Comedian Chris Rock’s new special “Tamborine” debuted on Netflix on Wednesday, and it was intensely political right out of the gate.
Rock’s first bit was about law enforcement, which he portrayed as a group of racists who shoot innocent black children in the street for sport.
“Here’s my question,” started Rock. “You would think that cops would occasionally shoot a white kid just to make it look good. You would think every couple of months they’d look at their dead n**** calendar and go, ‘Oh my God, we’re up to 16! We gotta shoot a white kid quick!'”
Rock continued, explaining that “real equality” would include “white mothers” crying about their dead children.
“I wanna live in a world with real equality. I want to live in a world where an equal amount of white kids are shot every month,” he said. “I wanna see white mothers on TV, crying, standing next to Al Sharpton, talkin’ about, ‘We need justice for Chad.'”
“Whenever a cop guns down an innocent black man,” said the 53-year-old later in the routine, they call the cop a “bad apple. … Bad apple: that’s a lovely name for murderer.”
As the federal government’s data shows, far more white people are fatally shot by police than black people. A 2015 Washington Post study found that 49% of those fatally shot by police were white, while 24% were black. The fact that more white people are shot than black people is of course unsurprising because whites represent a higher percentage of the population than blacks (62% and 13%, respectively). According to that study then, blacks are 2.5 times more likely to be fatally shot than whites. However, other studies that have drilled into the details of the specific cases more closely, including this Harvard study, found that in similar situations, there is no significant racial disparity in fatal police shootings.
In the new special, Rock also took on the issue of gun control, which will “never” happen “because Americans need the right to hunt,” he said mockingly.
President Donald Trump was mentioned, too, of course. Rock joked that the crackdown on bullies led to the election of Trump.
“That’s how Trump became president,” he said. “We got rid of bullies. A real bully showed up and nobody knew how to handle him.”
“Trump is so bad he’s going to give us Jesus,” he later joked.
Speaking about his infidelity to his wife, Rock addressed the ubiquitous nature of porn and its effects.
“When you watch too much porn, you know what happens? You become, like, sexually autistic,” he said. “You develop sexual autism. You have a hard time with eye contact and verbal cues. You get desensitized. When you start watching porn, any porn will do. Then, later on, you’re all f***ed up and you need a perfect porn cocktail to get you off. I was so f***ed up.”
WATCH the trailer, below: