Comedian Trevor Noah, host of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, is under fire for racially-tinged jokes about Australia’s native Aboriginal women.
In a video of his stand-up routine from 2013, Noah, who is a biracial South African, joked about the looks of the native women.
“All women of every race can be beautiful,” the host of the Daily Show said. “And I know some of you are sitting there now going, ‘Oh Trevor … I’ve never seen a beautiful Aborigine’ But you know what you say? You say, ‘Yet.’ Because you haven’t seen all of them, right?”
“Plus it’s not always about looks, maybe Aborigine women do special things, maybe they’ll just like, jump on top of you,” he added.
The video has since been taken down, and Noah promised via Twitter that he would make sure it was not ever promoted again. Noah also said he planned to visit an Aboriginal community in Australia, in order to “learn more,” presumably about their women’s looks.
But it may be too little, too late for the liberal comic… since he’s now facing an unprecedented backlash for his “racist” jokes. Australians on social media are now calling for Noah’s upcoming Australian tour to be boycotted.
Comedy Central, which airs The Daily Show, has not yet commented on the controversy.
That makes it increasingly likely that Noah could join the ranks of a growing number of liberal TV stars who have kept their job after inflammatory tweets–even as conservative actress, Roseanne Barr, saw her show cancelled after making a racially-tinged tweet about former Obama aide Valerie Jarrett.
