Dave Chappelle Is Obviously "Racially Vulnerable" And His Fans Are Obviously (And Actively) Driving Him Nuts

This is cruel.

Sorry but, other than Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor, I don't hear about a lot of comics dealing with this and the man is too important to let it slide:

“I'm watching Dave Chappelle quit stand up,” tweeted Lesli-Ann Lewis. “He's tired of White people treating him like he should shuck and jive.” Writing for Ebony, she expanded upon her use of that historically loaded phrase:  

Being in that crowd, a sea of drunk White male faces and seeing Chappelle sit there and be jeered at made me uncomfortable. Heckling isn’t uncommon for comedians but often when a comedian as famous as Chappelle puts their foot down, it is usually respected.  

While the racial makeup of the crowd was incidental, the way they treated Chappelle is not. It speaks to a long complicated history: the relationship between the White audience and the Black entertainer. This is a relationship you can easily trace to early minstrel shows, to archetypes of Blacks that still define the roles we’re offered today. 

One of the reasons Chappelle abandoned his sketch comedy series at its peak of popularity was that he grew uncomfortable with the response to his racially charged humor from white audiences. During the taping of an ill-fated sketch in which he donned blackface as a “black-pixie” who prodded black people to perform as stereotypes, Chappelle noticed that one white male audience member seemed to find it a little too funny. “When he laughed, it made me uncomfortable,” he said. “As a matter of fact, that was the last thing I shot before I told myself I gotta take fucking time out after this. Because my head almost exploded.” Lewis’ reading of last night’s performance seems plausible given this history. 

Why was the crowd so rowdy to begin with? Splitsider reports that fans were yelling well-known catchphrases from Chappelle’s Show “right off the bat,” and that it went downhill from there. (By most accounts, there was plenty of alcohol flowing as well.) Chappelle did a riff about Damon Wayans performing stand-up to a crowd that only wanted to see him do Homey the Clown—one of his signature characters from In Living Color—an apparent analogue to his own experience onstage last night.

I'm not too concerned for Chappelle - he's married, with a child, and has a good head on his shoulders - but he might need to re-think his relationship with America from here-on-out: 

 He's no longer the *blind* KKK leader they thought he was,...