Dave Chappelle's 8:46 A Powerful Commentary On Racism and US History.

Richard Mellor

Dave Chappelle is brilliant in this powerful and incredibly moving commentary on the recent protests in response to the  killing of George Floyd. It's called 846 as that is the length of time Derek Chaivin, his murderer,kept his knee on Floyd's neck.

I have always considered Chappelle one of the greatest comedians in the US and the most pointing political one. I want to appeal to friends and people in the UK or anywhere else outside of these borders to watch this. I think sometimes people outside the US have a hard time getting his humor or that it is always political and full of social commentary.  One also has to take the time to delve in to the culture here and to learn more about US history form other sources other than Hollywood.

There is a conservatism as that finds the sexual nature of his humor a bit too crude I think. But more importantly it is not understanding the nature of US society. Hollywood has a lot to do with that as well as the US mass media, deeply censored and controlled, perhaps the  most censored of all the advanced capitalist countries.

The US is an extremely militarized and violent society in so many ways. It is an extremely racist society and it is this racism, the demonizing, dehumanization and complete social expulsion of black people, the descendants of people dragged from their villages and homes in a continent 3000 miles away, that has been the means by which the US ruling class maintains its power and social position.

There is a reason that often US black people do not look like Africans do, or are lighter skinned, and that reason is mass rape. Rape on a level we cannot conceive. On ships that brought them here, (where some 2 million have believed to have perished) or on plantations in the South.  Image that in the 47 years I have been in this country black people have had to walk past that filthy flag of the Southern racists or statues of their racist heroes. All the killings of black people by the cops has gone on throughout history, the smart phone has simply allowed the rest of us to see it. It's not like they haven't cried about it form the rooftops opnly to hear about how they should stop whining or "get over slavery".

I read once (I think it was Eric Foner's history of Reconstruction) that in 1866 or thereabouts, 1000 white men were indicted for killing a black man that year. Not one was convicted. The account I read quoted one example of a  black man who was shot because he "didn't tip his hat to a white man.".

Just like every Jew has some connection to the mass extermination of their European kin, every black person has this history I touch on here. It is "their" history; it is embedded in their consciousness one way or another.

Capitalism cannot change this situation. I read Apple, Amazon and a few major corporations that have more money than the GDP of countries are offering money to what they call the "black community". This is piss money and there will be plenty of opportunists, aspiring politicians and representatives of black capitalism aiming to get a little further up the ladder and increase their class position in a system that offers workers no way out and that has racism built in to it.

Surely one cannot help weep as Chappelle yields to the power of the working class in action and the black working class especially. It brings tears to my eyes anyway, not tears of sadness or sorrow, but Chappelle's modesty and yielding to the power of the streets and the people that fill them. He responds to the celebrities who are all over the TV now whining about not doing enough. And to those who say celebrities should speak up; “Who gives a fuck what JA Rule thinks at a time like this” he says. Ja Rule is a rapper apparently.

All the talk from lefty academics, white liberals and their black class colleagues that lecture us on racism and tell us how we all ought to just get along are put to shame by Chappelle's comments here. He says more in 27 minutes about racism and history than you'll' get from 4 years of college or a degree in ethnic studies from one of the capitalist institutions. Watch it.

Blacks possessed, less “capacity for government than any other race of people. No independent government of any form has ever been successful in their hands. On the contrary, where ever they have been left to their own devices they have shown a constant tendency to relapse in to barbarism.” Andrew Johnson 1867 annual message to the Congress. From Eric Foner, Reconstruction America's Unfinished Revolution