Chris Rock hates Civil Rights movies.
The I Think I Love My Wife actor revealed in a recent interview for Neal Brennan’s “How Neal Feel” podcast that he does not like movies that showcase segregation and the Civil Rights Movement because they make racism look “fixable.”
“I hate all Civil Rights movies,” he said. “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.”
He then went on to say that the movies don’t show you how flawed the relationships were between white and Black people.
“They don’t get into how dysfunctional the relationships were in the 40s and 50s — white men would just walk in your house and take your food…It’s a predator-prey relationship,” Rock continued. “Do you think when it was time to rape, [white men] were raping white women? No. They would go and rape the women they could actually rape without going to jail for.”
“Racism and Jim Crow is so much dirtier than any movie ever shows,” he added. “The amount of rules that existed…My mother used to get her teeth taken out at the vet cause you weren’t allowed to go to the dentist. No movie shows you that.”
The Fargo actor did not call out any movies by name, but there have been many films that have faced criticism for not being accurate. Recently, directors were accused of “whitewashing” the 2018 film, Green Book.
The film did not go into detail about the actual Green Book — which was used to safely guide African-Americans around the country as they traveled. Additionally, the white characters in the film were painted as “white saviors” to the Black characters.
Watch the clip from Rock’s interview below.