The Joe Rogan Controversy Is About Joe Rogan Saying Racist Things

Over the weekend, India Arie released a video on Instagram compiling some of the many, many times that Joe Rogan has said the n-word on his podcast, and saying that his doing so was one of the reasons why she was pulling her music from the platform. Many Joe Rogan defenders, including the CEO of Spotify, have done their best to not engage with what she—and Rogan—actually said, making what would in any circumstances have been an excruciating debate somehow even more so.

In her video, Arie took issue with Rogan’s stance on COVID, which has led to him hosting conspiracy theorists and not doing much to interrogate their views when not agreeing with them. She also, though, pointed out that he has said incredibly bigoted things about black people on his podcast, including using the n-word, multiple times. In an Instagram post, she tied this to Spotify’s treatment of musicians, and said that the issue is about respect.

“Paying musicians a fraction of a penny?” she wrote. “And him $100 million? That shows what type of company they are and the company they keep.”

The extremity—in terms of both volume and content—of the outright racist things Rogan has said on his podcast took black people on social media by surprise. Rogan elected to remove over 70 episodes of his show from Spotify and issued a statement that only went as far as to apologize for the appearance of racism, saying that the clips had been taken out of context.

Daniel Ek, the CEO of Spotify, wrote a letter saying  that while Rogan’s views “do not represent the values of this company,” it will not be “silencing” him by removing from the platform. Ek also said that Spotify will pledge $100 million to marginalized artists, essentially saying that it takes many, many marginalized people to equal up to one Joe Rogan.

What Ek’s statement elides is the actual content that he says does not represent the values of Spotify: Joe Rogan saying the n-word repeatedly on his podcast and describing black people in racist and degrading terms. What drew the most heat was Rogan comparing a black neighborhood in Philadelphia to Planet of the Apes, and clumsily apologizing for it this past weekend by saying he had simply meant to compare the neighborhood to Africa. While in his non-apology he gestures at how long ago he did this (not that long ago), and the fact that there was context (there is always context), these things don’t matter: He was a grown man comparing black people to monkeys for laughs. 

To the extent that context does matter, part of the context is that Rogan has not stopped saying racist things on his podcast. On a recent episode with Jordan Peterson, he said the term black is “weird” unless you’re talking about “someone who is like, 100 percent African, from the darkest place where they’re not wearing any clothes all day.” He also said that he was not white, he’s Italian. This conversation was on a podcast released on January 25 of this year, and is still on Spotify. 

Over the weekend, the specific aspects of Rogan’s speech that black people took issue with got lost as other people talked about it. Comedians like Whitney Cummings tried to defend Rogan’s speech as somehow brave truth-telling:

Former New York Times commentator Bari Weiss, currently running a Substack newsletter that is the single thing standing between the United States and the dark tyranny described in Warhammer 40k, declared her “love” for Rogan in a tweet:

Congressman Dan Crenshaw said that he stood with Rogan, while declining to specify what exactly he was standing for:

A variety of well-known people intimated that Rogan is being targeted unfairly because he is too successful, or uncovering some kind of conspiracy. Some pointed out that other people have also said or done racist things:

None of these defenses are surprising. (Bari Weiss being a Rogan fan is perhaps the least surprising fact in the universe.) This last defense is the same line of logic director Joss Whedon used in the now-infamous Vulture interview where he claimed a black actor was only mad at him because a white man told him to be. The idea that black people are only upset about racism when outside forces convince them to be is also racist.

What is interesting about all of these comments is that they simply do not mention or address why people are mad at Joe Rogan; they amount to a chrestomathy of logical fallacies and rhetorical devices allowing someone to engage with a second- or third-order effect without engaging the thing itself. If Rogan defenders aren’t ignoring the content of the speech in question, they’re minimizing it. In a since-deleted Tweet, presidential and New York mayoral candidate Andrew Yang, without even bothering to mention that the issue was Rogan having said and done incontrovertibly racist things, said that Joe Rogan can’t be racist because he knows and interacts with black people:

This marketing professor at Concordia University—whose Twitter profile for some reason identifies him as an “Evolutionary Behavioral Scientist”— went so far as to say that black people who are upset by this are just making a big deal out of nothing.

I have heard white people say the n-word—nigger—so many times that I have learned to stop reacting to it. One of the first times was in high school, from a classmate who called her white teacher a “stupid nigger” because he gave her detention. They said it because they wanted to get a rise out of me, the reaction of black people being offended by a racial slur being just as amusing as saying the slur. But more than that, many non-black people on the whole love that they’re not supposed to say the n-word, because then they can complain about it not being fair.

I don’t want to mince words: Every defense of Joe Rogan in the context brought up by India Arie is a defense of white people saying the n-word, whether they mention it or not. The speech that got Rogan into trouble was racist speech, specifically racist speech that included him saying the n-word, over and over and over and over and over again. Rising to his defense in this context isn’t a defense of free speech, or open discourse, or his right to have a $100 million contract, or his personal kindness, or of his audience: It’s saying that one of the most powerful and influential entertainers in America, who over the past few years has had an increasing sway as in essence a political journalist, saying overtly racist things either doesn’t bother you, or is something you actively think is good.

Ascribing this defense to potential free speech issues in terms of Spotify moderating Rogan’s speech doesn’t work, it should be noted, because it’s conflating two things that have nothing to do with one another. It is very possible to be in favor of free speech—and to use a highly expansive definition of it that would identify things to be troubled by in Spotify moderating Rogan’s podcast—while also condemning racist speech and being disgusted by what Rogan said. (Removing Rogan from Spotify, incidentally, would not only not in any way violate his free speech, but would probably hardly affect him in the long run—Rogan managed to become one of the most popular podcasters in the world on his own while exercising his right to free speech specifically to say the n-word dozens of times, and would doubtless thrive if back on his own.)

If you think it would be unfair to “silence” Rogan, to use Ek’s parlance, what you are saying is that you think it is okay for white people to say the n-word. You are saying it is okay to compare black people to monkeys. You are saying you think it is okay to say you’re not really black unless you live in a part of Africa where they “don’t wear clothes all day.” You cannot skirt around that fact. This is what the controversy is about. That’s why Rogan removed the episodes himself. Even he knows this is wrong.