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Notes -
Chris Rock: "How Not to Get Your Ass Kicked by the Police"
Of course it's a comedy, and some of the advice either blames the police and/or suggests mutual blame in some cases, but it's mostly comedy built around a kernel of just what you're suggesting.
But if you're trying to reduce your bafflement: note that the genre and source and date of that video are probably not a coincidence. It's long enough after the Rodney King incident that it wasn't going to start another riot, long enough before cancel culture that it was relatively safe there, it's from a comedian, and the comedian is African-American. Rock wouldn't have come up with the routine in the first place unless he was capable of intelligent nuanced thought, sure, but if he wasn't also relatively immune to racism and victim-blaming allegations then I don't think he would have gotten HBO to okay it.
Fun fact: showing this video during police training was considered by an appellate court to be evidence of that police department's "city’s custom surrounding use of force" in an excessive-force lawsuit, leading to a half-million-dollar settlement.
It's fascinating that, long before all the stuff about the raping came out, Bill Cosby was considered a traitor to the black community for arguing (in the form of his famous "pound cake" speech) that many of the African-American community's problems are of its own making, and nurturing the politics of racial grievance is doing them no favours. And yet, Chris Rock has consistently made the same point for decades (most notably in "black folks vs. niggas", but this sketch too), but to the best of my knowledge no one considers him a race traitor. It is really as simple as his including the obvious fig leaf of "if you're a black guy driving with a white guy in the passenger seat, the police are less likely to beat you up" that allows him to get away with the fact that most of this sketch boils down to "if you don't break the law and are polite and deferential to police officers, they will have no cause to assault you (ergo, most black Americans who were assaulted by police officers have only themselves to blame)"?
Rock stopped performing that joke
That might be the difference. Rock was able to publicly acknowledge the issues making these sorts of jokes and how others could use them and toe the line of offering well-meaning criticism instead of validating racists
Cosby was apparently unapologetic, and was constantly lecturing black Americans despite the mother of logs in his own eye up until he was cancelled.
Rock didn't really get in any hot water over the bit in a way that compelled such a response, though. Even before his public acknowledgement about these potential issues, his bit was considered an absolute banger in the "funny because it's true" sort of way, and I recall his acknowledgement being a footnote, an interesting piece of trivia, in terms of how well publicized it was, so I don't think that had much of a factor.
I think the main difference was that Rock's thing was purely a comedy bit. He didn't have any extra messages before, after, or surrounding his stand-up act berating the black community or whatever. Cosby probably incorporated plenty of comedy to his messaging, but he was perceived as actually trying to push ideological and cultural messages as a comedian, putting himself into an oppressive patriarchal role. Rock was trying to make you laugh by hitting on a shared truth about culture that is taboo to say, which feels almost like the archetype of a stand-up comic - "If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you" - "only one who's allowed to tell the truth in the king's court is the jester."
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That was probably a fig leaf to HBO, but I think to Chris Rock it was just another instance of trying to wrap comedy around a kernel of truth!
When he was doing "Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee" with Seinfeld and their Lamborghini got pulled over (with Seinfeld speeding), Rock ad-libbed "It’d be such a better episode if he pulled me to the side and beat the shit out of me, don’t you think?" and "Now here’s the crazy thing: If you weren’t here, I’d be scared. ... I’m famous, still black. ... Right now, I’m looking for my license right now." pretty readily. Seinfeld is fucking around a bit with his answers to the cop's questions, and Rock is giving pure strait-laced advice. He's laughing, but it's a nervous laugh, and when he laughs later after "I was worried the whole time. I'm still worried." I think he's laughing as much at how the line made Seinfeld crack up as he is at his exaggeration. I don't think he believes cops are all overly eager to harass black people any more than he believes that everyone who gets beaten by the cops had it coming, but I think he's serious in suggesting that both situations can and do occur sometimes.
Personally, I (white guy) have only had respectful interactions with the police, but I'm not the one they'd be profiling the hardest, right? I do think it might not be a coincidence that I've gotten one speeding ticket in my life, while driving alone, and two "pulled over for speeding and let off with a warning" incidents while my wife or I were driving with our kids in the back.
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You just need to view enough police cams of random stops with black drivers to see the pattern, it's either exits the car and flails about, refuses to give information, acts strange and reaches for a gun, or doesn't follow lawful orders. I'm sure there is some selection bias, like the normal interactions don't have a reason to be uploaded to the interweb, but it's absolutely baffling watching them interact that way with the cops. Even the ones who have nothing wrong going on still act like the cops are out to get them, and even thinking that instead of doing their best to give the cop an excuse they agitate the situation instead.
Yeah, lawful orders. Tell me, what does it mean to you when a man puts his hand on his club and orders you to turn around?
It means you're about to have a bad time
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Its all about respectability politics. Cosby had the misfortune of being Wayne Brady without cool factor, a white persons idea of a safe black man. Chris Rock had that edge, the look of a man who if he said the N word wouldn't immediately look askance for white girls gasping at the offence. Its not like Jesse Jackson didn't have the same comments about sighing in relief when it was a white man behind him when walking down the street late at night. Black baptist churches are very open and vocal about the scourge of fatherlessness and crime. Its only white antiracism book clubs that refuse to acknowledge problems in the black community.
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