"Dave Chappelle - American Indians"

This YouTube video was found under a search for Native American comedy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrWtntXtLRg

This excerpt in from an episode of the Dave Chappelle Show, hosted by Dave Chappelle, a standup comedian. Chappelle tells the audience that he thought all Indians were dead, but that they really are not. He says he knows this because he found a “gathering of them” the other day, and that the gathering was at a Wal Mart store, in the hunting department. He states that they were all looking at bows and arrows with which to hunt. He went on to tell how he met one of them from the Navajo tribe and asked to have a “peace pot-smoking ritual” with him and his chief and other Indians. At this meeting, he tells that the Indians brought weed to the beat of drums, after which they gave him a teepee to sleep in for the night.

This racist episode of the Dave Chappelle Show relates to the ideas brought up in class about Native American Indians, and how we assume and make fun of their ways. Chappelle’s remarks remind me of the image we saw in class of the Cleveland Indians’ mascot and the misconceptions of the Native Americans that we often make. The Indians’ mascot is shown to be “happy-go-lucky” with feathers on his head dress and red skin. These assumptions, as well as those made my Dave Chappelle, are often made about Indians based on the thoughts of the English and those of the past. In addition, this related to our class material because as stated in A People’s History of the United States, “If you were a colonist, you knew that your technology was superior to the Indians.’ You knew that you were civilized, and they were savages…” Chapelle’s words mock this, especially when he says all the Indians were gathered at Wal Mart (saying they are not civilized enough to shop elsewhere), when he mocks the way they talk, and when he talks of how they smoke marijuana and worship spirits as savages would. By all of these comments, Chappelle is hinting to the fast that they are of a lower class and their ways of surviving and worshiping are weird compared to those of normal Americans. In addition, viewers of this show as well as Chappelle himself believe that these comments are not racist and merely out of good fun. They are clearly practicing the denial that is explained in “Getting Off the Hook: Denial and Resistance,” that racism does not occur in the first place, that it is all a matter of making light of a different ethnic group.

I find it difficult to believe that Dave Chappelle made those comments about Indians without any intent of them being racist comments. He was indirectly belittling Native Americans and any of them that were watching could very well be offended by his remarks. Just because the audience and himself believed the remarks to be funny does not mean that others did not take them to heart. It is sad to see so many examples of this in the media, of people making false claims of the Indian way of life as well as mocking the habits of Native Americans, without taking into account how it may affect them and the thoughts of their ancestors.