{"id":13980,"date":"2011-08-17T15:37:43","date_gmt":"2011-08-17T22:37:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=13980"},"modified":"2011-08-17T15:37:43","modified_gmt":"2011-08-17T22:37:43","slug":"is-wayne-brady-gonna-have-to-choke-a-bitch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=13980","title":{"rendered":"Is Wayne Brady Gonna Have to Choke a Bitch?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of the most brilliant sketches on the reliably brilliant <em>Chapelle&#8217;s Show <\/em>was Dave Chapelle&#8217;s night out with Wayne Brady. Brady, of course, has the reputation of being squeaky clean, almost to the point of absurdity. And so it comes as a bit of a surprise to Dave that their night out involves murder, pimping, and general mayhem.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.funnyordie.com\/embed\/bb6875cff8\" width=\"425\" height=\"354\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align:left;font-size:x-small;margin-top:0;width:425px;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.funnyordie.com\/videos\/bb6875cff8\/chappelle-show-daves-night-out-with-wayne-brady-from-uploaderguy\" title=\"from uploaderguy\">Chappelle Show: Dave&#8217;s Night Out with Wayne Brady<\/a> &#8211; watch more <a href=\"http:\/\/www.funnyordie.com\/\" title=\"on Funny or Die\">funny videos<\/a>      <iframe src=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/plugins\/like.php?app_id=138711277798&amp;href=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.funnyordie.com%2Fvideos%2Fbb6875cff8%2Fchappelle-show-daves-night-out-with-wayne-brady-from-uploaderguy&amp;send=false&amp;layout=button_count&amp;width=150&amp;show_faces=false&amp;action=like&amp;height=21\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" style=\"border:none; overflow:hidden; width:90px; height:21px; vertical-align:middle;\" allowTransparency=\"true\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div>\n<p>Like much of Chapelle&#8217;s humor, the sketch works on multiple levels. Yes, there&#8217;s that top level of watching Wayne Brady break a policeman&#8217;s neck. But at the deeper level, I think the sketch was saying something very important: that there are many kinds of blackness, and that Wayne Brady is no more or less &#8220;black&#8221; because he&#8217;s a nice guy than he&#8217;d be if he were a stereotypical, racist projection of a thug.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a powerful message, one that Chapelle and Brady slid nicely under the radar. Is Wayne Brady not a &#8220;black actor&#8221; just because he&#8217;s nice? That&#8217;s as wrongheaded as saying that because Wayne Brady&#8217;s black, he must be a gang banger. Both are stereotypes. Both accept a fundamental level of racism, a view of &#8220;blackness&#8221; as something monolithic. Chapelle and Brady rather brilliantly lay out exactly how absurd this viewpoint is.<\/p>\n<p>I was reminded of this sketch by a Bill Maher tweet.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/#!\/billmaher\/status\/103708001894010880\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/moderateleft.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/mahertweet-300x145.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"mahertweet\" width=\"300\" height=\"145\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-7058\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Maher is criticizing President Obama for his decision <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/2011\/08\/16\/us-usa-campaign-obama-perry-idUSTRE77F6SR20110816\" target=\"_blank\">not to lay into<\/a> Texas Gov. Rick Perry for all the stupid things Gov. Goodhair&#8217;s been saying. Now, first off, Maher couldn&#8217;t be wronger if he said the Sun is made of apples; the story is that Rick Perry is running around being an idiot. If Obama engages, the story morphs into &#8220;Obama vs. Perry: Smackdown!&#8221; Obama&#8217;s simply sitting on shore while Perry drowns. Why would he be stupid enough to throw Perry a lifeline?<\/p>\n<p>But it&#8217;s not Maher&#8217;s complete lack of political sense that drew my attention. No, it&#8217;s the &#8220;President Wayne Brady&#8221; crack, <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/#!\/billmaher\/status\/103714688021442560\" target=\"_blank\">followed up by the demand<\/a> that Obama &#8220;lift up his shirt just enough to show em there&#8217;s a gun tucked in there?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>There is a certain strain of progressive that supported Obama because they thought he&#8217;d be <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.buzzflash.com\/node\/12049\" target=\"_blank\">their own personal gang banger<\/a>. They wanted him to be <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/url?sa=t&#038;source=web&#038;cd=3&#038;ved=0CCQQFjAC&#038;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aoltv.com%2F2010%2F12%2F06%2Fbill-maher-likens-obama-to-wayne-brady-wishes-he-was-more-like%2F&#038;ei=ST1MTsq_Cu-FsALHtLjZCA&#038;usg=AFQjCNHtdh2oBNj2cxMJ00I7nUTke4GMZQ&#038;sig2=-7mVFdVBZ8s7Zc9vq710OA\" target=\"_blank\">their Suge Knight<\/a>. And when Obama turned out to be Barack Obama, the guy who was a lawyer, family man, and professor, these people turned on him, demanding that he conform to their idea of blackness. <\/p>\n<p>Well, as Chapelle and Brady so ably showed, there is no one form of &#8220;blackness.&#8221; Obama is not your gangsta, any more than Wayne Brady is. He&#8217;s Barack Obama, which is, quite frankly, pretty damn impressive. <\/p>\n<p>Expecting Obama to morph into a racist caricature of a thug is, itself, racist. It is expecting him to conform to stereotypes of what an African American is supposed to behave like, and it is no less racist a conceit when it&#8217;s used to backstop the argument that Obama should &#8220;fight&#8221; or &#8220;grow a spine.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Barack Obama is who he is. He&#8217;s not going to choke his opponents, metaphorically or literally. If you&#8217;re a white person who thinks that&#8217;s not &#8220;black enough,&#8221; the problem is not with Obama. It&#8217;s with you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the most brilliant sketches on the reliably brilliant Chapelle&#8217;s Show was Dave Chapelle&#8217;s night out with Wayne Brady. Brady, of course, has the reputation of being squeaky clean, almost to the point of absurdity. And so it comes &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=13980\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[93],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-race-racism-and-related-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13980"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13980\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13981,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13980\/revisions\/13981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}