Status: October 19, 2021 1:51 p.m.
On a Netflix show, US comedian Chappelle jokes about the supposed competition between various minorities. Criticism also comes from the streaming service team – but the CEO is behind him.
Dave Chappelle is an uncomfortable artist, that’s safe to say. The black comedian stands radically for anti-racism in the USA, his skits hurt, especially white viewers, whom he likes to remind of their privileges – for example when he tells his audience that he is only here because his black ancestors have been kidnapped and enslaved became. In his current Netflix show called “The Closer”, Chappelle wants to start a debate about the supposed competition between various minorities in the USA.
In it, Chappelle laments an alleged imbalance between the LGBTQ community and blacks: “In this country you can shoot a black man and kill him, but woe betide you hurt the feelings of a homosexual person,” says Chappelle, playing on cases like rapper DaBaby whose fatal shots at an alleged attacker in a supermarket in 2018 had no consequences – but whose homophobic remarks at a show in July had cost him his career.
Chappelle emphasizes that he has no problem with gays, lesbians or transgender people. On the contrary, he is jealous of the movement’s advances: “If slaves had been wearing short shorts and had been rubbed with baby oil, we might have been free 100 years earlier.”
Criticism: Chappelle ignores multiple discrimination
TV critic Eric Deggans said in an interview with the radio network NPR that the problem with this criticism is that it is aimed primarily at whites: “This notion seems to ignore that many homosexual or transgender people are not white” – and thus of multiple discrimination affected for both characteristics.
Numerous organizations and comedians from the LGBTQ community also criticized Chappelle because he repeatedly emphasized in the appearance that a binary gender concept was “fact” – and thus questioned the existence of transgender people.
Hannah Gadsby, for example, whose comedy show can also be seen on Netflix, accused Netflix boss Ted Sarandos of having no backbone. This has always defended Chappelle against criticism.
Netflix boss Ted Sarandos praised Netflix’s diversity in an email to the workforce.
Image: AFP
Netflix employee suspended after tweet
The Netflix workforce is also rumbling. After a transgender employee spoke out against Chappelle on Twitter, she was suspended and is now working there again.
Netflix boss Sarandos wrote in an email to the workforce that the streaming platform offers a wide variety of content and referred to a great diversity in the provider’s offer. Parts of the workforce have announced protests for Wednesday in protest and as a sign of solidarity with the LGBTQ community.