TV Eye

I've wanted to write about Dave Chappelle for a long time. Now that his "star gone crazy" narrative is well established in the popular media, it seems too late. But something kept nagging at me about his story. Something was not quite right. Not quite satisfying – if that's even a reasonable expectation – that Chappelle's story has a natural conclusion.

And that's when it hit me.

Packaging the Dave Chappelle story as a talented black man gone crazy, one misses the point. I came to this when I read a piece by Ken Tucker in the March 3 issue of Entertainment Weekly. After carefully regurgitating Chappelle's story, Tucker wrote the following: "Recent public appearances ... prove that Chappelle is ambling back into the game, but the root cause of his opting out remains a mystery."

A mystery?

How many ways can you make yourself heard? Chappelle spoke to Time, he spoke to Oprah Winfrey, and he spoke with James Lipton on Inside the Actors Studio. And, still, few seem to get beyond the "he walked away from $50 million" prologue. Chappelle has explained himself – perhaps not as articulately as someone like Michael Eric Dyson, but he's stated his case. How come no one is listening?

Chappelle is not unlike other people of color I've met in the arts who, after finding acceptance in the mainstream, find themselves confronting that curious dilemma of being the happy (in this case, black) poster child in a world (in this case, Hollywood) that takes pride in believing itself an egalitarian culture; that the best of the rest rises to the top. However, artists of color with any lick of consciousness will inevitably find themselves confronting what I call the wince. For Chappelle, as he explained to Oprah, the wince came at one of his show's tapings, when a white crew member laughed at a certain racial epithet with a relish Chappelle knew was off-key. It was then the internal wrestling match began, coming to terms with the idea that in the heat of the go-go-go of show business in general, and the demands of a weekly TV show in particular, some of the work he produced was socially irresponsible.

Now this, I suspect, is where people decide Chappelle is crazy. This, however, is where race and consciousness and the tangible trappings of success collide like opposing weather systems. It's a clash that's played over and over again privately, and if you're lucky, discussed with a circle of tight friends who understand. For Chappelle, it happened under a glaring spotlight.

Thanks to his work and others' before, we can laugh at the overt displays of racism. It's the covert that gets your mind churning and keeps you up at night. It's those subtle "reminders," people of color experience, that say, "Yes, you might be successful, even respected, but you're still the colored person here."

That Chappelle would pause to consider his social responsibility – something other performers abhor if they give it a thought at all – is extraordinary, given the demands of Hollywood, where it's all about speed, hitting big, and, of course, money. You just don't walk away from $50 million for unseen ghosts, particularly when so many people are riding your coattails to the bank. And yet, Chappelle did just that.

As Chappelle explained to Lipton, and as Tucker reports in his EW piece, "[My father] said, 'Name your price at the beginning. If it ever gets more expensive than the price you named, get out of there.'" Chappelle went to Africa. Reports surfaced saying he'd gone on a spiritual journey. Later, that he went seeking medical attention. The reality was, there was a place there for him to crash.

The good and bad thing for Chappelle is that because he is so fantastically talented, the industry still wants him and wants him bad. Official Comedy Central statements hide their salivation by expressing that the "door is always open to the comedic genius."

"I don't know how this whole Dave Chappelle thing is going to end," the comedian said to Lipton. "But I feel like I'm going to be some kind of parable by either what you're supposed to do or what you're not supposed to do. I'm either going to be a legend or just that tragic f-ing story."

He's right. In the popular media that prefers its truths short, quick, and easily digestible, his story will fall one way or the other. But the reality is something less definable, intangible, and mutable. And it can make you feel crazy.

Chappelle is not crazy. He's my brother.