“I will give you an example of how race affects my life. I live in a place called Alpine, New Jersey. Live in Alpine, New Jersey, right? My house costs millions of dollars. [some whistles and cheers from the audience] Don’t hate the player, hate the game. In my neighborhood, there are four black people. Hundreds of houses, four black people. Who are these black people? Well, there’s me, Mary J. Blige, Jay-Z and Eddie Murphy. Only black people in the whole neighborhood. So let’s break it down, let’s break it down: me, I’m a decent comedian. I’m a’ight. [applause] Mary J. Blige, one of the greatest R&B singers to ever walk the Earth. Jay-Z, one of the greatest rappers to ever live. Eddie Murphy, one of the funniest actors to ever, ever do it. Do you know what the white man who lives next door to me does for a living? He’s a fucking dentist! He ain’t the best dentist in the world…he ain’t going to the dental hall of fame…he don’t get plaques for getting rid of plaque. He’s just a yank-your-tooth-out dentist. See, the black man gotta fly to get to somethin’ the white man can walk to.”
Rad. Thanks for putting this up @ajay and I’m sorry it’s taken so long to get back to you on it. I saw on the Internet that this was a quote by Chris Rock, who has obviously carved out his place among the comedians who tell it like it is, especially when it comes to black-white differences in the States. So it’s no surprise to read this bright, hilarious, and powerful bit. Besides its form, its content is spot on. He nails a way to illustrate disparity.
@tyler Yes it is from Chris Rock. Sorry! I forgot to add that. lol! We know he is a comedian and he talking about his life and what he sees happening in his mind, but this is happening all over the world on many levels. For some reason this is something I have always seen, but could never put my finger on it. As a kid, one of my friends is half black, half white. His dad was black, but always treated his dark skin friends different from the fair skin ones. We all seen it and we would crack on his dad calling him a racists against his own kind. At that age it was just funny to us I didn’t think that was possible to I got older and mature. My point is that people get treated differently for many different reason. But this elephant is all around us and we choose to ignore it until something happens or someone makes a joke out of it.
Thank you! TYler
Absolutely right @ajay. The clarity that comedy gives us has always been one of the big reasons I love it. Think about it: something is funny because it isn’t what you expected. Comedians are master philosophers in that they not only understand what we expect, they often do something about it, which is force us to realize what our normal expectations or assumptions are. That’s why we laugh, because we suddenly realize what we were thinking deep down when it ends up not being what the comedian says.
Using this to think about Chris Rock’s quote, the humor is ripe with social comment, and in the end I think he’s saying something like a lot of us (black or white) assume this situation to be normal, but our expectations as humans, what we think deep down is right, is that this shouldn’t be happening. It’s the disparity between those two that makes us laugh, and then makes us think.
It is important to continue the conversation about racism. I like that humor is injected into this piece because it makes it more real somehow. Racism is not normal but like the fish swimming in the polluted waters we have become used to it so it feels normal. Thanks for sharing this AJ -Lis