Funny News Broadcast Crack in Neighborhood
Warning: The above clip contains graphic language.
People have been talking for years about the stark differences between the crack and opioid epidemics. But few have expressed its publicly in such raw terms as comedian Dave Chappelle did earlier this year.
Many found his 2019 Netflix comedy special, "Sticks and Stones," deeply offensive, in part because he joked about the current overdose epidemic, while others praised him for his candor.
"This opioid crisis is a crisis," Chappelle said. "I see it every day. It's ruining lives, it's destroying families. Sadly, you know what it reminds me of seeing it? It reminds me of us. These white folks look exactly like us during the crack epidemic."
Said Chappelle: "It's wild because I have insight into how the white community must have felt watching the black community go through the scourge of crack. Because I don't care either!
"Hang in there whites! Just say no!" he said. "What's so hard about that?"
Warning: This clip contains graphic language.
[This story is part of our Crack vs. Heroin investigation. The project examines how the responses to crack and opioids created an unfair justice system; what needs to be done to fix the inequity; the role that culture and comedy play; and our top 5 takeaways from the project.]
The controversy over Chappelle's jokes cast a light on another difference between the two epidemics that's been largely overlooked: Why is crack considered funny, but not opioids?
Crack was a staple of American comedy, starting in the 1980s.
Chris Rock and Chappelle made crack jokes that can be recited in any bar among black and white audiences.
Out of the ashes of a gritty, degrading and deadly epidemic, crack became comedy. Its perils and trappings were detailed in hip hop, becoming the soundtrack of the 1990s for the genre.
Thirty years later, crack is still part of America's nomenclature. "What are you, on crack?" We still say that. That decadent, addictive chocolate dessert? "It's like crack, man."
It's funny. Unless your neighborhood or someone you cared about was destroyed by the crack epidemic and the mass incarceration that it triggered. In contrast, for whatever reason, there's nothing even remotely funny about the opioid epidemic, and it's been going on for 20 years.
Why is that?
Warning: This clip contains graphic language.
'I smoke rocks'
Where Chappelle's jokes about opioids were criticized, Tyrone Biggums, Chappelle's caricature of a crack addict, became one of the touchstones of his comedy show.
Biggums has white chalky lips. His clothes were tattered. In one sketch, he defecated on a street corner.
Biggums's degenerate behavior would culminate with the punch line, "There's something y'all might not know about me. I smoke rocks!" '
Eric Deggans, the television critic for National Public Radio said crack jokes were popular on the comedy circuit for years, adding to the stigma.
"There's so many stereotypes , so much cultural baggage wrapped up in the image of the crackhead," Deggans said. "You think about Dave Chappelle's (Biggums), how he had the white makeup on his lips, it harkened back to traditional images of Sambo. I don't know if he was consciously trying to mimic that ."
Warning: This clip from the movie "New Jack City" contains graphic scenes and language.
One of Chris Rock's first major movie roles came in the 1991 cult classic "New Jack City," which chronicled crack's rise in New York. Rock's character, Pookie, provided comedic relief, but also showcased the dark underbelly of the crack epidemic.
Pookie would bear some resemblance to Chappelle's Tyrone Biggums. At one point, while strung out in the middle of an alleyway inside a crack house, Pookie pleads for help.
"I tried to kick... but that s--- just be callin' me man, it be callin' me, man... I just got to go to it," he says.
Years later, in his HBO comedy special "Never Scared" crack became the punchline to one of his biggest jokes.
"Krispey Kreme doughnuts are so good if I told you right now they had crack in it, you'd go," I know something is up." The joke continues with more vulgar analogies.
Just like crack
Some say the media is largely responsible for placing the crack and opioid epidemics on different planes.
As the opioid crisis spread, those abusing heroin and prescription painkillers were routinely depicted in the media as sympathetic victims, notes Helena Hansen, an associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry at New York University.
"It was almost uniform that the articles that described whites were sympathetic portrayals where they talked about the person's family life, their achievements as an athlete or as a family member or in their careers, the tragedy of their downfall and their helplessness in face of addiction," Hansen said.
"When the articles mentioned, black and Latino opioid users, it was a crime report, their criminal history, their court appearances were described, their personal history was not described. There was not a humanizing biography of the people in the story."
![Political activist Van Jones speaks to an audience in January. Jones works with others on a new nonpartisan effort aimed at reforming the criminal justice system.](https://www.gannett-cdn.com/presto/2019/07/23/PPAS/9e4ab9a6-39c0-40d2-bcb9-c44de151959d-AP19204086985730.jpg)
Van Jones, a CNN commentator who is CEO of the REFORM Alliance, an initiative to help people reduce their parole and probation sentences, said "the skin color of the people who are the poster children for the epidemic is different."
Said Jones: "The face of crack was black and the face of the opioid crisis was white, society has had polar opposite responses."
As a result, some say, jokes about the opioid epidemic are deemed out of bounds.
The few attempts have met with controversy.
An Ohio pub was publicly lambasted for advertising a bag of fentanyl as a featured item on its brunch special, according to a story on Cleveland.com The shop owner apologized on Facebook, but not before irate customers criticized the ad, many stating that they had a lost a friend to an overdose.
The upscale bakery Milk Bar for years marketed a dessert called Crack Pie, which was among its most popular dishes. The brown sugar and oatmeal based-pie's name irked Devra First, a food writer with the Boston Globe. She wrote a scathing column in 2019 saying it was time for the name to change.
"I grew up in New York in the 80s and early 90s, this was exactly the era when crack was really ravaging communities," First said,. "That is why it's been easy for people to make crack food jokes, it didn't touch the people who are making it and it didn't touch the people who are largely buying it," she said. "Crack Pie happens to cost $6 a slice. The people heading over to the East Village to buy it were not the people touched by the crack epidemic first hand."
In April, Milk Bar announced the pie's name would be changed to Milk Bar Pie.
Source: https://www.app.com/in-depth/news/local/communitychange/2019/12/02/crack-vs-heroin-drug-humor-underscores-differences/4196672002/
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