Vice President Mike Pence was still delivering his speech at the Republican National Convention Wednesday night when The Daily Show’s Trevor Noah turned to far more pressing matters.
“After the George Floyd protests, which swept not only the U.S. but many countries around the world, there was definitely a sense that this could be the moment of systemic change,” the host began. “But as we’ve been reminded of yet again, there is still a long way to go.”
Noah was of course talking about the police shooting of 29-year-old Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, this week. “I’ll never get used to how quickly police go from issuing demands to using deadly force,” he said. “Whatever happened to warning shots? Or tackling a suspect? Are we really meant to believe that the only two options a cop has is do nothing or shoot somebody in the back seven times?”
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After playing the powerful words of Blake’s sister, Noah said that it “only makes sense that she’s angry.” Because “there’s almost never any police accountability” in these cases and she knows that. “Black people are tired of hearing ‘I’m sorry’ and then nothing happening,” he added. “Because essentially what they’re really hearing is, ‘I’m sorry this is happening, and I’m sorry that it’s going to happen again.”
The host said that “frustration and anger and pain” also helps explain the protests in the streets of Kenosha this week where a 17-year-old vigilante allegedly crossed state lines and shot and killed two people at those demonstrations.
“Let me tell you something,” Noah said. “Nobody drives into a city with guns because they love someone else’s business that much. That’s some bullshit. No one has ever thought, ‘Oh, it’s my solemn duty to pick up a rifle and protect that T.J. Maxx.’ They do it because they’re hoping to shoot someone.”
“And while what happened with those shootings last night is tragic, what happened afterwards was illuminating,” he continued. “It really made me wonder why some people get shot seven times in the back, while other people are treated like human beings and reasoned with and taken into custody with no bullets in their bodies.”
Noah asked, “How come Jacob Blake was seen as a deadly threat for a theoretical gun that he might have and might try to commit a crime with, but this gunman who was armed and had already shot people—who had shown that he was a threat—was arrested the next day, given full due process of the law and generally treated like a human being whose life matters?”
“How did Dylann Roof shoot up a church, James Holmes shoot up a movie theater and both live to tell about it?” he asked. “Why is it that the police decide that some threats must be extinguished immediately while other threats get the privilege of being diffused?”
“The answer is that the gun doesn’t matter as much as who is holding the gun,” Noah concluded. “Because to some people, Black skin is the most threatening weapon of all.”
