Chris Rock Wants to Slaughter White Children

So, let’s talk about Chris Rock’s New Netflix Special. In this special, he said "I want to live in a world with real equality. I want to live in a world where an equal amount of white kids are shot every month. An equal world. I want to see white mothers on TV crying." Edgy? Definitely! Offensive? Maybe. Racist? No. Did he mean it? No.

Let’s look at how comedy works. When I write my material, one thing I always look at is "does this follow Freud’s idea of comedy being what the conscious mind would usually supress?" This is why my material about how people shouldn’t tell people like me with special needs that "just because you have special needs, doesn’t mean you can’t do what other kids can do" works because people would never think about what I say until I say it. It would be deemed "inappropriate" to say. This is why when someday says, "you can’t talk about rape/murder/abuse…" it actually makes it funnier because it means the mind would supress the thought even more. This can work with absolutely any joke ever written. Take Milton Jones' joke, "The pollen count, now that’s a difficult job" as the conscious mind wouldn’t think of the pollen count being a job where you have to count pollen. So, this is how comedy works. If we now apply this to Chris Rock’s joke, the conscious mind would usually supress the idea that equality means an equal number of people will die in shootings. It is an idea that would often be supressed and it is impossible to argue against the fact that if the same number of white and black children die, it wouldn’t be equal. This can be seen in the comments of his Facebook post. Nobody said that it wouldn’t be equal; the only issue was that he was saying that he wants children to be shot.

Was he saying this? A perfect example of this is the first ten minutes of Jim Jefferies’ special Freedumb in which he said, "Some people say ‘what took these women so long to come forward?' I think it’s because as rapes go, they weren’t the worst rapes, now were they?" He doesn’t mean this. In fact, he means the opposite. Actually, he is trying to emphasize how ridiculous the idea of people saying this is. Chris Rock could be doing something similar. He could merely be pointing out that people shouldn’t want this to happen. Just because somebody says it on stage doesn’t mean they mean it. An actor who plays Hamlet doesn’t believe he is Hamlet when he is off stage. People forget sometimes that comedians are putting on a performance, and I can almost guarantee that Rock would not want to see white mothers crying. Some comedians just try to be as edgy as possible, and I think this is what Chris Rock was doing here. Freud’s idea of comedy would still work if he just said that an equal world would be where an equal number of white and black people die. But he said children because it makes it more edgy and the laughs of, "Oh my god, I can’t believe he just said that" are more likely to occur. It is, in fact, just good writing to mention that white children should be shot.

I think a lot of the problem came from the horrendous timing of the special being released, which he could not control. Days before this special was released, there was a school shooting in America. This could mean the joke was more offensive and was even more of a touchy subject than was intended when the joke was first written. Obviously, this is absolutely atrocious and a sickening event to occur, but Chris Rock had nothing to do with it and thus, in my opinion, it is slightly unfair he is getting backlash over a joke which, at the time it was filmed, was just an edgy joke but now, due to recent heinous crimes, is untasteful. Chris Rock is known for doing edgy material. In an interview he did as part of the Dying Laughing documentary which was released earlier this year, he said, "A lot of comedians like laugh, laugh, laugh, laugh, laugh. I like laugh, laugh, boo, laugh, *gasp*." So, if people are watching Chris Rock speicals, it could be said that they should expect a bit of controversial humour.

In my opinion, a joke can never be racist, homophobic, or sexist. Why? Because if a person says something racist, then the intent of the statement is to show a hatred for a certain race. However, if a person says a joke then the intent of the statement is to make people laugh. Here is proof that a joke can’t be racist. Where is the punchline in "I hate black people"? There isn’t one. However, if somebody does a joke where there is a punchline about disliking black people, there is then a punchline. The intent of this is to make somebody laugh, not to show your bigoted views. Sure, a person can say a joke where the punchline is about hating black people and they themselves can still hate black people, but the person is racist, not the joke.

Thus, in my opinion, this is why Chris Rock does not deserve the backlash he is getting from the joke.