Just got pulled over by the cops wish me luck

A photo posted by Chris Rock (@chrisrock) on Feb 13, 2015 at 7:38am PST

Chris Rock has been posting a lot of selfies on his Instagram account lately. Several of the pictures show one thing in common — he’s getting pulled over by police. Rock has been pulled over not once or twice but three times over the past seven weeks. And these are only the times he’s remembered to take selfies. Rock was also pulled over (as a passenger) during a 2013 episode of Jerry Seinfeld’s Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. At the time, Rock joked to Jerry, “If you weren’t here, I’d be scared.” Rock has tacked racial profiling in his comedy routines. Now he’s illustrating his point with photographic evidence.

Isaiah Washington decided to tell Rock how he dealt with the same problem.

I sold my $90,000.00 Mercedes G500 and bought 3 Prius’s, because I got tired of being pulled over by Police. #Adapt @chrisrock

— Isaiah Washington (@IWashington) April 1, 2015

Twitter isn’t having it. The #TweetLikeIsaiahWashington hashtag is in full swing like so:

I got tired of being followed around in stores so I just started ordering from Amazon Prime. #ADAPT #TweetLikeIsaiahWashington

— Elon James White (@elonjames) April 1, 2015

Isaiah visited with CNN’s Don Lemon to “clarify” his perspective in a segment called “driving while black?” Some excerpts from the conversation:

Isaiah : “Police are about the business of policing, night and day. I obviously have a slight advantage because I’m a celebrity. … At night, I’m vulnerable like everyone else. I know a lot of people take issue with the hashtag ‘adapt,’ thinking I was implying that white supremacy or racial profiling was stopped if you were in a different car, but that’s not [what I meant]. If you are at war, which we all know that we are, there is a sentiment in the air that is highly toxic and highly negative, and [I wanted my tweet to] excite a conversation.”

Don: “What would you have Chris Rock do. What does he need to change, and why does he need to change it?”

Isaiah: “I really feel that he needs to look at the area that he’s in and even visit with the local police officers in the community. He should do that. He should reach out to the police officers and question why they’re pulling him out.”

Don: “It puts a burden on him that’s not a fair burden.”

Isaiah: “Oh, come on. We have been a people that have created civilization in this world, and I believe we are the people that share the DNA that’s going to recivilize this world again. We have been burdened for 400 years — we can’t use that as an excuse to say, ‘Well, we can’t challenge the system as it is.’ We’ve been marching for years.”

[From CNN Tonight]

Don then showed Isaiah the clip of Rock getting pulled over with Jerry Seinfeld. Isaiah was not amused at how Rock cracked a joke on the show. Isaiah continued to say “yes, the onus is on us” to “survive.” Perhaps Isaiah was kidding about buying three Prius cars instead of one. He definitely wasn’t kidding with the #adapt hashtag.

Stereo Williams of the Daily Beast wrote an in-depth column on this subject that’s well worth reading. Here’s the CNN clip of Don Lemon interviewing Isaiah.

Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet & WENN