This was just a short piece but it went longer than I thought. I’m using the space to do a couple things. The project for this spring is to setup a framework for understanding the difference between race and ethnicity, culture and society. My aim is to rescue culture from racialization. Right now I can only name that tune in 5000 notes, and I know the world doesn’t have time for that.
In my first illustration, I take a look at Chris Rock whom I like. I realized something about Chris Rock when watching his latest Netflix special ‘Selective Outrage’ that is key to helping me understand a few things about how racialization works in culture. Not so much as it used to, and on the other side of the matter Rock puts forth an excellent counter-example. But we’ll get to that.
Rock, of course has done something that is the rarest of creations. He dropped the mic. This gesture has become something akin to the high five. It’s bigger than a meme. It’s a global phenomenon, almost as big as the robot dance move. In his latest performance, he threw it down violently. Once again, it brought down the house. The line that killed goes straight to the heart of Rock and straight through to some very serious things that are forever changed. It centers on what everybody knows, Will Smith smacked Rock in the face at last year’s Oscars. The slap heard around the world.
How come you didn’t do nothing back that night?
Because I got parents, that’s why.
Because I was raised, okay? (applause)
You know what my parents taught me?
Don’t fight in front of white people. (slam)
When he delivered this in the Netflix special, you could see his eyes well up. He’s angry and heartbroken and completely honest. The moment was absolute.
My immediate reaction was that I remember that admonition as a child back in the bad old days when I didn’t know any white people and they were mysterious and all-powerful. Then again, I didn’t know very many black people outside of my neighborhood and I could already tell that we fought amongst each other. It was a sad moment but an understandable one in the context of Chris Rock the multimillionaire entertainer.
“I identify as poor”.
Rock’s Beloved Community
But it was during the final credits that I remembered why Chris Rock does what he does, and why this moment is so dramatic. There is a series of black and white stills that flash by as the credits roll in which you can see Rock hanging out with his peers, the royalty of [black] entertainment. That would include Mike Tyson, Dave Chappelle, Steph Curry, Jamie Foxx, and Kevin Hart. I also recognized Paul McCartney and David Spade in the montage. He has found the beloved community. He’s in with the in crowd. He stands at the highest plateau of the industry that delivers the most dosh to some of our nations most favored blacks. What other black people does he want or need to know?
So at the top of the entertainment game, it is understood that no matter how brilliant one might be and how well produced your product, nobody can guess whether or not your next venture will be a flop. So you become somebody that people like to work with - that is your reputation in Hollywood. What you never do is say anything, on or off the stage, which might alienate any fraction of your audience. The performance is constant. Hollywood, for all its vapidity and mendacious ways, does have a practical appreciation for the Asian concept of ‘face’. One must never lose face.
So Rock, ever honest and conscientious in the way that smart-ass skinny kids like me immediately recognize, is quick to shout out moonbeams to all constituencies. Then he mocks them. It’s the job of the jester. Jesters must be quickly clever and understand all the palace intrigues. Chris Rock annoys me because as quick as his mind is, he must explain his jokes for the poor in acuity, so he repeats himself. It’s part of his schtick, as he identifies with the [black] poor.
I, on the other hand, do not. Partially because I cannot afford to; I don’t have enough moolah to put up a philanthropic front worth beans. Partially because I’m not a people person, especially not a poor people person. I am conscientious, but I’m disagreeable and poor people can’t tell me jack. I identify with the top amateur edge of the Peasant class. I believe I might be skillful enough to be in the Genius class, but I never got the Ivy League connections to the Rulers. When I contrast this position with that of Rock, I recognize how he embodies the Talented Tenth, and this is key.
The Talented Tenth, Again
If you could hang out with the likes of Tyson, Chappelle, and god only knows whom else, there can be no question that you, as a black American, are right at the top of that impressive pyramid. Watch his show again even if you have and notice how transparently he talks about class. He rags on Megan Markle for not being racially conscious. He brags on his bitey daughter for matriculating to a Parisian culinary academy. He pinpoints the black diversity between himself and his truck driving brother over the woke subject of transsexuality. He nails the capacity for wealthy folks like the Kardashians to play fast and loose with the social conventions the rest of us peasants must respect. Yet he does all this as a wealthy insider.
Nowhere is this as clear as in his extended diatribe about paying {respect, obeisance, money} for {feminine beauty, pussy}. As much as there is to say about this, what’s clear to me is that in the American context of race, the thoroughfares and boundaries of this subject are colorblind. Where the Jay-Zs and Tiger Woods of the world are concerned the dynamic is fairly identical to that of their [non-black] counterparts. The man with money and looks wins, but looks are secondary. Of course in Hollywood, money = power much more so than in DC, so Rock talks what he knows to be true in his realm.
Conventional Race
Rock uses race in an absolutely conventional way. He understands that his ordinary black people are colorstruck. This counts especially with those he identifies with, the poor. He doesn’t say ‘because’, he says ‘cause’. His comic delivery echoes days gone by, the diction of the Chitlin’ Circuit. He’s playing particular cultural cards because we acknowledge his racial inheritance. Jim Gaffigan does the same thing for Midwestern white middle class dads. Bert Kreischer does the same thing for redneck white trash dads. All comedians do this, because if we in the audience didn’t have a shared set of concepts and convictions about race, no such topic could even approach being funny. Race talk would sound like a foreign language. How many Sunni vs Shi’ite jokes would American audiences get? How many Serb vs Croat jokes would we get. Close to zero.
Put it all together and you get to the depth of the betrayal. Chris Rock is in. He’s at the top of the Hollywood game, hosting the Oscars. He’s at the top of the black Talented Tenth game, chilling with Jay-Z, et. al. He’s got some old school black culture inheritance and identifies as poor, playing the diction of entertainers of the Jim Crow South. So when he gets beat down, in public, by Will Smith, all the walls come tumbling down. There are these specific charges he lays at the feet of The Violator.
Breaking the code of Hollywood of being good to work with.
Being pussy whipped even though you have all the money in the world.
Taking out revenge against someone who is not your enemy.
Airing dirty laundry about ‘the’ black community by showing violent disunity in front of white people.
Of course it was the last charge that was punctuated by his mic drop which is now the mic slam. This suggests to me, and probably should to you, that the racial violation was the one felt most deeply.
—
I love Rock in generally the same way I love Chappelle. I’ve seen them both turn against audiences earlier in their career when they were not above being heckled. Chappelle more than Rock, admittedly. Rock is more defensive and closer to self-deprecating dangerous truths. Still, it’s not fair to compare him to Chappelle, Kriescher or Gaffigan. I would say that Chappelle is closer in kind to Bill Burr, but I digress. Rock is going to have to deal with this unravelling like everyone else is. I’m curious as to what he’s likely to say next. What he said in his show was clear [in the edited version] that he only watched him in Emancipation to see massa beat his ass. Almost funny. Also Rock read of a list of [authentically black] people in entertainment that call him a biatch.
Despite all of that, I don’t believe Rock wants or needs to be the Head Negro In Charge and that he was motivated to dethrone Smith as if Smith were HNIC. Bear in mind that Rock was not trying to pull Smith’s ‘black card’; I think he was genuinely hurt, physically and emotionally by the four violations.
—
What should be less difficult now is to disambiguate the racial from the cultural. I hope I’ve done that in specifying the nature of the violations.
Hollywood has its professional culture. It’s influential in society, but it’s not racially exclusive.
The rules of attraction are cultural. The very idea of being pussy whipped is cultural. That too is influential in society, but not racial.
It’s almost universally accepted that it is unfair to beat up somebody smaller than you who did not provoke you. That’s not racial either.
The idea that black people should display unity and not fight in front of white people is explicitly racial.
Now that it has been demonstrated so clearly in the slap heard around the world and in the follow up a year later, people should see that race is not so deterministic as anyone thought. I haven’t seen anybody suggest more strongly now than they ever have that Will Smith is more or less ‘black’ than Chris Rock, although the very nature of Smith’s family (ahem) flavor is certainly less Old School than most. Rock himself said it loud and clear. Smith clearly wasn’t raised right. I can get behind this from Rock, as I have spent considerable time, as Cobb, representing the Old School. That is a set of cultural values in American society that is shared across generations and races. More on the Old School, later.
<i>what’s clear to me is that in the American context of race, the thoroughfares and boundaries of this subject are colorblind. </i>
One old white man: "believe that...(nods)"
Bert Kreischer is the true id of Florida Man. Understand Bert, understand Florida.
Well I had to start a paid sub for this. You’re just too honest. Good stuff my man.
My take in Rock’s special: https://michaelmohr.substack.com/p/chris-rock