Chris Rock, whose new comedy Top Five comes out on Friday, spoke recently with Frank Rich for New York magazine, offering his blunt take on a range of topics. Highlights:
- On Ferguson: If he were a journalist in Ferguson, Rock says that he'd only interview white people through a white reporter that he'd be feeding questions to through an earpiece: "We [already] know how black people feel about Ferguson—outraged, upset, cheated by the system, all these things. … I would ask [white people] questions that you would never come up with, and we'd have the most amazing interviews ever."
- On why he doesn't say "racial progress": "When we talk about race relations in America or racial progress, it's all nonsense. There are no race relations. White people were crazy. Now they're not as crazy. To say that black people have made progress would be to say they deserve what happened to them before. ... There have been smart, educated, beautiful, polite black children for hundreds of years.The advantage that my children have is that my children are encountering the nicest white people that America has ever produced. Let's hope America keeps producing nicer white people."