Andrew Yang & John McWhorter on Dave Chappelle and "Transphobia" | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO)

what a great segue now that we've established the woke topic to talk about what has been going on this week that everybody is talking about dave chappelle special the reaction netflix and the trans community now if we establish right here at the beginning that all three of us are supporters of all laws that protect trans people that we believe in all the dignity equality and respect that can be afforded to trans people can we have an honest free discussion about this many people don't think so but right many people that's what bothers me to begin with that there is this is what i call the one true opinion a very apropos of your religion theme john there is the one true opinion and there isn't there isn't just one true opinion i'm a free speech guy now i'm team dave but that doesn't mean i'm anti-trans we can have two thoughts in our head at the same time am i right about that i hope but there's only one truth there's a certain kind of person who and the book that i wrote i have to mention it explicitly once it's called woke racism the book that i didn't i mentioned it yes you did i did but i have to say it too okay it's fantastic right thank you very much but what a certain kind of person thinks is that what we must hold front and center is battling or striking battle poses against power differentials and that must center everything that we do intellectually artistically morally that is the main thing there might be some other things you can barbecue now and then but that is the center and if you're not doing that you're not just somebody who's annoying you're a moral pervert and you must be defenestrated and chased out of the public square they don't put it in those words but unfortunately that's what they mean that's what we're up against and so that's why there's some people who think that there's one truth they think they have found the final solution they think they are kant they aren't the philosopher see i dropped some people want to confuse anybody out there and get us in bigger trouble than we always are immanuel kant k-a-n-t he's a philosopher and he was a [Laughter] going to lose my job no you're not i'm going to lose mine well we're all going to lose our job okay but as a professor though of language here's what i thought i would get you on even though that's going to be the subject of my editorial next week because it's i think a much bigger subject than just this but this gets at it words have meaning but not anymore and when i hear transphobic phobic has a meaning fear i i'm not transphobic if i merely disagree with you it's not hate i mean here's what some one of the reactions from someone who worked at netflix said this is not an argument with two sides well right away you lost me it is an argument with trans people who want to be alive and people who don't want us to be well that's just ridiculous dave chappelle does not want you to not be alive amen it's just and you know you're not automatically right if you're trans you're completely equal you're just not automatically right and it doesn't behoove everybody to get their mind around very new changes i mean we were boy and girl for a very long time it was it's only been 10 years since how long have we had gay marriage you know i mean talking about the democratic voter i'm sure there's a guy in ohio going i just got on board with gay marriage could you give me a minute this idea that we're not we're not any gender when we're born is very new and very radical that you're born it's just jump ball but you have a penis it could mean you're a boy but that's a you know i mean that's a very new idea and i'm not sure i'm down with all of it and i don't have to be but he dave wasn't battling power differentials he wasn't immediately on board and that person from ohio needs to do some learning and some adjustments yes but that means that you are a heretic and you have to be pushed out a window because you are not battling the power differentials and what you see is that this is there's one thing this is these people people who do this about race who do this about trans who do this about anything think of themselves as a head of the curve they think of themselves as indicating some sort of higher wisdom really it's a very simple way of looking at things people like this no matter what they're arguing on the basis of are telling us the way you would have thought of it when you were five years old is the proper way to think of it that doesn't work never will bill you've been a comedian being a comedian seems like a really really tough job i think we can agree that comedian's primary role is to entertain and it's sometimes to make us think but no one thinks it's a comedian's role to tell us how to think or what to think and attributing that role to dave or any other comedian doesn't serve art the artist or society at all well i mean i was going to read some of these reviews i'm just going to read this one from npr it's because the reviews from the critics so at variance with the audience rotten tomatoes that that's a amalgam of reviews i think in this case seven his special got a 43 percent audience 95. says a lot about the differentiation between real people and the we're seeing this again and again defund the police says oh so sophisticated person and a person living in a dangerous neighborhood doesn't want it and there are more of them than there are of the people you know wearing t-shirts saying defund the police or latinx i don't have any problem with latinx but it doesn't seem to be making any inroads into the communities where most latinx people live and so you have this sort of educated dialect way of thinking and that's the case here where all of these people i think to get back to this simplicity idea they see that dave chappelle is a comedian they're layers of wit and irony and attitude going on and instead we're told to just read it as if it was the three bears and we're being told that that's sophisticated when really that means that these people who are you know so annoyed that anybody says some words or expresses some ideas are saying that most of america aren't sophisticated and yet last time i checked they were arguing on the basis of disempowered people or that there's a connection that because you don't agree with what he said which again i don't think is transphobic a lot of the special is about how he has this friendship with a trans person who is his opening act but that it's going to lead to violence now there has been an uptick in violence as there was with asian americans in the last couple of years of course we condemn this of course we should do everything we can to stop it but i don't think dave chappelle special has anything to do with it no now let me read the npr npr said it sounds like chappelle is using white privilege to excuse his homophobia and transphobia wait now dave chappelle can have white privilege i'm really confused now you

Channel: Real Time with Bill Maher

Views: 2,030,742

Keywords: Saru Jayaraman, UC Berkeley, Food Labor Research Center, One Fair Wage, author, Ending Subminimum Pay in America, Andrew Yang, Forward Party, Forward Notes on the Future of Our Democracy, John McWhorter, newsletter, The New York Times, Woke Racism, How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America

Id: WAUUgxQPwM0

Length: 8min 2sec (482 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 23 2021