A Story About Dave Chappelle Educating A White Woman On Racism During A Comedy Set Is Going Viral

It’s not often that a 25-tweet thread is worth reading, but trust me, this one, from comedian Kenny DeForrest, is worth it. Back in January 2015, Dave Chappelle was in New York to support his buddy and that week’s SNL host Kevin Hart. DeForrest was doing some hosting of his own, at the Knitting Factory in Brooklyn, when he reached out to fellow comedian Joyelle Nicole Johnson to see if Chappelle might want to drop by.

“We start the show thinking he MIGHT come,” he tweeted. “A couple comics in, he sneaks in like a boxer with his hood up. We’re in the green room smoking, drinking & joking. The dude is a machine. Every topic that came up, he had something profound for. We bring him up last, the crowd LOSES IT.” Chappelle asked the crowd for “headlines” to riff on, and someone in the audience suggested “police brutality.” This was, as DeForrest pointed out, “days after the cop that choked Eric Garner to death in Staten Island (you know, murder) was not indicted by a grand jury,” so tensions were high:

“Chappelle starts talking about Eric Garner and wathching him get murdered in cold blood on camera and how it makes him scared for his children… He said “I thought body cams would help, but what good is video evidence if y’all don’t care?” A clearly privileged white girl (she had a wide brimmed felt hat for chrissakes) shouts ‘Life’s hard, sorry ‘bout it!’ and it takes the air completely out of the room. A collective gasp. Chappelle zeros in on her. ‘What did you say?’ She repeats it. Chappelle starts going in.

He doesn’t go in by making fun of her hat, however. He enlightens her, and everyone else in attendance, about systemic racism. “He starts educating the crowd on the history of black people and the police. He talked about slave patrols and Rodney King and Watts and Emmett Till and Black Wall Street. He talked about Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and he talked about John Crawford III,” and apartheid ending in South Africa due in part to “critical mass,” DeForrest tweeted. Chappelle then told a story about getting pulled over by a cop in Ohio… the same cop who would go on to murder John Crawford III. He got off with a warning, though, because the police officer recognized him; his takeaway: “I shouldn’t have to be Dave Chappelle to survive police encounters.”

After the set, Nicole Johnson told Chappelle that the “dumbass white girl” wanted to talk to him. She and her friend come back to the green room and they’re both “humiliated,” DeForrest wrote. “Hat girl speaks first: “I just wanted to say I’m sorry for what I said and thank you for educating me. I was ignorant before, but I want you to know I learned from you tonight and I won’t say things like that anymore.” Chappelle’s response:

“You’re ok. That’s all we can ask. Know better, do better. I want to thank YOU for hearing me and listening. That’s your role. And now you know. Now you’re part of that critical mass we talked about and next time you hear a friend say some ignorant sh*t like you said, it’s your job to correct them and share with them what you learned tonight. THEN, you’re no longer part of the problem, you’re part of the solution.”

You can read the entire thread below (and follow Joyelle Nicole Johnson here).

https://twitter.com/KennyDeForest/status/1268288525234876416

omg i was there that night!! I even made a comic of it after (wow this was fun to revisit, also all the comics were great btw) i love the aftershow ending, that makes the whole night even better pic.twitter.com/7zmLVx65iz

— Madeline Hester (@mad_hester) June 4, 2020