No list of the best Chappelle’s Show sketches would be complete without “Clayton Bigsby,” a satirical Frontline investigation about a blind white supremacist who doesn’t realize that he’s Black. He was a fictional character created and portrayed by Dave Chappelle, but on Thursday, a real-life Clayton went viral.
As a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans group, Daniel Sims, a Black man, is opposed to the removal of Confederate symbols from outside the Marshall County courthouse in Albertville, Alabama. “Regardless of how the next person feels, I’m not going to take my flag down. If I got anything to do with it, ain’t no monument going to come down,” he told WHNT. Sims said he was raised in a white household, like Bigsby, and he “grew up in an all-white neighborhood. My grandfather was white and he was the main one that fought in this war here and he’s taught me everything I know.”
Pro-removal group Say Their Names Alabama was also on site, because the “rebel flag does not represent all Americans so it should not be at a place where all Americans in the county come, which is the courthouse. So, it is out of place and it has been out of place since they placed it here in 2005,” leader Unique Dunston said. Sims responded:
“It may make my blood boil if they just come up here and feel like they can just tear it down. I don’t see me still living if they do that right there. That monument ain’t hurting nobody. That monument ain’t killing a soul. It’s ain’t talking bad to nobody. It’s ain’t even racist.”
It’s one thing to read his quotes; it’s another to watch the footage.
Y’all…
It’s Clayton Bigsby IRL
(And he can see)
— Andreas Hale (@AndreasHale) August 13, 2020
And it’s something else entirely to hear Clayton’s voice over the news report.
https://twitter.com/TonyClementsTC/status/1293950987338764290
Here’s the original sketch (from the first episode of Chappelle’s Show!).
(Via WHNT)
