In an emotional video message, “The Daily Show” host Trevor Noah addressed the systemic racism in the U.S. and the explosion of protests in response to the death of George Floyd.
“Daily Show” is in reruns this week. On Monday, Noah released an 18-minute video discussing the domino effect that the news cycle has had on shining visibility on the deaths and altercations between police and unarmed African Americans.
“I saw so many people online saying, ‘These riots are disgusting, this is not how a society should be run, you do not loot and you do not burn, this is not how our society is built,’” Noah said. “But what is society? When you boil it down, society is a contract we sign as human beings amongst each other. ‘Amongst this group of us, we agree in common rules, common ideals, and common practices that are going to define us as a group.’”
Noah started by highlighting Christian Cooper, a black man in Central Park who asked Amy Cooper, a white woman, to leash her dog, resulting in an altercation in which Cooper threatened to call the police on him to say that an African American man was threatening her life. He then discussed the shooting of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia as another domino that shone a light on the racism present in our country. And then, he said, the video of Floyd’s death on May 25 from asphyxiation — after a Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes — was the final spark that incited protests held across the country and around the world.
“The video of George Floyd comes out, and I don’t know what made the video more painful for people to watch, the fact that that man was having his life taken in front of our eyes, the fact that we were watching someone being murdered by someone who’s job is to protect and serve, or the fact that he seemed so calm doing it,” said Noah.Story continues
This article was originally posted on yahoo.com/entertainment/.
