Former presidential and New York mayoral candidate Andrew Yang, asked about the backlash that comedian Dave Chappelle has received for making transphobic comments in his recent Netflix special, says artists should be given a “very wide berth” for self-expression.
“I think we should cut artists, a very, very wide berth in terms of the way they decide to express themselves and create,” Yang said on Hill.TV’s “Rising” on Tuesday when asked about “The Closer.”
Chappelle dedicates nearly half of the 70-minute special to jokes making fun of the trans community, including some defending author J.K. Rowling.
“I’m Team TERF!” Chappelle exclaimed, referring to an acronym meaning trans exclusionary radical feminist, or a transphobic feminist. “Gender is a fact.”
“The fact is, we are getting inflamed against each other,” Yang said Tuesday. “We’re attacking people for having different points of view, or expressing themselves in a way that upsets, maybe a subset of us. And that’s, to me something that we should be more open about in, what should be an open and free society,” he continued.
Yang said that one of the tenants of his new party, the “Forward” party, is to try and tamper down polarization in the country.
“Forty-two percent of Republicans and Democrats regard the other side as evil or their mortal enemies, and that kind of toxic culture is what we have to counteract and bring down as quickly as possible,” he said.
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