Comedians From South Africa

"And look, I don't know if I want to eat at a restaurant where everybody's armed. I mean, it's a fun gimmick, but you realize the second someone drops a plate, that place is turning into a Tarantino movie. I mean, it's still a restaurant, so you can't have bare feet, but otherwise, it's a Tarantino movie. But clearly, this person has an unhealthy fixation with guns."

"[A friend] said to me, he said "You know, Trevor, one of the greatest lies they tell you in America, they tell you that-- they tell you that America is two political parties -- Republicans and Democrats", and he said, "But I'll tell you now, it's Republicans, Democrats, and it's black people and every other person of color who's trying to make a name or do something for themselves." And that stuck with me, and it made me think about American politics differently. Made me realize that we get tricked a lot of the time -- not just in America, but everywhere in the world -- into liking or not liking something based more on the tribe that it comes from, the tribe that it emanates from, than what the idea actually is."

"The final lesson I learned at the show -- and I learned it not at the show, but because of the show and the news I was covering is -- please don't forget that the world is a friendlier place than the internet and the news will make you think?"

"If you’re Native American and you pray to the wolves, you’re a savage. If you’re African and you pray to your ancestors, you’re a primitive. But when white people pray to a guy who turns water into wine, well, that’s just common sense."

"In any society built on institutionalized racism, race-mixing doesn't merely challenge the system as unjust, it reveals the system as unsustainable and incoherent. Race-mixing proves that races can mix - and in a lot of cases, want to mix. Because a mixed person embodies that rebuke to the logic of the system, race-mixing becomes a crime worse than treason."

"That’s how a police state works - everyone thinks everyone else is the police."

"There were so many perks to being ‘white’ in a black family, I can’t even front. I was having a great time. My own family basically did what the American justice system does: I was given more lenient treatment than the black kids."

"Growing up the way I did, I learned how easy it is for white people to get comfortable with a system that awards them all the perks. I knew my cousins were getting beaten for things that I'd done, but I wasn't interested in changing my grandmother's perspective, because that would mean I'd get beaten, too. Why would I do that? So that I'd feel better? Being beaten didn't make me feel better. I had a choice. I could champion racial justice in our home, or I could enjoy granny's cookies. I went with the cookies."

"My mom raised me as if there were no limitations on where I could go or what I could do. When I look back I realize she raised me like a white kid - not white culturally, but in the sense of believing that the world was my oyster, that I should speak up for myself, that my ideas and thoughts and decisions mattered."

"As the outsider, you can retreat into a shell, be anonymous, be invisible. Or you can go the other way. You protect yourself by opening up. You don't ask to be accepted for everything you are, just the one part of yourself that you're willing to share. For me it was humor. I learned that even though I didn't belong to one group, I could be a part of any group that was laughing."

"People love to say, “Give a man a fish, and he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he’ll eat for a lifetime.” What they don’t say is, “And it would be nice if you gave him a fishing rod.” That’s the part of the analogy that’s missing."

"Every country thinks their history is the most important, and that’s especially true in the West. But if black South Africans could go back in time and kill one person, Cecil Rhodes would come up before Hitler. If people in the Congo could go back in time and kill one person, Belgium’s King Leopold would come way before Hitler. If Native Americans could go back in time and kill one person, it would probably be Christopher Columbus or Andrew Jackson."

"In the hood, even if you're not a hardcore criminal, crime is in your life in some way or another. There are degrees of it. It's everyone from the mom buying some food that fell off the back of a truck to feed her family, all the way up to the gangs selling military-grade weapons and hardware. The hood made me realize that crime succeeds because crime does the one thing the government doesn't do: crime cares. Crime is grassroots. Crime looks for the young kids who need support and a lifting hand. Crime offers internship programs and summer jobs and opportunities for advancement. Crime gets involved in the community. Crime doesn't discriminate."

"In society, we do horrible things to one another because we don't see the person it affects. We don't see their face. We don't see them as people. Which was the whole reason the hood was built in the first place, to keep the victims of apartheid out of sight and out of mind. Because if white people ever saw black people as human, they would see that slavery is unconscionable. We live in a world where we don't see the ramifications of what we do to others, because we don't live with them. It would be a whole lot harder for an investment banker to rip off people with subprime mortgages if he actually had to live with the people he was ripping off. If we could see one another's pain and empathize with one another, it would never be worth it to us to commit the crimes in the first place."

"The more time I spent in jail, the more I realized that the law isn’t rational at all. It’s a lottery. What color is your skin? How much money do you have? Who’s your lawyer? Who’s the judge?"

"Growing up in a home of abuse, you struggle with the notion that you can love a person you hate, or hate a person you love. It’s a strange feeling. You want to live in a world where someone is good or bad, where you either hate them or love them, but that’s not how people are."

"The way my mother always explained it, the traditional man wants a woman to be subservient, but he never falls in love with subservient women. He's attracted to independent women. "He's like an exotic bird collector," she said. "He only wants a woman who is free because his dream is to put her in a cage.""

"People built homes the way they bought eggs: a little at a time."

"The end of apartheid was a gradual thing. Concessions were made here and there, some laws were repealed, others simply weren’t enforced."

"We tell people to follow their dreams, but you can only dream of what you can imagine, and, depending on where you come from, your imagination can be quite limited."

"What was ironic to me was that white people had spent years seeing video of black people being beaten to death by other white people, but this one video of a black man kicking a cat, that’s what sent them over the edge."

"Every year under apartheid, some colored people would get promoted to white. People could submit applications to the government. Your hair might become straight enough, your skin might become light enough, your accent might become polished enough — -and you’d be reclassified as white. All you had to do was denounce your people, denounce your history, and leave your darker-skinned fiends and family behind."

"People don’t want to be rich. They want to be able to choose. The richer you are, the more choices you have. That is the freedom of money."

"So weird, how our prejudices have given everyone their lane. Middle Easterner does something, they're a terrorist. Black person does something, they're gang-related, they're a thug. But if a white guy walks into a church killing nine people there, what do they lead with on the news? "And today, in an isolated incident, a lone gunman walked into a church opening fire and killing nine people." It's always a lone gunman. "A lone gunman with no ties to society whatsoever". They always separate them as quickly as possible."

"We drink to enjoy. The Scottish drink to die."

"For me, Donald Trump is an emotional paradox, I'm not gonna lie. Logically, I can process him, emotionally, I struggle. On the one hand, I will admit, I wake up many days terrified at the notion that he's president of the most powerful nation in the world. But I also must admit, I wake up many days knowing he's gonna make me laugh. There's terror and there's joy and I don't know how to feel. You know what it feels like sometimes? It feels like there's a giant asteroid headed towards the earth, but it's shaped like a penis. Like, I think I'm gonna die, but I know I'm gonna laugh."

"You don't go to South Africa to escape racism. That's where you go to stock up. Are you kidding me, that's the one thing that reminds me of home. The racism out here."

"I spend most of my day screaming — and then over time I get tired and then when I'm tired, I start thinking of the jokes. … That's what I always loved about comedy, it is a way for us to just, you know, to numb the pain, to process what we're going through without feeling every single inkling of it."

"For any comedian, your life informs your point of view, the way you see the world. My comedy comes through the prism of race or class, because those are two worlds that collided for me growing up. And I guess that’s served me well, because those themes cross over countries and continents. We’re all still dealing with those issues today."

"I think the most important thing is to instantly give them a sense of who you are and how you feel in that moment. If a speaker is nervous and tells the audience that, people immediately contextualize it and respond accordingly. If a performer is in a good mood or feeling wild and crazy and says so, I’ve found, the crowd will be good at matching that energy. So for me, the rapport is built by a genuineness conveyed as quickly as possible."

"The weird thing is, I always say to people, "When you're poor, being poor sucks. But being poor together makes it a lot better." Right? Because you're in it together. And it doesn't discount the fact that you don't have much. But then you start to enjoy the things that you do have. And that is each other. And so we laughed. We enjoyed ourselves. We had something that sometimes you don't have when you have too much. And that is the ability to focus on the human beings around you."

"Growing up as a young boy in Wakanda, I would see King T’Challa flying over our village, and he would remind me of a great Xhosa phrase: Abelungu abazi ubu ndiyaxoka, which means: ‘In times like these, we are stronger when we fight together than when we try to fight apart.’"

"…I like to think that I am the product of a world of impossibilities. You know, my mother is where she should have never been. I think my mother made greater leaps than I have ever made. It's just that her leaps were made within her world and so maybe don't seem as grand. But I think my family, myself, my country, we come from a place where we have achieved the impossible…"

"Every single one of you, whether you like it or not, is a bastion of democracy. And if you ever begin to doubt your responsibilities. If you ever begin to doubt how meaningful it is, look no further than what's happening in Ukraine. Look at what's happening there. Journalists are risking and even losing their lives to show the world what's really happening. You realize how amazing it is. Like in America, you have the right to seek the truth and speak the truth, even if it makes people in power uncomfortable. Even if it makes your viewers or readers uncomfortable. Do you understand how amazing that is? I stood here tonight and I made fun of the President of the United States, and I'm going to be fine. — I'm going to be fine, right? Like, do you really understand what a blessing it is? Maybe it's happened for so long that you — it might slip your mind, it's a blessing. In fact, here — ask yourself this question. Honestly ask yourself this question: If Russian journalists, who are losing their livelihoods ... and their freedom for daring to report on what their own government is doing. If they had the freedom to write any words, to show any stories, or to ask any questions. If they had, basically, what you have, would they be using it in the same way that you do? Ask yourself that question every day. Because you have one of the most important roles in the world."

"I always believe that funny is serious and serious is funny. You don’t really need a distinction between them. If I’m doing something on stage and it evokes an emotion, then I might show that emotion, but I also don’t believe in being a preacher. If you have a point, that’s a bonus. But the funny has to come first, otherwise you shouldn’t call yourself a comedian."

"(What book might people be surprised to find on your shelves?) Books about self-esteem and depression."

"I felt like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, it was, like, the weirdest thing ever. I just came for a tour, I just wanted some of the Wonka bars and then the next thing, I'm, like, managing the Oompa Loompas. I'm like "Aaah! I don't know how this works, this is crazy!""

"Laughter is strange in that if we think of all the emotions that we're able to express or feel, one of the things about laughter that's particularly interesting to me is it's one of the few emotions that robs your pain of its power."

"I think sometimes it's hard for us to think about the possibility of a better future because we haven't lived in it."

"[Interviewer: When you say you "wouldn't be here" with me, what do you mean by that?] You wouldn't be calling me here to have an interview with me, because I wouldn't have done the things that I've done. Because I couldn't have done them alone. Because nobody could have done them alone. Nobody has done the things they've done alone, you know? Like, everyone-- I've seen people tell these stories of climbing Mount Everest and Maya-san, and-- Yo, all those sherpas that went with you, let's talk about them. No one's climbing Everest alone! No one's discovering, y'know, the, the South Pole alone! No, you weren't! In fact, the guy who first navigated the South Pole was led there by somebody, you know what I mean?"

"I hear people all the time go like "I'm gonna put my head down and I'm gonna crush it!" Okay, alone? Good luck."

"I learned so many things at The Daily Show, I'm eternally grateful for them... but I also would like to learn more things? Even in the years I haven't been there, I've re-learned and re-remembered that politics isn't a binary. It's not blue and red, that's an illusion. There aren't two ideas for every problems, that's fake. There are a multitude of ways to discuss any issue and any topic. But if you stay in one place for long enough, then in a good way and in a bad way, you start to perceive that as reality. [...] All my friends that are South African were trapped in South Africa, couldn't leave, couldn't come to me, I couldn't go to them. Couldn't see my family. And I wasn't even big on that, it's not even that I was like "Oh, I've gotta go home to see my family," I just go when I'll go. But now, I realized, I was like, wow! This is just-- again, it's fleeting. And I had to ask myself "Trevor, what are you trying to achieve in your life? Where do you want it to go? Where do you want it to end, y'know? What's more important to you? The ratings on the success of this show and this idea, or the ratings on the success of your friendships and your relationships?""

"[If] you read the news once a week, I promise you, you'll be as informed as somebody who's reading it every single day. You know why? 'Cause when you're reading it every day, you are caught in the cycle of it trying to discover what it doesn't know yet."

"And that is a problem I have with, like, a lot of American political spin -- they try and tell you that what you're seeing is not what you're seeing."

"I think, again, as an old person, you should have a dignified end. You know? And I think we've robbed old people of that in society, y'know, like Capitalism and whatever. It's like, no, it's nice to, like, "You go, you've live your life, you've done your thing, and you can relax now.""

"Ben Carson: for people who like Donald Trump's ideas, but hate his charm and charisma. Ben Carson is like the drug free cocaine for people who don't wanna get high but just like snorting white powder."

"Of course Ben Carson advisors can't make him smart, you can't change its brain. That's a job for a neurosurgeon. It's the same when your barber has a #### haircut."

"Donald Trump didn't invent racism. Trump didn't invent islamophobia. And he didn't invent violence. All he did was put his name on them like he does with everything else."

"Race jokes are kind of like orcas: powerful and entertaining, but you put them on display in the wrong environment and people are going to get hurt, and the joke might die. Like this one just did."

"So talented he's enough to drive any aspiring writer to OD on Smarties - or at least encourage them to stick to writing out place-settings for dinner parties."