“Maybe it would help you if… you think about that… unease that you felt watching that Target being looted, try to imagine how it must feel for Black Americans when they watch themselves being looted every single day,” Noah, who is the host of “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah,” told Cooper.
“That’s fundamentally what’s happening in America,” he said. “Police in America are looting black bodies.”
While President Donald Trump has sought to position himself as a law-and-order president in the wake of lootings and some violence associated with the protests, Noah said it is actually law and order that protesters and organizers who took the streets are demanding.
“When they’re fighting, when they’re out there in the streets, what they’re protesting for is law and order,” said Noah. “They’re fighting for an equal application of law and order. And I think that’s what a lotta people don’t realize.”
Noah drew parallels between what’s happening in the United States now and the extraordinary transformation that took place in his home country of South Africa after apartheid, in particular during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in which victims and perpetrators gave witness to racial violence.
Noah said he believed the rise of cell phone video of many police encounters had forced the United States into a dialogue much like that commission.
“Cell phone cameras have brought you a Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” said Noah. “Right now, there hasn’t been reconciliation, but the truth is definitely coming out.”
“As videos and as cameras have become as ubiquitous as they are, it’s becoming that commission,” he said. “It’s becoming a world where people are forced to see the truth of the America that they live in.”