Revolution Televised.pdf

Conclusion 179
constructions of blackness and present a textured vision of African
American society.
Chris Rock: Televising the Politics of Black Communal Spaces
Who’s more racist, black people or white people? Black people. You
know why? Because we hate black people too. . . . There’s, like, a
civil war going on with black people. And there’s two sides: there’s
black people, and there’s niggas. And the niggas have got to go. Every
time black people want to have a good time, ign’ant ass niggas fuck it
up! . . . Can’t keep a disco open more than three weeks. . . . Can’t go
to a movie the first week it come out! Why? ’Cause niggas are shooting
at the screen! . . . “Hey, this is a good movie—this so good, I gotta
bust a cap in here.” I love black people, but I hate niggas. . . . Niggas
always want some credit for some shit they supposed to do. . . . “I
take care of my kids.” You’re supposed to, you dumb motherfucker. . . .
“I ain’t never been to jail.” What you want—a cookie? You’re not supposed
to go to jail, you low-expectation motherfucker. . . . Some black
people looking at me, “Man, why you got say that? . . . It ain’t us, its
the media. . . . The media has distorted our image to make us look
bad.” . . . Please cut the fucking shit. When I go to the money machine
tonight, I ain’t looking over my back for the media; I’m looking for niggas.
Shit, Ted Koppel ain’t never took shit from me. Niggas have. You
think I got three guns in my house ’cause the media outside. Oh shit,
Mike Wallace—run!
Chris Rock, Bring the Pain, 1996
In his 1963 speech at the Northern Negro Grass Roots Leadership
Conference, “A Message to the Grassroots,” Malcolm X said:
Instead of airing our differences in public, we have to realize we’re
all the same family. And when you have a family squabble, you
don’t get out on the sidewalk. If you do, everybody calls you uncouth,
unrefined, uncivilized, savage. If you don’t make it at home,
you settle it at home; you get in the closet, argue it out behind closed
doors, and then when you come out on the street, you pose a common
front, a united front. And this is what we need to do in the
community, and in the city, and in the state. We need to stop airing
our differences in front of the white man. 18
This is a riff on the common adage “Don’t air your dirty laundry in
public.” But this concept has a particular meaning to black society