*Daily Show host Trevor Noah sparked debate among his followers on social media recently after he explained why he prefers racism in South Africa versus America.
As previously reported, Noah made a stop at his grandmother’s house in Soweto for the Global Citizen Festival: Mandela 100, and gave viewers a tour of the neighborhood he grew up in. They also spoke to the struggles they faced during apartheid, something he further explores in the young adult version of his memoir “Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood.”
“I think learning about history gives you some context. It gives you an idea of what the world was like,” Noah said in an interview with WBUR. “It also gives you an idea of where the world has gone to in comparison to the past. And so for me, if you read stories from South Africa, if you read about apartheid, you come to realize that racism or oppression aren’t unique ideas to America.”
Nominee Trevor Noah from The Daily Show gives his perspective of what Racism means in America. @tanyahollywood@AURNOnline#Emmys #Emmys70@NBC @televisionAcad @HwoodPost @TheDailyShow @Trevornoah pic.twitter.com/WWuvSdILQR
— Tanya Hart (@TanyaHollywood) September 18, 2018
Apartheid governed South Africa from the late 1940s to the early ’90s. Meanwhile, America still has a long way to go in addressing generational and systemic racism.
In the WBUR interview, Trevor said: “I think it’s unfortunately part of the fabric of the country. South Africa and America have very similar histories in that fundamentally, the beginnings of the countries as we know them, came from a place and a time when people had certain views about people of a different skin color. And so that has traveled through time and that has translated into laws and policies that have affected black people in America [and] black people in South Africa. So for me, what’s always interesting is seeing what similarities there are, but then also noticing what differences there are.”
He also once noted on The Daily Show: “Whenever I see all the stuff about voter registration and voter ID laws in America that’s one of the few moments that I miss South Africa’s racism. What I like about South Africa’s racism is that it was just straight up. They’re just like, ‘No Blacks..’ Unlike in America where they make you work for your racism.”
As noted by cheatsheet.com, last year at the Emmys, Noah told TV personality Tanya Hart that South Africa based apartheid on segregation in the United States.
“In South Africa, black people are the majority, black people got power and democracy is what freed everybody. In America, you are still seeing a world where black people are still fighting to be considered completely equal, whether it be in the eyes of the law or the boardroom. Whether it be in employment.”
