Dave Chappelle Drops N-Word During ‘SNL’ Monologue About Donald Trump
Dave Chappelle returned to television to host Saturday Night Live in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s election. With his opening monologue, he instantly showed why America has missed him.
Chappelle did not hesitate to immediately jump into the topic of Trump’s election in his opening monologue, stating, “But America’s done it. We’ve actually elected an Internet troll as our president.”
But while white, liberal America reacted towards Trump’s victory with shock and horror, Dave Chappelle expressed cynicism tinged with a hint of amusement. He made fun of white anti-Trump protesters in Portland destroying property by calling them “amateurs” and noted that he intended to “let the whites figure this out amongst themselves. For us, we’ve been here before.”
Dave Chappelle went on to discuss events such as the Orlando nightclub shooting earlier this year as well as Black Lives Matters and ISIS. He also used the N-word when talking about the Harambe shooting, mocking the fact that police officers seemed to be more hesitant about shooting a gorilla than a black man.
A rather cynical comedian
This sort of cynicism has been part and parcel of Dave’s humor even since he stormed into the comedy world over 10 years ago with The Chappelle Show. As the Washington Post noted, Chappelle became famous “as a comedic genius unafraid to cull humor from the most tragic aspects of racism in America.”
But while Chappelle never hesitated to call out racism using humor, he became afraid that his humor was being used to foster racism. As a result, he abruptly quit his show, turned down a multi-million dollar contract, and has spent much of the past decade doing little comedy beyond the occasional stand-up routine.
Dave Chappelle’s cynicism quickly made itself clear in the first sketch after his monologue. Chappelle, along with Chris Rock, sat alongside a group of white Hillary supporters at an election watch party and poked fun at their growing despair and outrage. While the supporters sat stunned at the idea that America was racist enough to vote for a candidate like Trump, Rock and Dave made it clear that they knew that to be true the entire time.
Outside of politics, Chappelle also took aim at some of his own stock characters from The Chappelle Show. In a skit referencing the premiere of The Walking Dead, Chappelle threatened his own stock characters from his past show with a baseball bat before taking the head off of one of them.
Hoping for a better future
But while Dave Chappelle has never been the most optimistic person, he did try to layer a message of hope for all Americans at the end of his opening monologue. He talked about a moment when he visited the White House during the Obama administration for a party. It was sponsored by BET, which meant that “everybody in there was black — except for Bradley Cooper, for some reason.”
Chappelle noted how past presidents who were viewed as progressive in their time such as Lincoln and FDR faced opprobrium for even inviting a single black person to the White House, and he contrasted those past instances of racism with how the White House could now host a party filled with black people. The moment made Chappelle feel proud to be an American.
Dave Chappelle finished by wishing Trump luck and said that “I’m going to give him a chance, and we, the historically disenfranchised, demand that he give us one too. Thank you very much.”
This sort of rhetoric comes alongside remarks from other actors and politicians who opposed Trump that now urging American to give him a chance. Whether this moment will represent a moment of actual political unity remains to be seen.
[Featured Image by Eugene Gologursky/Getty Images]
