Last week, Dave Chappelle hosted Saturday Night Live. He opened with an apology: “I denounce antisemitism in all its forms and I stand with my friends in the Jewish community. And that, Kanye, is how you buy yourself some time.”
Framed as advice to Ye, whose antisemitism had cost him (among other things) a very lucrative contract with Adidas, the joke is that Chappelle was also looking to buy himself some time. He knew what was he was about to say and he could anticipate the response.
Most of his fifteen minute opening monologue explored the backlash against Ye and Nets basketball star Kyrie Irving after each was accused of promoting antisemitism. To do so, he raised, played with, and dismissed many of the antisemitic tropes found in the statements and posts of Ye and Irving.
Many Jews watching the monologue believed it was tackling our favorite topic: antisemitism. But in truth, the monologue was tackling Dave Chappelle’s favorite topic: Black people.
Particularly famous Black people. And even more particularly, famous Black men.
My gut says that Chappelle isn’t very interested in antisemitism. He IS interested in how famous Black men are treated in America.
Or to put it in words Ye might appreciate: Dave Chappelle doesn’t care about white people.
In this case, the white people Chappelle doesn’t care about are Jews. Yes, many Jews aren’t white. And many white Jews don’t identify as white. But just as Chappelle erased Black and Brown people from among his trans and gay critics in The Closer, non-white Jews are basically invisible to Chappelle.
It’s worth pausing here to note that not caring about white people, or Jews, isn’t hostility, per se. It’s disinterest. Chappelle is focused elsewhere.
Back to the monologue (which I watched, despite the fact that I don’t think Chappelle should have been invited to host SNL in the first place, given his recent unfunny, painful, transphobic and homophobic rants).
The monologue is a critique of Ye and Kyrie. And it is a critique of way the Jewish community handles antisemitism, at least when the perpetrators are Black.
It is not an endorsement of antisemitism or antisemitic tropes.
Don’t buy it? Let’s see what he said.
Here is what Chappelle says about Ye and Kyrie:
- He quotes Ye admitting to being antisemitic: “[Ye] said, ‘I can say antisemitic things and Adidas can’t drop me. Now what?’”
- He quotes Ye being antisemitic: “Vaguely I remember it started with a tweet, strange tweet. It was like, ‘I’m feeling a little sleepy. I’m gonna get my some rest, but when I wake up, I’m gonna go DEFCON 3 on the Jews.’ And then he just went to bed. I was up all night worried. What is he going to do to the Jews?”
- He compares Ye unfavorably to the Nazi-founded Adidas: “Adidas was founded by Nazis. I guess the student has surpassed the teacher.”
- He says Kyrie is probably a Holocaust denier: “Kyrie Irving’s Black a** was nowhere near the Holocaust. In fact, he’s not even certain it existed.”
- He notes that the movie Kyrie posted was antisemitic: “Kyrie Irving posted a link to a movie that he had seen on Amazon… apparently this movie had some antisemitic tropes…”
Here is what Chappelle says about antisemitism:
- On assigning collective responsibility: “early in my career, I learned that there are two words in the English language that you should never say in sequence, and those words are ‘the’ and ‘Jews.’ Never heard someone do good after they said that.”
- On the distinction between being concentrated and being in control: “I’ve been to Hollywood. And I don’t want y’all to get mad at me, I’m just telling you this is just what I saw. It’s a lot of Jews. Like a lot. But that doesn’t mean anything, you know what I mean? There’s a lot of Black people in Ferguson, Missouri. It doesn’t mean we run the place.”
- On whether or not the Jews run Hollywood: “I would see if you had some kind of issue, you might go out to Hollywood, you might start connecting some kind of lines, and you could maybe adopt the delusion that the Jews run showbusiness. It’s not a crazy thing to think. But it’s a crazy thing to say out loud in a climate like this.”
Many people are fine with these parts of the monologue. If you aren’t, well, maybe you should stop reading now, because you’re definitely not going to like what comes next.
What many people are NOT fine with are three threads in Chappelle’s monologue. Taking this from the perspective of its critics… the first is the idea that Chappelle believes it’s OK to be antisemitic, or think antisemitic thoughts, as long as you keep it to yourself… or, at a minimum, apologize. The second is the idea that Chappelle believes the Jewish community treats antisemitic incidents from prominent Black folks, like Kyrie, unfairly. The third is the idea that Chappelle believes Jews really do control Hollywood and the media.
The seed for the first idea is planted early. His line, “and that, Kanye, is how you buy yourself some time” suggests buying time with an insincere apology is a good thing. Later, after detailing Ye’s explicit antisemitism, Chappelle says, “He had broken the showbusiness rules. You know, the rules of perception. If they’re Black, then it’s a gang. If they’re Italian, it’s a mob, but if they’re Jewish, it’s a coincidence and you should never speak about it.” Again, the implication is, keep your beliefs about collective, conspiratorial Jewish action to yourself.
You can take these lines at face value. But I believe they are satirizing the rituals that have been established, in Hollywood and beyond, for avoiding actually confronting unpopular ideas and beliefs. It’s a game and you have to know how to play it, and those who suffer are those who refuse to play. It’s an observation by Chappelle, rooted in truth, not an endorsement.
The second idea is expressed pretty clearly. Chappelle says, about Kyrie, “The NBA told him he should apologize and he was slow to apologize and the list of demands to get back in their good graces got longer and longer, but, this, this is where you know I draw the line. I know Jewish people have been through terrible things all over the world but but you can’t blame that on Black Americans. You just can’t. You know what I mean?”
WTF is going on here? Does Chappelle believe that, in calling out Kyrie for promoting antisemitism, the Jewish community is blaming Black Americans for all the terrible things we have been through?
I would say, broadly speaking, that Chappelle is against white people policing Black people, and that includes policing what Black people say and think. I also think Chappelle distinguishes Ye’s bigotry, which reinforces white supremacy (White Lives Matter!), from Kyrie’s, which he may see as challenging white supremacy. So part of what Chappelle is exploring in this monologue is how the Jewish community, and big corporations like Adidas and the Nets, respond to these kinds of incidents by Black celebrities, and what that says about them and us.
In the section quoted above, Chappelle takes issue with how Kyrie is being treated by the NBA and the Jewish community. And more pointedly, the way in which the Jewish community acts as if “Black antisemitism” is an existential danger to Jews. This is how Chappelle moves from a single incident with Kyrie to a broader critique of how disproportionate blame is placed on the Black community for antisemitism.
This is not a new issue. And he isn’t wrong. The Jewish community as a whole has long focused much more energy on incidents like these than it has on the systemic issues of antisemitism among those with real power. Like, say, Tucker Carlson and Fox News, who regularly platform bigots and promulgate antisemitic ideas, like the so-called “Great Replacement” conspiracy. You know, the one that led directly to the synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh. Yes, the ADL occasionally wags a finger at Carlson, but the community hasn’t mobilized against him, which is ABSURD given the role he plays on a weekly basis in spreading antisemitism. Or, to take this specific example, we are much more angry at Kyrie than we are at Jeff Bezos, who is profiting daily off of the sale of antisemitic content on Amazon.
It also has not gone unnoticed by many folks, I’m guessing Chappelle included, that antisemitism expressed by prominent Black men has long been a particular focus of Jewish communal attention. I grew up in the 80s and 90s, when the ADL and other organizations were waging war against the Nation of Islam and its admirers, despite its marginal role in American life. There is a history here of forced ring kissing and scripted apologies that was a huge mistake, and has not been forgotten.
Agree or disagree with any of this, but it is not an unfounded position for Chappelle to take, and it is definitely not an antisemitic one.
The final idea is divined from the final lines of the monologue. In a callback to his opening apology, Chappelle laments his past and likely future cancelation: “It shouldn’t be this scary to talk about anything. It’s making my job incredibly difficult, I’ll be honest with you. I’m getting sick of talking to a crowd like this. I love you to death and I thank you for your support. And I hope they don’t take anything away from me. Whoever they are.”
A lot of people seem to believe that when Chappelle says “they” he means “the Jews,” and therefore, this is evidence that Chappelle believes the Jews control… something. This is somehow both exactly right and completely wrong. Sure, Chappelle means “the Jews” when he says “they” — in other words, the joke here is that he means “the Jews.” But in reality, he means white people, including Jews, and the LGBTQ community, and corporations, and anyone with the ability to take things away from him.
But he isn’t suggesting there is a conspiracy, or that Jews “control” anything. He’s is building on a fact, which is that two Black men, Ye and Kyrie, had things taken away from them, because of things they said or shared. Again, this is a fact. It happened. It is still happening.
What’s tricky here, and especially tricky for Jews, is that attempts to wield influence to combat antisemitism, the way the community has done recently with Ye and Kyrie, reinforces tropes and conspiracies about Jewish power. We want to combat antisemitism, to stand up for ourselves, but we also don’t want to admit that we have the ability to do just that. Yet we can’t do nothing, can we? It’s a Catch 22.
Chappelle recognizes this. As he said earlier, there are a lot of Jews in Hollywood, but Jews don’t control Hollywood. He understands the distinction. But he also knows that it doesn’t mean Jews have no power, even if that power is not evidence of a conspiracy, and even if that power isn’t absolute, or otherwise condemnable.
This is very challenging territory. It makes Jews uncomfortable. But that doesn’t make Chappelle’s joke antisemitic.
So, where does this leave us?
Antisemitism is real. It is bad. And the conspiracy theories that transmit antisemitic ideas are embraced by more and more people every year. Open expressions of antisemitism help it spread, collectively turning bigoted ideas into violent actions. We must be vigilant.
But we must also be smart. We need to be able to distinguish a Ye from a Kyrie. We need to be able to distinguish Chappelle’s bigoted anti-trans and anti-gay “jokes” from his jokes about Jews and antisemitism. And we need to address antisemitism in ways that attract more allies to the cause and reduce incidents moving forward. Unfortunately, too often we are doing the opposite.
Recommended reading!
There are a million think pieces about this, because, of course there are. A few I’d recommend, despite disagreeing with most of them, are:
Chappelle Was Right by Yair Rosenberg
I Critiqued Dave Chappelle and His Fans Questioned My Blackness by Eric Deggans
Dave Chappelle Didn’t Say The Harshest Things About Jews Last Week — This Comedian Did by Rob Eshman
Jon Stewart is Not Our SpokesJew, He normalized Hate Speech by Elad Nehorai
