Chet Hanks, the internet-infamous white rapper who is somehow the son of iconic actor Tom Hanks, is no stranger to accusations of cultural appropriation. And he's not apologizing for it.
That's what Hanks told comedian Ziwe Fumodoh on her Showtime show Ziwe, which lampoons America's issues with race by asking guests deeply uncomfortable questions about it.
Asked by Fumodoh if he'd like to apologize for frequently appropriating African American Vernacular English and Caribbean patois in his work, Hanks had a one-word answer—"Nah."
See the clip below.
Hanks' appearance on Ziwe comes fresh on the heels of his one-episode arc on Donald Glover's FX series Atlanta, another series centered on race issues and the Black experience.
In the episode, Hanks plays a white guy from New York City's ultra-posh Soho neighborhood who speaks in Trinidadian Patois, one of the many Caribbean languages that blend West African languages spoken by slaves with the European languages of the colonists who trafficked them.
Hanks seems not to have picked up on the significance of his Atlanta character's details.
Fumodoh asked if there were "any marginalized communities" Hanks would like to apologize to, gesturing offset presumably toward a crew member and adding, "maybe the Patois community."
Hanks told her:
"I don't feel like I've truly done anything offensive."
Fumodoh then baited Hanks into saying he instead sees appropriation as a "celebration of culture" and agrees "social justice warriors can go kick rocks'."
"Yeah... I a hundred percent agree, social justice warriors can kick rocks."
Interestingly, Hanks seemed to refrain from using his usual mix of Patois and an AAVE-mimicking "Blaccent" while talking with Fumodoh.
Hanks has repeatedly been criticized for the way he seems to almost pretend to be Black in his work, on red carpets and on social media, and his "kick rocks" response to Fumodoh is one he has frequently invoked, as in the Instagram post below.
Hanks has also defended his use of Black speech and Patois by absurdly comparing it to Black people engaging in the "mainly white" sport of snowboarding or wearing cowboy boots and loving country music.
On Twitter, some Jamaicans, one of the largest Patois-speaking communities, defended Hanks and agreed that his use of the language is celebration, and not appropriation.
But many others people were not exactly impressed by Hanks' Ziwe appearance.
White Boy Summer 2022 is certainly off to an interesting start.
