Chris Rock is tired of civil right’s themed movies and would like for them to stop now. Racial tensions around the nation have been high for some years now and the actor-comedian is echoing the sentiments of many African-Americans as it pertains to film and television, including the added “white savior” component to them.
The Fargo actor had a recent interview with Neal Brennan’s How Neal Feel podcast and he shared his reasoning behind his dislike for those historical films is he feels they make racism look very “fixable.”
“I hate all Civil Rights movies,” said the comedian. “Don’t get me wrong, I applaud the effort and they should exist. The problem is they only show the back of the bus and the lunch counter. They actually make racism look very fixable.”
Chris Rock talking about why he doesn’t like Civil Rights movies: “My mother used to get her teeth taken out at the vet….no movie shows you that” pic.twitter.com/uvtDCSU1Pp
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The actor then points out that they don’t quite accurately depict just how strained relationships were between races. “They don’t get into how dysfunctional the relationships were in the 40s and 50s — white men would just walk in your house and take your food…It’s a predator-prey relationship,” Rock stated. “Do you think when it was time to rape, [white men] were raping white women? No. They would go and rape the women they could actually rape without going to jail for.”
He added, “Racism and Jim Crow is so much dirtier than any movie ever shows. The amount of rules that existed…My mother used to get her teeth taken out at the vet cause you weren’t allowed to go to the dentist. No movie shows you that.”
Rock has previously shared the story of his mother’s experience of having to see a vet for her dental work due to racism and Jim Crow laws. He stated how it was for her living in South Carolina saying, “My mother, not my great-grandmother,” he began, “ they wouldn’t let Black people go to the dentist. So she had to, all the Black people in town, got their teeth taken out by the vet. So, to go to the vet, ok? And not only did they have to go to the vet to get their teeth removed, they had to go to the back door. ‘Cause God forbid the white people found out that they were using the same utensils, or whatever the hell, the same equipment on n—as on their dogs.”
Chris Rock talking about how his moms had to go to the VET to get her teeth pulled. Not the dentist. smh pic.twitter.com/QgSGgNfI2E
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He continued, adding his stance on being called the “N word”. “That’s my mother! It’s not like some old… this is not like “George Washington Carver” or some s—t, this is my mother. Ok? Like, I’m gonna be p—d off ‘cause somebody said “n—r”? Are you kidding me? I’m gonna let somebody break my heart? Please.”
His comments were discussed on daytime talk show The Talk, where hosts Eve and Sheryl Underwood applauded his recent statements on Brennan’s podcast. “Him telling that story, that’s a huge thing. For his mother to have gone through something like that, maybe this is a project that he’ll do,” says Eve. “Maybe he’ll direct or produce a movie that will show some of these incredible things. Because I know we’re only hearing half.
“If you haven’t lived through it or know someone who actually lived through it, been through it – there’s not a lot we know. Those horrific stories, we don’t know. So, I’m hoping a project is coming from him soon,” added Eve, to which Sheryl Underwood chimes in saying, “We have to continue to speak up and continue to tell these stories because they are part of our country’s history and people need to know it.”