We’re not used to Dave Chappelle being serious. We expect him to be funny — that’s why it’s so shocking that he says what he’s saying now is not a joke.
And the housing question in Yellow Springs, Ohio, is not a joke.
It’s also about much more than whether Chappelle would have divested from the town if its recent housing proposal had been allowed to go through. On the surface, it looks like Chappelle’s threat represented a callous disregard for those needing affordable housing. But this is just the surface of a very complicated issue that goes much deeper than what kind of housing developments get approved. But it’s impossible to know this without having had a long history with the village.
If you grew up in Yellow Springs during the 1970s and ’80s, as I did, and especially if you are Black, as I am, you would have a very different understanding of what the village is than someone who’s been living there only for 10 or even 15 years, or not at all.
Given the community’s values of racial and gender equality, it would seem strange that Chappelle would oppose affordable housing. But a long history with the village reveals there is something else hidden behind this issue, and very important to oppose.
As Carla Sims, Chappelle’s publicist, wrote in a statement to CNN, “Neither Dave nor his neighbors are against affordable housing, however, they are against the poorly vetted, cookie-cutter, sprawl-style development deal which has little regard for the community, culture and infrastructure of the Village.”
Sims also said that “Dave Chappelle cares about Yellow Springs. ... He’s sewn into the fabric of the Village,” and he didn’t kill affordable housing. “Concerned residents and a responding Village Council ‘killed’ a half-baked plan which never actually offered affordable housing,” she continued.
According to the Dayton Daily News, the single-family residences proposed by the developer would start at $300,000.
But what Sims is really talking about can be properly understood only through a historical knowledge of the village and the community’s strong values. In other words, its culture.
That long history encompasses the village’s early involvement with the Underground Railroad, being only about one hour north of Cincinnati and the Ohio River, that important antebellum dividing line between slave country and freedom, and the village’s fostering of Antioch College, which, though not fully committed to gender equality in the mid-19th century, was strongly abolitionist, especially under the leadership of its first president, Horace Mann.
Later, throughout the 1960s, the college and the community continued their deep commitment to racial equality, which blossomed into a more general egalitarian advocacy. Coretta Scott King was educated there and brought her husband, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., to give the 1965 Antioch commencement speech.
Almost from its incorporation in 1856, many seeking to escape the difficulties of racial and gender inequality in mainstream America flocked to Yellow Springs, especially through the 1960s and ’70s. Among them were interracial and intercultural families who had crossed racial lines in their most personal relationships.
This was the generation of my parents, who grew up in the 1940s and ’50s when Jim Crow and racial segregation were rampant in America. Members of that generation came to Yellow Springs in droves and created an unbelievable world for me and others in which to come of age. This was (and is) especially important to those of us who are Black because in that world, we were able to reach adulthood without any concept of having been disadvantaged because of our race.
This attitude toward race represents a core value of the village that is also very much in danger of being lost as a result of outside influences. So when Sims talks about culture, this is a very large part of what she means. But by culture, she also means that despite its proximity to Dayton, Ohio, Yellow Springs is not a suburb and has fought becoming one for years.
The “cookie-cutter, sprawl-style development” that Sims mentions is precisely what the village has fought to avoid. It has remained adamant over decades that the effort to maintain its uniqueness, both culturally and visually, is more than important — it is part of its very existence. Without this, how can the village maintain its own personality and way of life into the future?
In a September 2021 article in the Yellow Springs News, Chappelle said, “The culture of this town is something of global import — I think the way that we treat each other in our community is an example for the rest of the country.”
In this, Chappelle’s opposition to the housing proposal also rests on the developer’s failure to address the village’s cultural roots, which run more than deep. Housing here is much more than shelter — it’s also about the fact that in this village, there is a priceless legacy to protect, and to foster.
