Dave Chappelle: New George Floyd set is a history of violence

Dave Chappelle was not funny during his first stage performance in 87 days, an impassioned, 27-minute set that spoke to the cultural reckoning triggered by the killing of George Floyd. Chappelle’s special, “8:46” — named for the amount of time a Minneapolis police officer held his knee to Floyd’s neck before Floyd died by asphyxiation — arrived unannounced late Thursday via the Netflix Is a Joke streaming channel on YouTube with nothing more than this short, written intro from the performer: “Normally I wouldn’t show you something so unrefined, I hope you understand.” For the record: An earlier version of this story stated that John Crawford III was killed in Colorado. Chappelle was nervous when first addressing the gathering from the rustic, wooden stage, admitting it was a weird time to put on a show, but the only way to see if it would work is to “do the goddamn show.” He started by giving a shout-out “to all the young people who went out protesting.” “I’m proud of you,” he said. Chappelle recalled the names of so many of those Black men who’d been killed: “Eric Garner in New York, the first guy that told the police, ‘I can’t breathe.’ He was selling loose cigarettes in Staten Island when my first son was born. Then vaguely in my mind I remember that idiot … telling somebody to shut up and dribble, and I watched dribbling, and saving this goddamn country from itself.” As he recalled his great-great-grandfather, who joined other formerly enslaved people to lobby Woodrow Wilson, and connected that act with the mass activism that has followed Floyd’s death, Chappelle said, “They were slaves.