Abstract

Dave Chappelle is one of the most talented and controversial comedians working today. Beginning with Chappelle’s Show in 2003 and continuing through his more recent stand-up specials on Netflix, Chappelle has worked to infuse laughter with difficult observations about race and identity. Chappelle uses race as a lens to think about representation more generally, using incongruity and contradiction to point out false equivalences and strategies that perpetuate systemic racism. Chappelle’s philosophy of race has matured over time: on Chappelle’s Show, he displayed a more playful, anarchic attitude toward the constructed nature of stereotypes. Chappelle sought to undermine stereotypes not by showing that they were false but by showing that it was ridiculous to give them any weight or consideration to begin with. The more mature Chappelle of Equanimity (2017), The Bird Revelations (2017), and Sticks and Stones (2019) recognizes that revealing the artificial and constructed nature of stereotypes has only made people give them more weight and credibility. Chappelle has responded by adopting a perspective on personal responsibility that repeats the post-racist and color-blind racist attitudes toward freedom, choice, and responsibility that shape the White habitus in which most of his audience exists. Chappelle is not post-racist, but his emphasis on choice and responsibility allows him to rank the oppression different marginalized groups suffer, concluding that Black men are always the most oppressed group. This is why Chappelle’s more controversial statements about women and transgender individuals can be interpreted through his racial lens. Chappelle wants to use comic misdirection and hyperbole to make larger points about American history and identity, and thus his comedy is the latest, perhaps greatest, example of the way that Black comics have used humor to illuminate cultural contradictions and change their audience’s perceptions about the long, violent history of racism in America.