A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance

by Hanif Abdurraqib

I want the feeling of walking out of a hot, sweat-drenched dance party and into a cool night bottled and sold.

Dave Chappelle is back now. He’s doing stand-up again, which he always insisted was his best medium. His jokes are sometimes as layered, nuanced, and sharp as they used to be, but he often struggles with weaving in effective subject matter. He drifts into punching down, targeting queer and trans folks, or victims of sexual violence. His comedic style remains committed to walking the thin line between brash, extreme presentation and a palpable underlying message, but the line too often blurs itself and he, like other comedians of his era, gets caught up in being a victim of the times and their demand for evolution around gender, language, sensitivity. Chappelle himself hasn’t changed all that much, but the era has. The people who craved permission from him haven’t changed either, it’s just that the permissions themselves have shifted. The same people who missed the message in his old jokes and laughed because it was funny to hear white people saying “Niggar” are the people who now, like Chappelle, feel as though they are being censored from expressing the truest version of themselves. In doing what he imagines as flying in the face of critics, Chappelle is once again confirming those who wish to be confirmed. Showing people that someone can say whatever they want, however they want, privileges and all be damned.

I tell my friend that I’m done writing poems about Black people being killed and he asks if I think that will stop them from dying.

The thing I find myself explaining most vigorously to people these days is that consumption and love are not equal parts of the same machine. To consume is not to love, and ideally love is not rooted solely in consumption.

A foolish thing is when writers, or curious people who hold information, insist loudly that they wish more people would be talking about a topic and then continue to withhold vehicles for the starting of that conversation.

Black people get asked to perform hope when white people are afraid, but it doesn’t always serve reality. Hope is the small hole cut into the honest machinery. The milk crate is still a milk crate, but with the right opening, a basketball can make its way through. If I am going to be afraid, I might as well do it honest. Arm in arm with everyone I love, adorned in blood and bruises, singing jokes on our way to a grave.

When someone loves loudly, with everything they have in them, the withholding of that loud love, even briefly, feels impossible to endure.

Your scene is too white and will probably stay too white because when the Black kids come to your shows, people make sure to include them in the photos but shove them outta the way once the songs start. Your scene will stay too white because all shows are is a negotiation of space, who deserves it and who doesn’t, and there’s no way you and your crew are gonna make space for people who don’t look like you when most of the room already looks like you.