Joe Rogan claimed Black people have “a different brain” in a resurfaced video that came to light as the podcaster was forced to apologize for using the N-word in his past shows.
“Powerful combination genetic wise,” Mr Rogan told a guest who said he had a Black father and a white mother. “Right? You get the body of the Black man and then you get the mind of the white man altogether in some strange combination.”
“That doesn’t, by the way, mean that Black people don’t have brains, it’s a different brain,” Mr Rogan can be heard saying in the old clip.
The podcaster apologized for using the N-word after a number of clips appeared online showing him using the racial slur 22 times.
“There’s a compilation made of clips, taken out of context, of me of 12 years of conversations on my podcast. It’s all smooshed together and it looks f***ing horrible, even to me,” Mr Rogan said in an Instagram video posted on Saturday.
“I know for most people there’s no context where a white person is allowed to say that word – and I agree with that now,” he said. “I haven’t said it for years ... I thought as long as it was in context, people would understand what I was doing.”
“I never used it to be racist, because I’m not racist,” he added. “But whenever you’re in a situation where you have to say ‘I’m not racist’, you’ve f***ed up. And I’ve clearly f***ed up.”
A site that detects deleted podcast episodes, JRE Missing, has found that Spotify has removed 113 episodes of The Joe Rogan Experience, including interviews with far-right commentators such as Alex Jones of InfoWars and former Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos.
Singer India Arie requested that her music be taken off Spotify on Tuesday because of Mr Rogan’s “language around race”, saying that he was “problematic” and that she felt that she could “walk” through a door “opened” by the Canadian singer Neil Young, who asked for his music to be removed from the platform because of Covid-19 vaccine misinformation on The Joe Rogan Experience.
India Arie said Mr Rogan “shouldn’t even be uttering the word. Don’t say it, under any context”.
Joni Mitchell has also joined the Spotify boycott because of the Covid-19 misinformation on the podcast.
In his Instagram video, Mr Rogan also spoke about an old episode in which he had appeared to juxtapose a Black neighbourhood and the film Planet of the Apes.
“I was telling a story on the podcast about me and my friend Tommy and his girlfriend,” he said. “We got really high and we went to see Planet of the Apes . We got dropped off in this all-Black neighbourhood and I was trying to make the story entertaining. I said, ‘We got out and it was like we were in Africa, we were in Planet of the Apes . I did not and nor would I ever say that Black people were apes, but it sure f***ing sounded like that. I immediately said afterwards it was a racist thing to say.”
The comedian and sports commentator started The Joe Rogan Experience in 2009, garnering a large number of followers and signing a deal with Spotify in 2020 for a reported sum of $100m. More than 1,700 episodes have been produced.
Spotify has published its content policies, stating that Mr Rogan must follow the guidelines. CEO Daniel Ek has rejected calls for his company to drop Mr Rogan, saying that Spotify is merely a platform hosting the show and that the company doesn’t have editorial control over the podcast.
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