Letter to the Editor: Fighting Rock

Fighting Rock

To the editor:

I was flooded with many memories, both sweet and horrible, after reading Elizabeth Wellington’s review of Chris Rock’s Netflix special Selective Outrage at Baltimore’s Hippodrome Theatre. Baltimore is my hometown, and I know the Hippodrome well. Throughout my childhood, there were periods when I lived with my grandmother, and each year before school started, as a special gift, she bought us tickets in the Hippodrome balcony “scholarship section.” In the Baltimore of my youth, where odious Jim Crow laws thrived, the Chris Rocks of that time would have taken their lives in their hands if they tried to walk into the Hippodrome, or even open its doors. In Wellington’s review, she criticized Rock for prioritizing the reactions of white people over his own pain, using his explanation for not striking Will Smith at the 2022 Academy Awards ceremony to make her point: “And you know what my parents taught me: Don’t fight in front of white people.” Wellington’s point taken! However, as I experience his words, the magnificently brilliant Rock used this example, veiled in humor, to lay bare the universal terror all Black parents share about their children’s safety. And more — to demonstrate a conscience they planted deeply within him, as well as the hope and determination for something better than hate.

SaraKay Smullens

Philadelphia

The Philadelphia Inquirer, March 10, 2023