Dave Chappelle, a Black comedian who has courted controversy throughout his career, has once again hit the hornet’s nest. At Madison Square Garden in New York, he said, “I’m sure Charlie Kirk is looking up at us right now laughing so hard he can’t breathe,” suggesting the white nationalist was watching the show from hell. Despite being a phone-free event, video footage surfaced, and far-right pundits were so mad you would have thought a fox had gotten into their henhouse.
What few realized at the time was that Chapelle’s joke reversed one Tony Hinchcliff made during The Roast of Kevin Hart, which aired on Netflix last May. “Right now, George Floyd is looking up at us all laughing so hard that he can’t breathe,” he said to rancorous applause. Despite brash jokes being more readily accepted during a roast, mocking a Black man killed by the police at a show honoring a Black comedian was widely seen as racist and offensive in the black community.
George Floyd was an unarmed Black man killed by a white police officer, and while Charlie Kirk, an unarmed white man, was also allegedly killed by a white man, only one of these men became a spokesperson for hate. Charlie Kirk was a renowned white nationalist who, despite being a community college dropout, used his organization, Turning Point USA, to visit college campuses throughout the country and debate students from his conservative, or far-right, worldview. In that respect, he died doing what he loved.
At Utah University, a young man asked whether Kirk knew how many mass shooters there’ve been within the past decade. To that, he uttered his final words, “counting or not counting gang violence.”Given that mass shootings are more readily associated with young white men,it’s interesting, but not surprising, that Kirk pivoted to a discussion about gang violence, which he’s often associated with Black people living in urban areas. It’s ironic that Charlie Kirk was pointing the finger at black-on-black crime moments before becoming a victim of white-on-white crime.
In May 2023, Charlie Kirk claimed, “prowling Blacks go around for fun to target white people,” a dehumanizing statement that overlooks data showing Black people are more likely to be victims of racial hate crimes. Two months later, Kirk described Black women such as Joy Reid, Michelle Obama, Sheila Jackson Lee, and Ketanji Brown Jackson as “affirmative action picks,” despite none of these women benefiting from race-conscious programs, and he claimed they didn’t have the “brain processing power to otherwise be taken seriously.” He once called the passage of the Civil Rights Act a “mistake.”
Given his racist views, including describing Black people as too incompetent to become pilots or Black women as too incompetent to become leaders in any industry, and his complaints about legislation designed to end racial segregation, it’s strange that some white people expect Black people to show reverence and civility toward Charlie Kirk simply because he died a violent death. Have they shown any mercy to the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who led peaceful protests? No. His violent death at the hands of a white man did not stop conservatives from mocking his efforts and disrespecting his legacy by cherry-picking quotes to misrepresent who he was. At least Black people like Dave Chappelle are being honest, rather than masking their disapproval of the deceased.
Some believe Black people should turn the other cheek when it comes to racism, be the “bigger person,” and adopt a “when they go low, we go high” mindset.While useful in some political circumstances, this perspective suggests that cruelty should always be met with kindness. ButDave Chappelle is clearly unbound by the leash of respectability politics. That’s how he could tell a joke that inspires Americans to think about the hypocrisy of a society that openly laughs at a Black man killed in broad daylight but cries about cordiality when a Black man refuses to show reverence for a racist. The moment Black people match energy, even for a brief moment, there’s a total meltdown, and that in itself exposes this double standard.
Charlie Kirk once called George Floyd a “scumbag,” showing no regard for his children and family, yet people angry at Dave Chappelle claim his jokes crossed the line because of Charlie Kirk’s family. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida condemned Chappelle’s joke but, notably, once referred to George Floyd as a “known drug addict,” playing on misinformation spread at trial. Autopsy reports confirmed Floyd died from cardiopulmonary arrest complicated by law enforcement restraining him and compressing his neck. But this truth was inconvenient for her. Some of the same people complaining about the insensitivity of a Black comedian were on the record showing callous disregard for the life of a Black man.
The critics seem, in some ways, angrier at Dave Chappelle for making a joke than they are at the white man who fatally shot Charlie Kirk. To be clear, Black people are not condoning or inciting violence by rejecting the social expectation to mourn racists. You wouldn’t expect enslaved people to mourn their enslavers, or for Black people during Jim Crow to mourn segregationists. So, you shouldn’t expect Black people in the modern era to express anguish at the loss of a white supremacist. Instead of trying to peer-pressure or bully Black people into showing contrition,America should adjust its expectations, because Black people have no obligation to mourn racists.