UPDATE, 6/12/20, 12:24pm ET: Candace Owens responded to Dave Chappelle‘s special on Twitter, and her reaction was surprising. “We’ve arrived too suddenly into a culture where people can’t laugh at themselves, or want to restrain comedians. I will never be a part of that culture. @DaveChappelle — you are legend and I’d love to meet you and challenge you to say any of that to my face! All love!”
We’ve arrived too suddenly into a culture where people can’t laugh at themselves, or want to restrain comedians.
I will never be a part of that culture. @DaveChappelle —you are legend and I’d love to meet you and challenge you to say any of that to my face! 😂
All love!
— Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO) June 12, 2020
CNN’s Don Lemon, whom Chappelle also slammed for asking celebrities to speak out following George Floyd’s death, responded, as well: “Dave Chappelle is my favorite comedian, and I do care what Dave Chappelle says. “First of all, my nieces and nephews will give me some props because I’m cool now that Dave Chappelle has mentioned my name. And I’m actually honored to be memorialized in his special. What I will say is that I actually agree with Dave Chappelle. I agree that the establishment is a bit behind..”
ORIGINAL: Dave Chappelle released a surprise Netflix special on June 12 that tears into the media’s coverage of George Floyd‘s killing, asking that all Americans join the protests to fight policy brutality and white supremacy across the nation. Chappelle, 46, said that he couldn’t watch the video showing Floyd’s death for over a week, but when he did, he was overcome with emotion. And he immediately understood why protesters took to the streets. You can watch the FULL special above, which was filmed in Yellow Springs, Ohio with a socially distanced and masked audience.
“This kid thought he was going to die, he knew he was going to die,” Chappelle said in his set, called 8:46 — the number of minutes Floyd was pinned to the ground before his death by Officer Derek Chauvin. “He called for his mother, he called for his dead mother. I’ve only seen that once before in my life: My father on his deathbed called for his grandmother. When I watched that tape I understood this man knew he was going to die. People watched it, people filmed it, and for some reason that I still don’t understand, all these f**king police had their hands in their pockets.”
“Who are you talking to? What are you signifying? That you can kneel on a man’s neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds and feel like you wouldn’t get the wrath of God? That is what is happening right now. It’s not for a single cop, it’s for all of it, f**king all of it,” he continued. “I don’t mean to get heavy but we gotta say something.” At one point, Chappelle listed the names of Black individuals killed at the hands of police. He later went in on conservative commentator and ardent Trump supporter Candace Owens, who has slammed Black Lives Matter.
Owens recently posted a video to Facebook on June 3 titled I Do Not Support George Floyd, in which she criticized those seeing him as a “martyr” amidst the protests. “We are being sold a lot of lies at the detriment to the Black community, at the detriment to the White community and at the detriment to America as a whole. So, I want to come out and say that I do not support George Floyd and the media’s depiction of him as a martyr for Black America.”
In an EXCLUSIVE podcast interview with HollywoodLife, The Bachelorette star Rachel Lindsay called out Owens for being “against everything that’s black,” after retweeting someone who called the pundit a “black white supremacist.” Chappelle went a little further than that in his special. “I seen Candace Owens try to convince white America, ‘Don’t worry about it. He’s a criminal anyway.’ I don’t give a f**k what this n**** did,” he said. “I don’t care what this n**** did. I don’t care if he personally kicked Candace Owens in her stanky p***.”
The video, which Netflix posted to YouTube, came with a disclaimer. “From Dave: Normally I wouldn’t show you something so unrefined, I hope you understand.” He included a link to the Equal Justice Initiative, a nonprofit focusing on ending mass incarceration and racial inequality.