! And that's like, the entire issue with reality that Dave is so tired of living in that he wrote a whole special dedicated to pointing it out is that white people have this tendency to not notice when we and our attitudes are at the center of everyone else's problems.

There's so many details that I want to point out but it's just too old and tired at this point for it to be worth it. But for my own sanity and for posterity and all that, I had to get something out.