Comedian Dave Chappelle made statements during his latest Netflix special ‘What’s In a Name?’ taped at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington, D.C. where students there had earlier challenged the renaming of a new theater after the Chappelle, who formerly attended the school. During the show, Chappelle rejects the objections of the ‘woke’ high school students and those who denounced his previous comedy special The Closer for being what they considered “transphobic” and “anti-LGBTQ”.
Although Chappelle eventually declined the honor of having the theater named after him, he stood firm on his freedom of speech.
According to Chappelle, the more these triggered teens attempt to suppress him, the more determined he becomes to speak out.
“The more you say I can’t say something, the more urgent it is for me to say it,” Chappelle reportedly says in What’s in a Name?, released Thursday on Netflix.
“It has nothing to do with what you’re saying I can’t say. It has everything to do with my right and my freedom of artistic expression. It’s worth protecting for me, and it’s worth protecting for everyone else who endeavors in our noble professions.”
Chappelle also said that the woke students are sadly so obsessed with identity, they miss the point.
“These kids said everything about gender and this, that, and the other, but they didn’t say anything about art,” he says. “It would be like if you were reading a newspaper and it said, ‘Man shot in the face by a six-foot rabbit, expected to survive, but they never tell you it’s a Bugs Bunny cartoon.”
After Chappelle declined the school’s offer to put rename the theater in his honor, the school has since renamed the venue to “Theater for Artistic Freedom and Expression”.
