So when Paul Mooney made the joke on "The Chappelle Show"
that Wayne Brady makes Bryant Gumbel look like Malcolm X.
As a fan of "The Chappelle Show" up until that point,
I was sitting down, getting a haircut, and it came on the TV.
Like, what the hell?
What did I do?
I didn't think-- I didn't think the joke was funny.
I ran into a couple of his guys.
I ran into Donnell Rawlings randomly at an event,
and he came up and said, hey, man.
I'm a big fan.
And I was like, you can kiss my ass.
I don't wanna-- No, not a fan.
You guys blah, blah, blah, blah.
Got back to Dave--
which, by the way, I loved Donnell Rawlings.
Got back to Dave.
Dave called me.
He said, oh, man.
Paul wrote that joke.
I didn't think it was funny.
Look, I'm doing this last big episode.
Please come.
Let's write a sketch together.
So Neil, Dave, and myself--
Neil's partner-- we wrote the answer to that sketch.
He was like, let's do Wayne Brady's take
and over the sketch, and they show he's mad.
And we wrote the Training Day parody.
For the record, that is one of the coolest things
I have ever been a part of.
And it's one of those things that you
know that when you're doing it, you're like,
this is going to be--
this is going to do something.
I don't know what, but this is going to do something.
Now, that's the background to the sketch.
Here's the thing.
Paul Mooney's joke was not funny to me.
And it wasn't funny to me because of my ego.
And this is what I've said to some people.
And some people in the Black community
have said to me, well, you were just too sensitive
and da da da.
I said, no.
No.
Here's why that joke wasn't funny.
And this joke actually dovetails into a couple of years later,
why I had a thing with Bill Maher,
and I told Bill Maher that I would beat his ass
in public, if that's the kind of Black man
that he wanted to see.
Because it's the same type of correlation--
the same type of weaponized correlation that
is used among Black people.
In that joke--
Well, for a joke to be funny, you
have to assume that your audience is on the same page
as you, to a degree, or they'll understand
where you're coming from.
So Paul, as a Black man, is saying to another successful
Black man in the comedic world that I,
in whatever it is that I do, I am so not Black--
whatever Black means--
that it makes Bryant Gumbel--
who he also has deemed as Bryant Gumbel
is not Black at all, no matter what
the determination and the fight that he had to come up
against as a Black man in the sports world
to not just be a boxer or a basketball player,
but to rise to through the ranks of sports journalism
to be who he was in that world.
So you have, with one joke, you have dismissed two Black people
of note and their accomplishments,
because you're saying they don't fit into our tribe
or our community.
Because we're like this.
They're like that.
Y'all should laugh now, because they're bad like that.
Some people listening might say that I
took it too much to heart.
I disagree with you.
Because in that thinking, if Paul Mooney as a Black man
makes that joke, that sketch blows up, of course.
Doug in Iowa, Jimmy in New York City sits down.
He says, oh, I really love Dave Chappelle.
I love these Black folks.
Oh, that one dude said that other dude isn't Black at all.
OK, then that's not Black.
So now somebody who looks nothing like me
thinks that they know what Black is,
so they can walk up to me on the street or anyone like me
and go--
or say the thing that I've heard said to other people, whatnot.
Come on, man?
You don't like that song?
I'm blacker than you are.
No.
Can you get yanked out of a car because of the way
that you look by a police officer?
No.
So that whole sketch, I was railing against the sketch.
And up until that point, I was doing my talk show.
And like some people, they said--
I realized that the talk show wasn't even a good fit anymore,
because of some of the things that I was doing on the talk
show with the guest and things, that I was
being perceived a certain way.
And perception is reality.
So when my time with the talk show ended,
it ended at a beautiful time that I knew that the Chappelle
thing was coming up.
And I was like, yes, let's rock this.
Because it wasn't that I was trying
to change anyone's perception.
I wanted to blow the lid off that joke,
because I wanted to get to the heart of the joke.
And I think after all these years and all the accolades
about it.
And yes, it changed some people's perceptions.
But I will let you in on something.
Whether it changed someone's perception of me,
I could care less, because I already knew.
I already knew who I was.
If you came to see me live, even when I
was doing my talk show, who's--
my show that I do live and the things I talk about live,
those are the things that I can talk about in that venue.
So I already knew me.
So when a network person--
a white network person comes up to me and says, you know what?
I'd like to offer you this role now, because I saw what you
did on "The Chappelle Show."
If you saw what I did as an actor on "The Chappelle Show,"
cool, because I acted the hell out of that,
and we wrote a great sketch.
But if now I'm on your list as being
Black because of that thing, well, you can kiss my ass.
And fans.
A brother will come up and say, Wayne, man.
I didn't like you before, but since that Chappelle thing--
stop.
Thank you for the compliment, brother,
but it's not the compliment that you want,
so we don't need to talk.
Well, Wayne's a jerk, because he didn't take my compliment.
No.
It's an insult. Your compliment is an insult,
and that's just my way of taking it.
I get where it comes from.
So that's why my job is to continue to do things, to break
down that line of thinking within my community of what is
Black and outside the community of what is thought
of and perceived as Black.
Because it's limiting.
Any time that someone says, you are this thing,
you've now taken money out of my mouth.
Why?
Because I can't do this role, because somebody
thinks that I'm not Black enough.
You won't let me do something that is integral to my art,
because you don't think this thing.
That's real, and it's not just me.
So that's what Black comedy can do now,
is flip all of that on its ear.
That's why I'm glad I did the sketch, because I
just wanted to do it so that I could
punch that joke in the mouth.