The brutally awkward conversation on race relations between Richard Pryor and Dick Cavett
Richard Pryor‘s brand of stand-up comedy always toyed with the notions of racial inequality. Pryor was simply a master of highlighting the differences between the abundance of opportunity, the supposed high-mindedness of white culture, and the disadvantages of being black.
However, when Pryor joined Dick Cavett in conversation in 1985, Cavett’s attempts to discuss race fell relatively flat. They resulted in a particularly awkward conversation in which Cavett retreated into other topics after it became apparent that Pryor wasn’t particularly amused.
Cavett opened the chat by stating: “Richard, I don’t want to be obsessed with race, but this is a different angle I’ve never really heard anybody discuss. Can white writers write for you?” Pausing for a moment, Pryor replied: “If they write for the human being in me, yes. If they try to write for some ideal they have for what I would be as a black person, they usually cannot do that.”
Then Cavett asked whether or not Pryor could tell when a white writer had written a page of dialogue where they had clearly used a typically black vernacular. Pryor responded: “I think if they just write, I get a script just of a person, you know, I can understand it at a lot better than someone saying, ‘he’s black, and he has all this.'”
“You read it, and it makes you sick, you know, when they write like that. I would prefer they didn’t for me,” Pryor added. “I know they don’t mean it, but they don’t realise how ignorant it is trying to have that black voice that some whites try to do. It really doesn’t do well.”
Strangely, Cavett then thought it appropriate to tell Pryor that he believed that he could write for Pryor using his way of speaking. “I honestly think I could,” he said. “I think I could write for you in your vernacular.” But naturally, Pryor was a bit incensed at this and asked: “What is my vernacular? What are you talking about? Dick, what are you talking about? What do you think I am? What do I talk like? Explain.”
Cavett then delivered a ridiculous jumbled sentence in which you can tell he’s feeling the pressure: “Now you know as well as I do that if you’re with a group of friends you grew up with, or something and a couple of fake cats come about, and you want to talk so they can’t understand you can ever as, hmm…people from the Caribbean will suddenly go into a…have you ever been to the Caribbean where…”
After attempting to detail an anecdote in a Caribbean hotel and failing miserably, Cavett then asked: “How the hell did I get into this?” Pryor just shook his head and shrugged. Cavett then asked Pryor which part he didn’t understand, to which Pryor replied, “None of it.” It’s all rather humorous and in good spirits, but an awkward watch indeed.
