Trevor Noah has mocked a conversation about skin colour between Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson that took place on a recent podcast episode.
Rogan hosted the controversial YouTube personality and clinical psychologist on his popular Spotify series, The Joe Rogan Experience, earlier this week. A segment in which Rogan and Peterson, who are both white, discussed who should be considered “Black”, provoked an outcry online.
“The Black and white thing is so strange because the shades are such a spectrum of shades of people,” said Rogan at one point during the exchange.
“Unless you are talking to someone who is, like, 100 per cent African from the darkest place, where they are not wearing any clothes all day and they have developed all of that melanin to protect themselves from the sun, even the term Black is weird. When you use it for people who are literally my colour, it becomes very strange.”
The Daily Show host Noah responded to the comments in yesterday’s (26 January) episode of the popular satire.
Looking at his hands, Noah quipped: “Oh my God! I’m not Black! I’m… not Black! Joe Rogan’s right! I’m like a Caramel Mocha Frappuccino. This changes everything… This changes everything!”
After running off-screen, we then hear police sirens, and he returns, saying: “The police said I’m Black.”
“But yeah, apparently Joe Rogan really wants to know why they say ‘Black people’ if they’re not the colour of a Sharpie,” he continued.
“The things these guys seem to be ignoring is that Black people didn’t call themselves Black. You understand that, right? It’s not like Black people were like, ‘We’re Black.’ No. In Africa, we have tribes. We have cultures. Zulu. Xhosa. Baganda. Igbo. Wakandans!
“But then white people got there, and they were like, ‘Wow. There’s a lot of Black people here. A lot of Black people.’ Then in America, they invented a rule that if you had one drop of Black blood in you, that makes you Black – which defined how you were treated by the government and by society.”
You can watch the full segment here.
