Chelsea Handler Travels The Country To Apologize For Her “White Privilege” In New Netflix Documentary

On Twitter, Handler shared a clip where she speaks to her black ex-boyfriend who was imprisoned for dealing heroin...and she blames her being "white" as the reason she didn't go to jail while he did, going as far as to say that he was "just trying to make money":

In her announcement of the release of the movie documenting her travels to pay for her "whiteness" Chelsea Handler called out President Trump in classic liberal fashion:

After seeing previews for the documentary and Handler's ignorant implication that Trump is racist, when in fact minority groups are thriving in his economy, here are a few response tweets to Ms. Handler that will restore your faith in American patriots!

Breitbart has more to say about the documentary:

Chelsea Handler stars in a new Netflix documentary the features the former talk show host traveling the country apologizing for her white privilege and endeavoring to finally learn “how to be a better white person to people of color, without making it a thing.”

“I’m clearly the beneficiary of white privilege. And I want to know what my personal responsibility is moving forward in the world we live in today where race is concerned,” Handler confesses at the top of the hour-long documentary, called Hello, Privilege. It’s Me, Chelsea, the dropped on the streamer Friday.

The documentary sees Handler interviewing Actor-comedians Kevin Hart, Tiffany Haddish, and W. Kamau Bell, race writer Tim Wise, Civil Rights activist Ruby Sales, Emory University historian Carol Anderson, Tennessee-based rapper Jelly Roll, Black Lives Matter co-founder Melina Abdullah, and New Jersey Institute for Justice CEO Ryan Haygood, a Republican strategists, black students at the University of California at an open mic night, and her high school ex-boyfriend Tyshawn.

Handler told GQ in a recently published interview that she’s “somebody who has benefitted from extreme privilege.”

“I’m really eager to have a conversation about what it is I can know more about and to illuminate to people who are not of color what it means to be of color in this country,” Handler says in the film to an audience attending a college open mic event. Handler’s self-mutilation and constant apologizing is interrupted 10 minutes into the film by a young black college student who tells Handler that her Netflix documentary “is just another example of white privilege — using your white privilege. What are you going to do with it other than come into this space and take?”

Realizing that privilege “is a white people’s problem,” Handler sets out to talk to experts on whiteness, like Dear White America author Tim Wise. Wise informs Handler, in a sit-down chat at her sprawling Bel Air home, that America can’t solve the problem of white privilege until white people realize that their privilege of being white comes at the expense of non-whites being oppressed, from slavery to segregation to contemporary America.

GQ also gave these details from their interview with Chelsea (surprise, surprise, she says the 2016 election triggered her to make the documentary):

Despite the chaos that’s befallen America in the past few years, the events that transpired in November 2016 have given Chelsea Handler a new lease on life. The comedian has, she says, taken a long, hard look at the world, and an even harder look at herself. Taking in her life of decadence, Handler says she realized she’d allowed herself to become complacent in a political laziness that allowed a delusional, unqualified man to take a seat in the White House.

From that epiphany came a newfound dedication to political activism, a tell-all memoir, and a new Netflix documentary, Hello Privilege. It’s Me, Chelsea (out Friday, and produced by Conde Nast Entertainment), that dissects the thorny topic of white privilege and her role in it. Early in the documentary, Handler attends an open mic night at USC themed around this very problem. She hangs around in the back, watching a student pour out his anguish through spoken word, before being invited to speak herself. She hesitantly stands in front of the crowd and announces her desire to have a conversation, but the students argue that a conversation isn’t enough. One says she’s embarrassed to be in the same room as her.

It’s a precursor to the revealing nature of the documentary—rather than evade her past, in all of its colorful and sometimes controversial facets, she frames those experiences around a desire to become a better ally. Hello Privilege, It’s Me, Chelsea displays a new side of Handler. Contrary to the loud and unapologetic comedian that has graced our screens, this new Chelsea Handler is willing—nay, wants to take a step back and listen.

Chelsea Handler is probably the last person you would expect to make a documentary on white privilege, which is why the finished product is so fascinating. On a rare moment of downtime during her ongoing stand-up tour, Handler spoke with GQ about her time of self-discovery, how politics made her a better comedian, and why she’s running out of ex-boyfriends to reunite with.

GQ: What was the decision behind making a documentary on white privilege, and why now?

Chelsea Handler: I think it was just me waking up to the 2016 election and taking a deeper look at myself, and the effects of Donald Trump being elected and why something like that would happen. I was kind of stuck in my own naïveté of, oh, sexism was over, we were going to elect our first female president; racism was over when we elected Barack Obama. Just the idealism and the naïveté that came along with that, and not knowing more and not being more educated. I was thinking about what I was putting out into the world, and actually doing a really deep dive to understand my own privilege, because I, along with tons of white people, assumed that white privilege was just for a certain section of society, and it’s not.

Would you say that the 2016 election was the catalyzing moment where you realized your white privilege, or was it more of an accumulation of factors?

That was the biggest moment in my life that changed me. It made me take a really honest look at myself, and I had been moving so quickly throughout my life that it prevented me from doing so. I thought I worked really hard, I thought I was really talented. I thought those were the reasons for my success. It never occurred to me that being white was a huge benefit to me. I never thought about that because I didn’t grow up with people of color. When I grew up and started looking around and I was, like, “Well, where do I live?” I live in Bel Air, and I think I’m diverse. I grew up in a white neighborhood in New Jersey and then I moved to Santa Monica, and then I moved to Brentwood, and then I moved to Bel Air. What the fuck do I know about diversity when I’m living my life like somebody who’s just white and is used to being around other white people?

One thing that stood out to me in the documentary was when you said, “I wouldn’t have gotten away with my career if I was a black girl.” Was there a moment where you came to that realization?

It wasn’t one specific moment but it was just a lot of eye-opening. It felt really good to look outside of myself and get out of my own experience and start to think about how other people go through this world, and what their hurdles are. And to be sensitive about it, because to be a better advocate and ally, you need to be educated. I just felt like I needed to know more, and I didn’t understand why so many people deny the idea of white privilege, and I think it’s because people with privilege don’t want to lose what they’ve got.

Well, white people see equality as oppression in a way, and I guess that’s a difficult realization to come to. You talk to white people about white privilege but they’re kind of blind to it. Is that frustrating to you?

It was frustrating. But I wrote my recent book, Life Will Be the Death of Me, made the documentary, and a cannabis line. Those were the three things I focused on last year, and they were all coupled together in being more tolerant of people who have different opinions. And that goes for people who are white, and are racist or do racist things. I think we all have inner racism and we all have prejudices that we follow or learn without knowing it. That’s not the problem. The problem is denying it.

Wayne Dupree has a better idea for Chelsea!

How about this for her next documentary?

Would you watch it?!