They're blockbusters in the theaters, but films about slave narratives or the Civil Rights Movement have been polarizing, especially among American audiences. While they are praised as stories that need to be told on a grander scale, some don't agree with their often peaceful resolution. Chris Rock recently gave his take on such films while appearing on Neal Brennan's How Neal Feel and shared that the Civil Rights Movement is "dirtier" than what most people have been taught.
"I hate all civil rights movies," said Chris. "Don't get me wrong. I applaud the effort and they should exist. The problem is they only show the back of the bus and the lunch counter. They actually make racism look very fixable. They don't really get into how dysfunctional the relationships were. In the '40s and '50s, White men would just walk in your house and take your food... What do you think would happen during the Depression when people were hungry? White people are hungry? Oh, there's Black people cooking on that side of town. What do you think would happen? They would walk in your house and take your sh*t."
He called it a "predator-prey relationship" and went on to discuss how White men would commit brazen acts of sexual assault because they could get away with it. "They would go and rape the women they could rape without actually going to jail for it, okay? Or sexual assault... all that sh*t. This sh*t is so much more—racism and Jim Crow is so much dirtier than any movie ever shows."
Chris Rock then shared that there were so many rules that existed for Black people during that time, explaining that his mother would get her teeth taken out at the veterinarian. "'Cause you weren't' allowed to go to the dentist," he added. "No movie shows you that." Check out the clip from Chris Rock on How Neal Feel below.
