Kevin Hart Slams Katt Williams for Bashing Tiffany Haddish: What Is At the Root of it All?
by Dr. Alexander Hamilton
While I don’t buy into the helpless without white approval ideology, I agree with Dr. Hamilton on almost every other point he makes in the breakdown of the racial caste system that governs opportunities and positions in our country. I definitely agree that the aggression and frustration exhibited by both, Kevin Hart and Katt Williams, is misplaced. I love that Dr. Hamilton is challenging us to see beyond what is presented on the surface as truth and reality to search out the cause of our ailments. For, it is the discovery of the cause that initiates the process of healing. ~ Rick Wallace, Ph.D., Psy.D.
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THE TIFF BETWEEN KEVIN AND KATT
For the intellectually curious and the comedically inclined, follow me: neither Katt Williams or Kevin Hart fully comprehend the crux of the matter that afflicts them both. Most black people don’t. It is meant for black people to fight each other while the real culprit of their predicament remains unscathed and never gets addressed. This is by design. Let’s take a brisk walk together through the valley of white supremacy to fully comprehend the behavior of its melanin coated inhabitants who toil under its rule and contort to its dominance.
By design, white supremacy requires division amongst its subjects to thrive across the land. It is also the undercurrent force that drives why some black people get opportunity and others don’t. Both Katt and Kevin are having the wrong conversation aimed at the wrong people. Neither of them are the source of what afflicts both of them. Fact is, most black people in America have never done well. Only certain black people are permitted to do well in this country and they are meant to play the societal role of window dressing for other black people who naively buy into the false narrative that they too can make it if they are as well behaved and if they work as hard as Tiffany Haddish, Kevin Hart and the plethora of other black celebrities who continuously and erroneously peddle self-help narratives as antidotes to black people’s ills. These types sing the mantra of “playing the game” and “bootstrapping” which is nothing more than respectability politics, personal responsibility, assimilation, and custom tailored deference to whiteness all rolled up in one. Here, he or she who assimilates the best wins. The Oppression Olympics is in full swing and there are many black people caping for gold medals being awarded by white hands. Hate none of them. Pity all of them. For they know not what they do. Let’s dig deeper.
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NEWSFLASH!!!! No one gets anywhere by working hard. Slaves worked hard. Where did it get them? Most people in this world work hard, but most people will never get where any of our black celebrities are in life. People only get somewhere in life because someone else gave them an opportunity. Beware of people of use “I, I, I” to describe how they made it. There is no such thing as a self-made man or woman. No one gets there on their own. All had help.
On a deeper level, for Mr. Hart to bring up Mr. Williams’ drug addiction exhibits a profound nonawareness of the black condition in America generally and his chosen field of comedy specifically. A good portion of our black comics, athletes, and entertainers suffered drug addiction and alcoholism. Whether it be the first black Quarterback Jefferson Street Joe Gilliam who was benched for Terry Bradshaw after taking the Pittsburgh Steelers undefeated only for white fans to shout racial slurs from the stands demanding that “no nigger” be allowed to QB an NFL team. Joe Gilliam died a heroin addict. Whether it be Michael Jackson, Prince, Whitney Houston or the plethora of other singers who died of drug addictions. Or what about the demons afflicting Richard Pryor, an addict, and perhaps the greatest comic ever. All addicts. All great. And all suffering from the dreadful affliction of being black living under the weight of white supremacy.
Why doesn’t Mr. Hart give Mr. Williams or other black actors and comics the same benefit of the doubt and opportunity white Hollywood gave drug addict Robert Downey Jr. who was given a multimillion-dollar movie deal for the movie Iron Man all while he was in rehab and despite criminal convictions? Katt Williams got no such support from other black comics or actors and never got the opportunity to fully recover career wise from his addictions. Black people don’t get the second chances white men like Downey to get routinely and not just because of what white people do to us, but more importantly because of what we won’t do for each other.
And while I’m at it, why didn’t Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock tie their salary negotiations with Netflix to helping Monique and other black comediennes get paid the same way white actress Jessica Chastain tied her salary negotiations to helping black actress Octavia Spencer get a higher salary in the film, “The Help?” Cue Mr. Hart’s silence on gender pay equity when asked by Breakfast Club host Angela Yee how much he was paying Tiffany Haddish in their upcoming film “Night School.” Dr. King once posited that “either we go up together or we go down together.” Black people are in dire need of divesting from black celebrity culture that routinely attempts to mimic white accouterments of success. The solution to all that ails black people must be driven by the communal and NOT the individual. Anyone telling you otherwise is attempting to sell you an igloo with a fireplace in the Caribbean.
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What Mr. Hart does not fully comprehend is the psychosis required to “weather” white supremacy. He does not even see how his own addiction has contributed to his past scandals with women. Hart is a blind man who fails to see the symptoms of his own addiction, all while shining a light on another man’s struggles. Neither sees their addiction as a consequence of oppression. All fall short. Nevertheless, to be an addict or an alcoholic is a quite logical response to the brutal stress of living under ruthless racial oppression. Such are the accouterments of what Professor Dr. Joy DeGruy Leary describes as “Post Traumatic Slave Disorder.” The fact that more black people are not addicts or in a mental asylum is a testament to our fortitude, naivete, willful ignorance, or pure luck. Never forget James Baldwin’s famous retort on the matter at hand, “To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a state of rage all the time.” Put simply, alcohol and drugs are the morphine used to anesthetize the pain experienced by black bodies living under white supremacy.
The difference between Hart and Williams is the ability to see the forest for the trees. Williams sees it and the pain of it all has driven him at times to addiction. Hart feels it but is better at masking it while experiences the grind and churn of trying to force fit into a white world. There is something Hart has to buy into to fit into that white commercial space. At the moment he ceases to buy into it, it will all be taken from him in an instant. Herein lies the racial gravity that contorts the black psyche. The more materialism and wealth one accumulates, the better one becomes at masking the pain of oppression and the more luxurious circumstances they can act out their oppression in. Both are oppressed. Both suffer the same affliction. But it cuts two different ways. One runs the gambit of respectability politics and bootstrapism (Hart) while the other falls prey to blaming the oppressed for the oppressor’s actions (Williams). The differences in their career trajectory lies in the willingness of one to accept what the other would not. Both Monique and Williams represent the outcast strand of black comedy while Hart and Chappelle represent the commercial brand. Each has their place in God’s world and each need not argue over the motives of the other. However, the responsibility of all is to see the forest for the trees. In many ways, the Hart-Williams brouhaha is a sordid reincarnation of the old Booker T. Washington – W.E.B. Dubois debate.
Every black person afforded an opportunity in a white space needs to arrive with the understanding that they were not necessarily the best black for the job nor are they there because they worked harder than anyone else. They were not necessarily the most qualified. They are just the first resume white people chose to read. Thus, never forget there were generations of people who could have done just as good as you had they been given an opportunity. Therefore, Tiffany Haddish and Kevin Hart must continuously ponder why, with the same skillset, they were given the opportunity that Monique and Williams were not. And Monique and Williams must encourage, as Hart contends, for those coming behind to learn to comprehend the forces at play and push on to higher ground. Neither must fall prey to hating the other for if so, the proud tradition of white supremacy reigns on. Remember, the forest for the trees.
Finally, a word on Mr. Harts’s use of the oft-quoted infamous “crab-in-the-bucket” phraseology, first uttered in the public square by none other than former Congresswoman and presidential candidate Shirley Chisholm. One who has any experience cooking crabs realizes that when the water reaches about 68.5 degrees Fahrenheit, the crabs start fighting each other to get out the pot. Riddle me this: why do you think the crabs are fighting each other? Is it because they hate each other? Or is it because the water is hot? Who do you think is sitting at the stove turning up the heat, cooking the crabs? Get that and while you’re at it get this: understand that black people acting like crabs in a bucket is not because they hate each other. They do so because they are reacting to the scalding hot water of white supremacy. And white America been cooking and eating crabs a long time. Pass the butter sauce. ~ Dr. Alexander Hamilton