…a few years ago Trevor Noah told a really bad joke.
It was a racist joke. It was an offensive joke. Its a problematic joke that played into hurtful stereotypes of a people that have almost nothing left and have been treated like dog-shit for much of their existence since invasion day.
There were many different ways Noah could have handled this. Just last week he went on the offensive when the French Ambassador didn’t take too kindly to one of his jokes. But how Noah has decided to handle this is like this:
No Trevor.
Being a racist fuck does not depend on context. It doesn’t depend on who your audience is. Your joke was racist as fuck whether it was performed in front of a group of South Africans or a group of Americans. The very least you could do is apologise. That you choose not to: that you choose not to listen to the voices of indigenous Australians and to characterize them as “angry for the sake of being angry” says everything we need to know about you. You are not welcome down-under. You are a despicable, hypocritical peice of shit.
When he first got his current gig people dragged up a bunch of his touchier old twitter gags. A numb of them were perhaps over the line and I didn’t appreciate the handwaving of some of it. That said, he seems like a genuinely caring and thoughtful person for the most part. So I won’t be joining you in this mostly bullshit manufactured outrage.
…oh fuck off. Nothing about this is “manufactured.” “Genuinely caring and thoughtful” people know how to say “sorry” for telling racist-as-fuck jokes. He’s just about to do a tour of Australia. Plenty of indigenous Australians have tried to engage him respectfully about this and he has chosen to ignore them. This isn’t about the joke. Its how he has chosen to react.
Where else are there people called aborigines? Seriously, I’ve never heard it referring to anyone else. I don’t even know why that joke would be funny to South Africans – do they have a lot of aborigines that come to visit? Do they mean something else by aborigine?
I tried looking for definitions, but they all seem to point to Australian aborigines. Maybe if I found my way to Google South Africa.
That joke doesn’t seem very funny anyway. I guess you had to be there.
…the revelation of the video may have been contrived by the same right-wing-trolls that are actively trying to stir up trouble. The reaction to how Noah has chosen to respond to the video are not contrived at all.
…New Zealand, Australia, South Africa are all countries with a lot of shared history. There is no doubt who Noah was talking about. The entire context of everything Noah has said since regarding the comedy clip make it clear he was talking about indigenous Australians. That’s why this is especially galling.
But lets pretend that instead of Australian indigenous people he was talking about Canadian indigenous people. Does that suddenly make it less racist-as-fuck?
It’s a foolish, childish reaction. So he said something insulting and racist a few years back and is not sufficiently apologetic about it to some arbitrary standard. I do not believe an adult of sound mind would feel outraged by this, therefore if someone who is ostensibly an adult of sound mind says they feel outraged by this, I don’t believe them.
If it makes them form a negative opinion about Noah that impacts their opinions of anything he might do in future, fine. If they’re actually angered by it… grow the fuck up.
For what it’s worth, I don’t like Noah and haven’t watched The Daily Show since Stewart’s departure. I care nothing about Noah’s past work, I just don’t like his voice or delivery.
Google pictures of aborigines and you’ll get the joke. Not all of them, but certainly a lot of them are pretty hard on the eyes, I’ve heard similarly edged jokes about how British people look.
I’m not a fan of Trevor Noah but comedy isn’t really an area that is meant to be policed. Comedy is subjective, you don’t get to tell other people what is, or isn’t funny. If you don’t think he’s funny don’t listen to his jokes, I don’t think he’s funny, so I don’t listen to him. Comedy is truly an art form in a lot of ways, and it’s one of the last bastions of free speech.
Maybe don’t worry so much about what someone on the other side of the Indian Ocean thinks is pretty. Certainly there are a lot of mixed-race aboriginal Australians, so they are attractive to people who are familiar with them.
Where else are there people called aborigines? Seriously, I’ve never heard it referring to anyone else. I don’t even know why that joke would be funny to South Africans – do they have a lot of aborigines that come to visit? Do they mean something else by aborigine?