Between Kanye West’s interview with Tucker Carlson and L.A. City Council President Nury Martinez’s leaked audio about wanting to give her white colleague’s Black son “a beatdown,” it’s been a big week for racism. And Trevor Noah wanted to talk about all of it — especially Alabama senator Tommy Tuberville’s impressive feat of cramming more racism into 15 seconds of a speech than perhaps any other person before or after him.
On Tuesday night, Noah mockingly feigned surprise that a Republican senator from Alabama, of all places, would dare to say the quiet part out loud — and on TV no less. During a rally over the weekend, a fired-up Tuberville told the crowd that had gathered that Democrats had the power to put an end to crime in America, but that “they want crime. They want crime because they want to take over what you’ve got. They want to control what you have. They want reparations because they think the people that do the crime are owed that. They are not owed that. BULLSHIT!”
Noah was surprised, and maybe even a little impressed, by Tuberville daring to throw in that whiplash-inducing mention of reparations:
I’ve heard racists say all kinds of things. I’ve heard them say that Black people are criminals, and I’ve heard them say that reparations are reverse racism. But it takes a true racism innovator to combine both ideas at the same time. This is like the stuffed crust pizza of racism. ‘Cause I knew you could have crust, and I knew that you could have cheese. But I didn’t know that you could put the cheese inside the crust that’s holding the rest of the cheese. Because now the crust is holding the cheese at the same time… It’s genius!!
Noah knew that many of his viewers would be confused by Tuberville’s argument. And to those people, he offered this: “Congratulations. You’re sane.” But Noah did have some questions about just how sound Tuberville’s argument really was:
How does this argument explain Black people who steal things from other Black people? ‘Cause then who’s reparating who? And secondly, how is this man going to stand on stage and imply that all criminals are Black? That is disgusting! Has this senator never watched Netflix? I’m not going to stand here and let Tommy Tuberville erase all these white people’s contributions.
Noah dubbed that double standard “the real racism.”
You can watch the full clip above, beginning at the 1:45 mark.