Trevor Noah Standing Up Against Cancel Culture and Defending Comedy!

racial observations have very much formed at least in the early stages the backbone of your stand-up uh 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 love everyone can say something is not really funny this is the way some people don't think is it more than that 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 oh but that's but that's different but that's different but it's not it's using chocolate but that is different swiss love chocolates is not a terminator you're referring to george's skin color as chocolate what do you say because my mom is proud beautiful chocolate 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 chocolate i wouldn't use that when nobody what is that no i i'm that color and i wouldn't say this when i grew up when i grew up i believed that all people were chocolates my mom was dark chocolates my dad was white chocolate and i was milk chocolates so i see so you see that's funny but do you not realize 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 is his view his view is different from yours because he's lenny henry and i'm trevor noah yeah but he's also he's black yes but he was talking about leaking chocolate implying that his skin color was not something that belonged to him that is a difference he's just trying to say that his skin color is chocolate you're splitting hairs here no but that is exactly what we should be doing because what you're doing is creating you're not sure you're creating a ratio no you're creating monoliths 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 but somebody could take that out of context and you've so i'm putting it to you then are you not given what leni 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 going to 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 your routine as a comedian um 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 jokes church all right yeah i'm not trevor noah and i'm not a comedian no i don't know but you see that that's but i'm not 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 uh i'll be here with you forever you can always be my friend standing under my umbrella ella ella ella ella 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 were doing comedy merely by words i spoke it my eyes my voice my connection with an audience is completely different people can see when you are being playful people can see what you are saying you're being playful about that you don't believe that is what satire is though you're poking holes so you're you're so 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 american except white americans so it's african-american asian-american hispanic-american latin american uh nato you have irish americans no no no no no no no no no but that that that didn't become on a box and this is a joke for americans understand that so as an american they understand this right on the boxes there is no irish american there is only one but not look but there is african-american and there is asian-americans but you know and there you go but 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 i.e 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 you know captured the imagination of the african-american black american community and also the 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 kwame kwayama the black britain theatre director in the united states says he has conversations with african americans now who are 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 there 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 good reasons it's the same reason we notice different colors 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 apartheid did to 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're 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 were 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 group fine and does that difference mean that it doesn't act as a cohesive form because i 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 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'm 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 uh you know oppressors um i think those are the things that many people can relate to across the board so there's more to unite even though you say there's definitely united especially when you are being oppressed as a group because you must remember when you are 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 hairs they're not going to say excuse me trevor no are you from south africa yes that doesn't mean detroit that doesn't happen no that doesn't

Channel: Daily Dose Comedy

Views: 9,089,277

Keywords:

Id: an3G7F6k6GU

Length: 9min 12sec (552 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 20 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/NumberOneRussian]

She seems really keen on speaking on behalf of all black people while having the straightest soccer mom hairdo

[u/Buckle_Sandwich]

Important context: This is a 2016 interview on the BBC show HARDtalk, the premise of which is to challenge the guest's views. So maybe keep that in mind before everyone berates this lady for being argumentative. That is literally her job.

[u/PatientSomeone]

I'm gonna go ahead and state the controversial. Trevor Noah is making a phenomenal point here. I am not African American, though I do consider myself "black". That is an extremely different statement. The point Trevor is making is that there is a significant difference between describing something, and prescribing something. Telling someone they are African American is to assume you know their country of origin, while stating that they are "black" is stating that they are darker colored. Yes, there are other terms that are more PC that can be used, "colored" was one of those that we tried as a country, and it became even worse, likely because the intent was still discrimination.

To take this a step further, I will admit that I am actually Asian and white; however, I came out basically black. I have had enough traumatizing experiences with police to know that what you're actual ethnicity doesn't mean dickall. If my afro is grown out, I'm black, and I fit a profile. If my hair is short, I'm Mexican, and I fit a profile.

I have not and would never classify myself as African American, as I am not African any more than the majority of anyone else is (because guess what, that's where the majority of human life began). That said, I would classify myself as black, because that is what I look like. African-American is a statement of a country of origin and country of residence. "Black" is a description. To Trevor's point, there's no checkbox that says "Slightly Asian, very white, but looks like he may have come from Africa". On paper, I'm Asian and white, but on the street, I'm black.

​

*Edit for capitalization

[u/I_Request_Sources]

That interviewer managed to be more unlikable than Trever Noah. I'm impressed.

[u/mrcakeyface]

When comedy is the last line of defense, we have a fucking problem

[u/BigStrongCiderGuy]

Goddamn Trevor Noah is such a solid dude. This woman is annoying as hell and he remains so cool.

[u/Morvictus]

Yeah so this is the second post I've seen from you in particular whining about cancel culture. Kinda weird, my dude. People not liking what you say and choosing not to support you over it isn't "cAnCeL cUlTuRe", it's capitalism. I believe you even invoked Louis CK as an example of cancel culture in your other post, which is super weird given that what he did had nothing to do with his comedy. Kinda feels like you want people not to face the consequence of negative opinion based on their reactions. You know, like a child would?

[u/Yeti_of_the_Flow]

“Cancel culture” is a far right dog whistle by the way. Every time you say it you make nazis stronger.

[u/Mr-hoffelpuff]

i fucking hate reporters talking more than the person they are interviewing. feeling like i am getting some propaganda shit and getting preached to from the corporate media, sincerely go fuck yourself bbc.