The Closure

 

By Dave Chappelle

Distributed by Netflix

A review by Steve Halpern

Dave Chappelle’s recent comedy performance has stirred up a bit of controversy. When I viewed this show recently, I can understand why. 

In this show, Chappelle, who is no fan of modesty, labelled himself as the GOAT (Greatest Of All Time). Clearly Chappelle has comedic skills that has endeared him to a large audience. However, I would not call him the GOAT.

Hopefully one day someone will write a history of comedy in this country. That history would, no doubt, include the names of Richard Pryor, Redd Fox, George Carlin, Lenny Bruce, Dick Gregory, and let us not forget Moms Mabley. Personally, I’m not going to rank Chappelle above those performers.

The Closure

However, in his performance titled The Closure, there were several instances that I didn’t feel were funny. What was the theme of this performance? At the end of this show, Chappelle argued that he doesn’t want the LBGT community to “punch down” on the Black community. 

Clearly, I will not deny that among people who identify as LBGT, there are some who have racist attitudes. Clearly, Chappelle would be justified in calling out instances of discrimination in this community. However, allow me to look at the parts of Chappelle’s The Closure to see if he is making a legitimate argument.

In one skit in this performance, Chappelle talked about confronting a table of people who were gay who were filming him without his consent. Clearly Chappelle had a right to object to this. Then, Chappelle argued that someone at this table called the police. He then argued that Black people wouldn’t have called the police because of an argument.

I do not deny that Chappelle had this experience. However, when we think about LBGT people calling the police, we might also consider this information.

Over the past few years, I’ve attended political meetings where LBGT people talked about the issues they face. In those meetings there was a consensus that LBGT people never call the police. There are clear reasons for this attitude.

The police have a long history of raiding gay bars and taking people into custody merely because of their sexual preference. There is an international trend of murders of people who are LBGT. In the year 2013, 20% of the hate crime murders were of people who were LBGT. Hillary Swank won an Oscar for her role as a transsexual who was murdered in the film Boys Don’t Cry. 

As we might imagine, the police are usually, at best, indifferent to these murders. So, when Dave Chappelle criticizes LBGT people for calling the police, he should be aware of the fact that most LBGT people have excellent reasons for never calling the police. 

Then, Chappelle spoke about another incident involving a transsexual. He argued that this person attempted to assault him. Then, Chappelle boasted that he proceeded to beat this person up. Clearly Chappelle had every right to defend himself when he was assaulted. However, why did he boast about beating up a transsexual who became a woman? If this had happened to me, I would have considered myself lucky that this person didn’t pull out a gun and kill me. 

Allow me to ask a question. Suppose it was a Black man who attempted to assault a transsexual. Then the transsexual beat up the Black man. Do we think that boasting about beating up a Black man would be funny? I don’t think so. 

Empathy and solidarity

Then, Chappelle argued that Mohammed Ali endured more criticism for changing his name than the criticism of Caitlyn Jenner when she changed her sex. This statement by Chappelle gets to the heart of the problem with his performance. 

There are many oppressed people in the world. In this country, we are not only talking about LBGT and Black people. We are also talking about Native Americans, Latinos, immigrants, and women. Do we want to have a ranking system where we rank people as to who has experienced the worse discrimination? Or do we want to struggle against all forms of discrimination?

Bob Marley was one of my favorite performers. However, Dick Gregory was absolutely right when he spoke to Marley and was critical of his song “Buffalo Soldiers.” Those Buffalo Soldiers were used by the United States government to participate in the genocidal warfare against Native Americans. 

Clearly Marley believed that the Buffalo Soldiers were courageous fighters. In reality, their actions only served the the powerful interests in this country. We can also say that while Colin Powell and Barack Obama achieved many of their personal goals, their politics represented a disaster for working people around the world.  

In his performance in The Closure, Chappelle claims he has “empathy” for people who are LBGT. The definition of empathy is: The ability to understand and share the feelings of another. 

Then, there is the definition of the word solidarity: Unity or agreement of feeling or action, especially among individuals with a common interest.

So, what is my problem with Dave Chappelle’s performance The Closure? Chappelle feels that it is all right to ridicule the lives of LBGT people because there are some LBGT people who have racist attitudes. Well, there are some Black people who have sexist attitudes. That didn’t stop millions of women, from all over the world, from protesting the murder of George Floyd. 

I am in solidarity with all people who experience discrimination. I expect nothing in return for those expressions of solidarity. The only real strength of the working class is our ability to come together demanding that an injury to one is an injury to all. This requires an ongoing struggle against all forms of discrimination.

I noticed that in the audience of Dave Chappelle’s performance there were two white women who clearly liked most of his comedy. However, while most people laughed at most of Chappelle’s jokes, it became clear that those two women didn’t find many of his jokes funny.

Clearly, a comedian’s job is not to make everyone laugh. If I were a comedian, I would make it a routine practice to make billionaires and their supporters uncomfortable. However, my opinion is that Dave Chappelle will become a much better comedian when he makes those two women laugh at his jokes.

President Biden marks Indigenous People Day by continuing the genocide against Native Americans

 

This morning I read a story in the Philadelphia Inquirer that made me angry. The article reported on Joe Biden’s presidential proclamation to refocus the federal holiday of Columbus Day to an appreciation of Native peoples. 

Reading this story, I was thinking about the hundreds of treaties the United States government signed, and then violated against Native Americans. I thought about all of the Native American children who the government took from their homes, and forced them to attend horrendous schools where so-called teachers demanded that students forget their heritage. I thought about the fact that today Native Americans are the poorest nationality in this country, where many live without direct access to running water or electricity.

However, when we look at the genocide against Native Americans, we need to go back to the birth of the United States of America. Every year July Fourth is a national holiday. This date marks the signing of the Declaration of Independence. When we read that document we notice that the founding fathers of this country labelled Native Americans with the racist word of “savages.” One of the reasons for the revolution of the thirteen colonies was a protest against the fact that the British were not giving enough aid to the colonist’s war against the first nations of this part of the world.

Dasani

Also, this morning, I read a review of a book in the New York Times titled, Invisible Child – Poverty Survival, and Hope in an American City by Andrea Elliott, and reviewed by Mathew Desmond. This is the story of Dasani who was an 11-year-old homeless Black girl, who was featured on the front page of the New York Times for five straight days in 2013. 

While I was reading the story about Dasani, I came across a sentence that made me think about President Biden’s speech on Indigenous Peoples Day. Andrea Elliott had this to say about the contrast between the front-page coverage of Dasani’s story and the reality of her life. “Whatever power came from being in The Times was no match for the power of poverty in Dasani’s life.” We might also argue that, whatever the power of Joe Biden’s proclamation, it was no match for the routine criminal discrimination and poverty Native Americans experience every day.

So, thinking about these two stories, we might ask the question: why is there routine poverty and discrimination in a nation that claims to represent “liberty and justice for all?”

Karl Marx

Karl Marx answered that question in his analysis of the capitalist system. Marx argued that the natural functioning of this system leads to a tiny minority of the population living in opulent wealth while the masses of people live in dire poverty. Today, there are three individuals in this country who own $300 billion in assets, while about eighty percent of the world’s population lives on $10 per day or less. 

In the years 2008 and 2020, there were severe downturns in the world economy. We might consider a few facts concerning those events. In the capitalist system there is a continuous flow of capital from the production of commodities, to sales, to the distribution of assets derived from the sale of those commodities. During the downturns of 2008 and 2020, that flow essentially stopped. What did this mean?

Commodities only have value when people are willing to purchase those commodities. If no one is willing to purchase commodities, they have absolutely no value. 

So, in 2008 and 2020 since people were not purchasing many of the commodities on the markets, for a time, commodities had no value. Then, the government got together with corporate officers where they made decisions about how to get the economy going again. 

Those decisions meant that millions of people might be evicted from their homes. Millions would also live their lives without having enough food to eat. At the same time, the government would dump trillions of dollars on corporations, so they could continue their drive to gouge out maximum profits. Nowhere in any of these decisions was there any concern about the life of Dasani or the lives of Native Americans. 

In the past, the poverty that millions of people in this country experienced was kept a secret in the news media. Today, as the economic crisis deepens, we see how the gross disparity of wealth is being protested by larger and larger numbers of people.

Human needs are more important than profits. Only when we have a worker’s government will we have the power to combat the power of poverty that is affecting the lives of billions of workers all over the world.