BBCHardTalk - Trevor Noah Interview

racial observations have very much formed at least in the early stages the backbone of your stand-up comedy career do you now regret some of the jokes you made let me give you an example you said my mother black South African was saying get me a white guy get me a white guy well my father was white Swiss of course he liked chocolate that sounds funny to me even when you say it that sounded really funny why would I regret that why would you regret that because some people say that's not really very funny but the people loved everyone can say something is not really funny this is the way some people don't okay let me give you an example we have a very well-established black comedian in the Britain called Lenny Henry and he has said that he regrets doing that kind of joke where he said he would wipe his sweating brow and say huh I'm leaking chocolate he open rates but that's different it's not it's using chocolate but that is different well let's switch love chocolates is not a terminal skin color as chocolate what either said because my mom is proud to let me donate beautiful chocolate yeah that's what she's saying and this is if you in the book I talk about this as well I go I saw people and race as chalk I wouldn't use that when was that no I'm that color I wouldn't say that's no when I get when I grew up I believed that all people were chocolates my mom was dark chocolates my dad was white chocolate and I was mocha chocolate so I see so you see that it's funny but do you not a choice that some people might not like that and Lenny Henry went on to say that joke about how he was leaking chocolate he says I knew there had to be a better way of trying to put the message over putting your jokes over without having to pick on people because of their color or because of their race yes but if his view his view is different from yours because he's Lenny Henry and I'm Trevor Noah so he's like yes but he was talking about leaking chocolate implying that his skin color was not something that belonged to him that is a day that his skin color is you're splitting hairs here no but that is exactly what we should be doing because what you're doing is creating oh sure I you're creating racial say no you're creating evil lifts you're creating monoliths of jokes and that's not fair to do every single joke has a context every single joke comes from a place the most important thing with comedy is context without context no conversation is complete without context no communication take that out of context yes oh I'm putting it to you then are you not given what Lenny Henry said are you not guilty perhaps with some of your routines or a joke like that reinforcing prejudices and promoting stereotypes in the minds of people who may be inclined to think like that and then they'll think oh Trevor Noah says his mother's chocolate I'm gonna go around saying that to my black friends and they might take offense you could be reinforcing prejudice you could be doing anything if you are not doing the opposites how your action is implied does not define what you were doing okay let's look at another aspect of race you moved just a few years ago to the United States your Senor routine is the comedian often mimicked Africans and also African Americans and about African Americans you have said this you are not African but we play along it's a very loose term African American because half the time you use it for people who aren't even African as long as you're black they say African American I didn't deliver it like that you're not doing my job all right yeah I'm not Trevor Noah and I'm not a comedian no no no but you see that that's but asking are they not African American here's the here's what you're missing what you're doing right now is the equivalent of me saying now it's raining more than ever I'll be here with you forever you can always be my friend standing under my umbrella ella ella ella ella ella ella ella ella eh eh eh eh ella ella ella eh eh eh eh I seem like a mad person right now because I'm not doing everything that was within the context of the song umbrella by Rihanna when you're doing comedy merely by words I spoke it's my eyes my voice my connection with an audience is completely different people can see when you are being playful people can see when you are saying so you being playful about that you don't believe that is what sex so you're poking holes so you so so in I believe so hey no no no what you're what you're leaving out in that whole joke is what I was talking about was how in America in America anglo-saxons had successfully removed Americanisms from minorities so every single group in America had an identity attached to the Americanist except whites Americans so it's African American Asian American Hispanic American Latin American Native American but that didn't become on a on a box and this is a joke for Americans understand that so as an American they understand alright on the boxes there is no Irish American there is only vice but there was African American and there was Asian American you know and there did you get the point I'm trying to make is that there was a shift amongst the black American community to start calling themselves African American they didn't want a definition by default ie you were not white so therefore you were black they wanted to have a hyphenated identity that linked them with the continent of their ancestors and therefore when you say oh they're not really African they're playing along you cannot disconnect what you say from this debate that's really a you know captured the imagination of the African American black American community and also point I want to make to use when you say that it now feeds into a debate that's current in the United States for example Kwami Quay AMA the black Brittain theatre director in the United States says he has conversations with African Americans now who is saying we want to go back to being called black American because we don't have anything in common with this recently arrived African Americans be they Somalis Nigerians South Africans such as your as you you know they have different language and so on so what you say feeds into that debate and it sounds like you're saying there is a difference between African Americans and black Americans that definitely is a difference right but these are differences that can be celebrated or used to separate people noting differences does not implicitly make it a bad thing when you are noticing differences you can note them for a good reasons it's the same reason we notice different colours or we notice different flowers that can be a good thing if you're using it to celebrate you can use that same thing the same way apart I did two separate people when you talk about African Americans the one conversation that I was talking about was I was traveling America and I was going to a lot of universities and I came to realize in many universities in America the conversation you are having right now they had they had an african-american student body and very quickly they noticed a shift because they could not lump black people into a monolith they could not lump because there are people from the Caribbean who said we are not african-american there were people from Africa who were like these are not our views we are Africans in America so that's interesting yeah and so what people themselves did was they said you can't just lump us into this crime and does that difference mean that it doesn't act as a cohesive form because I'm thinking in 2014 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie the celebrated Nigerian author she said that when she visited the u.s. she felt that her African American classmate was annoyed with her because she didn't share their anger and she said that she was not burdened herself by America's terrible racial history that difference does it result in the African Americans who've arrived recently in the United States such as are acting differently or having a different psyche from the black Americans who were the descendants of slaves and have lived for many many years obviously in the u.s. well I will say this I will be careful to not comment on the experience of every single person because I am only myself and I can only experience the people that are around me what I do know is this in terms of our racial histories South Africa and America are very similar when I talk to a black American person there are many stories that we share as human beings there are many oppressions that we have experienced through our selective you know oppresses I think those are the things that many people can relate to across the board so there's more to unite either really you sailors different especially when you are being oppressed as a group because you must remember when you were in the US as a black African man I can tell you now that if you have an encounter with the police they are not going to split the hair excuse me Trevor no are you from South Africa doesn't that show that doesn't happen that doesn't

Channel: Mr. A

Views: 1,003,964

Rating: 4.331778 out of 5

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Id: CaHkhgAjdAc

Length: 9min 12sec (552 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 03 2017