Speaking to Playboy magazine, South African comedian Trevor Noah touched on his own experiences of racial discrimination in the US.
“It’s often very small things, but they pile up. Cabdrivers don’t pick you up. It happens to me. Or you go into a corner store and get followed, or people say things about you. It’s often not blatant, but it’s entrenched in the system,” he told the magazine.
When asked about why he thinks having a black president has done little to ease race tensions in the US, Trevor had this to say.
“This is hard to explain to white people, but the thing about race is that you can’t turn it off. If you’re black, you are constantly black and that blackness is always affecting you in some way or another. That’s a tough conversation to have…”
Life in America is great, though, and Trevor says his first impression of the country was all the choices its citizens have at their disposal.
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Going to Walmart was quite an experience for the comedian.
“That place absolutely blew my mind. I had never seen anything like it. Seventeen different types of milk. Twenty-two kinds of laundry soap. It is a land of unimaginable abundance, though it wasn’t a complete surprise.”
Being host of The Daily Show comes with its perks, but being famous, Trevor says, does not come cheap.
“The biggest thing I have learned in America is that it is expensive to be famous here. You have to pay for things. You have to pay for bodyguards. You have to pay for a driver. You have to pay for a publicist. You have to pay for a stylist. I never used to understand the stress around those things. I never experienced that, and I still try to not experience it.“
Trevor is currently dating US model Jordyn Taylor, but admitted to having a fanboy crush on two famous celebrities.
“Charlize Theron. Not just because she’s South African. I think she is aging majestically. She’s so beautiful. Jennifer Lopez as well. Does she even have an age?”