Transcripts For BBCNEWS HARDtalk 20170102

And satirist trevor noah, who presents one of the most influential programmes on american tv, the daily show. Born a crime to a black mother and white father in apartheid south africa, he has navigated his way through the explosive issue of race and identity. With critics claiming that Donald Trumps victory has encouraged intolerant rhetoric, does he fear that the space for liberal satire such as his is shrinking . Trevor noah, welcome to hardtalk. Thank you, zeinab. You were born in 1984, six years before Nelson Mandela was released. Your father is a white swiss man, your mother was black, a union punishable by five years in prison. How did it feel to be born a crime . Well, the truth is for me it didnt feel any different to being born i guess any differently, because i was really lucky in that i was insulated as a child, so i grew up under apartheid but i was spared from a lot of the ills of apartheid. My parents were in a world where they were the ones who faced the ills, thats what i talk about in the book, i dont make it seem like it was my struggle, its a struggle i didnt even know i was part of, essentially, and by the time i became aware of it i was lucky enough south africa abolished Apartheid Laws and then we very rapidly moved into democracy. You just published your book called born a crime stories from a south african childhood. Youve just said now that you were insulated from that but at the beginning your mother actually hid you from view, kept you at home, you didnt lead a normal Early Childhood in that respect, how did you amuse yourself, did you live in your head or something . Thats the great thing about books. I lived in a world where i could be anywhere. Thanks to books i travelled the world. Ive been to france and to space. Ive been to charlies Chocolate Factory with willie wonka, ive been everywhere. Thats what i try to explain, i never tried to make it seem like i was one who was suffering. My family and people were suffering but because i was a child i only knew this world, you know . I watched a beautiful movie called room. Its a fascinating story about a woman whos trapped in a bunker with her child, and the child doesnt know that the world exists beyond this room because the mother has done such a greatjob of insulating him, and thats what happened to us. We were in a tough world where my mum couldnt be seen to be my mother, she couldnt be with my father, she couldnt sometimes be with me in public yet she still made that seemed like a normal world, which is a testament to her parenting. She really did, as you describe, take on a great deal on your behalf. You saw your father once a week and you say how basically, if i can paraphrase it, you were basically too white for your black mother and too black for your white father. So what happened when you did go out in public with your mother or when you saw your father in public . Well, we very seldom went out together because that would cause commotion. My parents were always trying to obscure the fact that they were a couple. As much as the country on the face of the laws was changing, you know, anyone who knows about apartheid tells you that what the government said to the International Community was not what was happening on the streets, they were trying to paint a facade of a country that wasnt bad, they were trying to create a world that didnt seem like it was oppressive but it really was. So sometimes my mum and i would go out with my dad. For instance, my mum would often times dress as a maid to navigate this world. As a black person you didnt have the freedoms a white person had in south africa. Shed go out with a coloured friend pushing you in the pushchair because you look coloured. There were three ways she would do it. If my mum was with me, she would dress like a maid and act like she was looking after the child of someone. If she couldnt do that, she would get her friend who looked like me, who was my skin tone, to act like she was my mother and my mother would walk with us, that is how we could navigate more freely. I have pictures of me as a child with my mum in the background Photo Bombing the pictures. If we went with my dad. I remember one day i went to the park with them and i only remember it as a story of me going to the park with my parents. My mum tells me of how we went to the park and i started chasing my dad and screaming, daddy, and he ran away from me and i chased him. You thought it was a game . And my mum started chasing me. Which child. Even when you see kids today, they dont think anything is happening beyond them playing. You were running after your father saying daddy, daddy. You thought it was a game when he was running away but its because he didnt want to acknowledge you in public, tough . It was completely a game for me, so tough for them but really exciting for me. Your black grandparents lived in soweto and you would visit them obviously, but you say you were treated differently from your cousins and other members of the family, they treated you as an honorary white. That was one of the vestiges of apartheid. My grandfather called me master my entire life. Sometimes i could feel it was an exaggeration but it was definitely implicitly speaking to the country that we lived in. He didnt treat me any differently but he always referred to me as master. My grandmother didnt do that but she never administered beatings for instance. My grandmother oftentimes would be the one who disciplined all the kids because we would Stay Together and our mums would all be at work, and i was the one that was never hit. She used to tell my mum she was afraid of hitting me because she didnt know how to hit a white child. The bruises were blue and green and red and she says black children she understood because its all the same, but with me she was so afraid of committing the crime the government told her she would be committing. Then things got tough at home, your mother married a violent alcoholic man, abel, your stepfather, a mechanic. You turned to pawn broking and also dealing in stolen goods. You spent a week in a cell. Your life could have gone down a different path . Definitely. I think thats a story all too familiar for anyone who grows up in a place where there is poverty and in a place where there is oppression. If opportunities are not afforded to communities, they afford themselves the opportunities. I always say one thing that i admire about crime is that it has a fantastic outreach programme. Crime doesnt discriminate. Crime doesnt stop seeking out new opportunities for people. If you have ever lived in an Informal Community you will know that the lines of crime are very blurred. We call it crime now and we do know it as crime, the law, yes, but informally people trade and people are swapping things and trying to make ends meet. I definitely could have ended up in a different place in my life, which is a story that happens all too often. But it didnt to you, you got out and you launched yourself into a career of comedy and so on and became fantastically successful in south africa before you moved to the United States. You say in your book you were mixed but not coloured, coloured by complexion but not by culture. Do you feel now we ascribe to much of an identity to people based on their colour . Because youre black you have to behave in this way, because youre coloured you have to behave in this way, white and so on and forth. I dont think we can deny the colour has become linked to something. So lets go with this, basically race is a construct but that construct has been used in a lot of ways to define cultures. So now the two have almost become linked. So if you have black skin it is likely you grew up in a black or African Culture and now if you have an African Culture youre going to give birth to more children, those children will be black and so now black people have African Cultures, African People are black, it becomes, you know, a self perpetuating cycle, its never going to end, its a feedback loop. So we have prescribed too much to it, i think we have created that world. You do see it in some countries where language is more unifying, where themes go across. You know, ive talked to people from places like the Dominican Republic where they go, race is not really something. Other things may define your identity. Exactly. People in brazil have the same ideals. Nevertheless, racial observations have formed in the early stages the backbone of your stand up comedy career. Do you now regret some of the jokes you made . Let me give you an example, you said my mother, black south african, was saying, get me a white guy. Well, my father was white swiss, of course he liked chocolate. That sounds funny to me even when you say it that sounded really funny. Why would i regret that . Why would you regret that . Because some people say thats not very funny. But the people laugh. Everyone can Say Something is not really funny. Just like the way some people dont like indian food. Let me give you an example. We have a Well Established Black Comedian In Britain called lenny henry, he has said he regrets doing that kind ofjoke where he said he would wipe his Sweating Brow and say, huh, im leaking chocolate. But that is different. Its not, its using chocolate. That is different. The swiss Love Chocolate is not a pejorative term. Youre referring to your mothers skin colour as chocolate. Yes, because my mother is proud to be dark, beautiful chocolate. Thats what shes saying. I talk about this in the book as well, i saw people and race as chocolate. I wouldnt use that, im that colour and i wouldnt say that. When i grew up i believed that all people were chocolates. My mum was dark chocolate, my dad was White Chocolate and i was milk chocolate. So i see all people as chocolates. You see that as funny but do you not realise that some people might not like that . Lenny henry went on to say, thatjoke about how he was leaking chocolate, he says, i knew there had to be a better way of trying to put the message over, putting your jokes over without having to pick on people because of their colour or their race. His view is different from yours. Because hes lenny henry and im trevor noah. But also hes black. Hes talking about leaking chocolate, implying his skin colour was not something that belonged to him. Thats a different idea. He is trying to say his skin colour is chocolate, youre splitting hairs here. Thats exactly what we should be doing. Im not sure i would say what you said. Youre creating racialjokes. Youre creating Monoliths Ofjokes and thats not fair to do. Every single joke has a context, every singlejoke comes from a place. The most important thing with comedy is context. Without context, no conversation is complete. Without context, no communication can truly appreciate. If you take that out of context, so im putting it to you, given what lenny henry has said, are you not guilty in some of your routines with a joke like that of reinforcing prejudices and promoting stereotypes in the minds of people who may be inclined to think like that and then theyll think, 0h, trevor noah says his mothers s chocolate, im going to say that to my black friends, and they might take offence. You could be reinforcing prejudice. You could be doing anything if youre not doing the opposite. How your action is implied does not define what you were doing. Lets look at another aspect of race. A few years ago you moved to the United States. Your routine as a comedian often mimicked africans and also African Americans, and about African Americans you have said this. You are not african but we play along. Its a very loose term, African American, because half the time you use it for people who arent even african. As long as youre black they say African American. I didnt deliver it like that, youre not doing myjokesjustice. All right, yeah. Im not trevor noah and im not a comedian, satirist. Im just asking, are they not African American . Heres what youre missing. What youre doing right now is the equivalent of me saying, now its raining more than ever, ill be here with you forever. You can always be my friend, standing under my umbrella. ella, ella, ella, ella, ella, ella, ella, ella, ay, ay, ay, ay, ay, ella, ella, ella, ay ay i seem like a mad person right now because im not doing everything that was within the context of the song umbrella by rihanna. When youre doing comedy merely by words, i spoke it, my eyes, my voice, my connection with an audience is completely different. People can see when youre being playful. People can see when youre saying something you dont believe. You were being playful about that . That is what satire is, youre poking holes. So you dont believe what you said . No, no, no. What youre leaving out in that whole joke is what i was talking about was how in america, in america, anglo saxons had successfully removed americanisms from minorities so every single group in america had an identity attached to their americanness except white americans. So its African American, asian american, hispanic american, latin american, native american. I dont know, you have irish americans, theyre white. You have polish americans. No, no, that didnt become on a box. And this is a joke for americans, understand that. So as an american, they understand this. On the boxes there is no irish american, there is only white, but there is African American, and there is asian american, do you get what im saying . So thats the whole point of thejoke. The point i was trying to make is there was a shift amongst the black American Community to start calling themselves African American. They didnt want a definition by default, ie you were not white, so therefore you were black. They wanted to have a hyphenated identity that linked them with the continent of their ancestors, and therefore when you say, oh, theyre not really african, theyre playing along, you cannot disconnect what you say from this debate thats really, you know, captured the imagination of the African American, black American Community. And also, the point i want to make to you, when you say that it now feeds into a debate thats current in the United States. Kwame kwei armah, The Black Briton theatre director in the United States says he has conversations with African Americans now who say we want to go back to being called black american because we dont have anything in common with these recently arrived African Americans, be they somalis, nigerians, south africans such as you, they have different language and so on. So what you say feeds into that debate and it sounds like youre saying there is a difference between African Americans and black americans . There definitely is a difference. Right. But these are differences that can be celebrated or used to separate people. Noting differences does not implicitly make it a bad thing. When you are noticing differences, you can note them for good reasons, the same reason we notice different colours or flowers. That can be a good thing, if youre using it to celebrate. You can use it the same way apartheid used it to separate people. When you talk about African Americans, the one conversation that i was talking about is i was Travelling America and i was going to a lot of universities and i came to realise, in many universities in america, the conversation you are having now, they had. They had an African American student body and very quickly they noticed a shift because they could not lump black people into a monolith. Because there were people from the caribbean who said, we are not African American. There were people from africa who were like, these are not our views, we are africans in america. Theres a difference. So what people themselves did was said, you cantjust lump us into this group. Fine. And does that difference mean that it doesnt act as a cohesive form . Im thinking, in 2014, Chimamanda Ngozi adichie, the celebrated nigerian author, she said that when she visited the us she felt that her African American classmate was annoyed with her because she didnt share their anger and she said that she was not burdened, herself, by americas terrible racial history. That difference, does it result in the African Americans who have arrived recently in the us, such as yourself, acting differently or having a different psyche from the black americans who are the descendants of slaves and have lived for many, many years, obviously, in the us . I will say this, i will be careful not to comment on the experience of every Single Person because i am only myself and can only experience the people who are around me. What i do know is this. In terms of our racial histories, south africa and america are very similar. When i talk to a black american person, there are many stories that we share as human beings, there are many oppressions that we have experienced through our selective oppressors. I think those are the things that many people can relate to a across the board. So theres more to unite, even though you say there are differences . There is definitely more to unite, especially when you are being oppressed as a group. When you are in the us as a black african man, i can tell you now that if you have an encounter with the police they are not going to split the hairs that you are talking about. Theyre not going to say, excuse me, trevor noah, are you from south africa or detroit . That doesnt happen. But here you are, a black icon, South African Born and so on, and you present one of the most iconic News Programmes in the us, the daily show you took over from john stewart last year. Now we see a lot being made about fake news appearing on websites on the internet, and thats something people lament, particularly in the recent president ial campaign, because it kind of distorts facts. Do you feel that you in some way use mockery, fake incredulity and exaggeration, that perhaps youre treading a fine line yourself . I dont think so, because we are operating in the space of a news parody and satire. When you talk about fake news, the biggest difference is it never tells you that it is fake news. We let you know from the beginning. We are on comedy central. I tell you from the get go who i am. There is no facade. So when you come to our show. One thing we do maintain is factual accuracy and that is a standard and a legacy that i inherited from john stewart and i keep it. I keep it not because of moral high ground, but because i believe the bestjokes are based in truth, and so when your True Foundation is solid you will find that your jokes connect with more people. Are you not contributing to that kind of Echo Chamber Effect . Now we are seeing that there is a lot of personal invective on social media, traditional media, polarised opinions. Are you perhaps becoming part of that . You are implicitly a part of it, though. How do you not be a part of it . Ill tell you one way you can not be a part of it, is by trying to operate in a space where you are completely neutral, devoid of all opinion and giving everybody an equal platform to share their views. Oftentimes what weve seen is all you are doing when you do this is you are giving a platform to either hate speech or to divisive rhetoric that is extreme, and the middle keeps getting pushed over to the right. So when you look at conversations that are had. So for instance, when someone will be on cnn saying, are jews people . And then youre like, are you going to give that person a platform . So if i say the world is square, do i deserve a platform . When i go against science, do i deserve a platform . When i go against things that we know, why do we still give these people a platform . The truth is we do it because we want to maintain the appearance of impartiality. But the news then loses focus, because the news should be fact driven. Am i correct . No, you answer that. Yeah, of course. Should it be fact driven . Yeah, comment is free, fact is sacred, is what we always say. So, if youve got the facts. We havent got much time. Now fact has become opinion. Ok, but do you feel now that youre concerned that there is right wing rhetoric and power now combined . And im thinking of steve bannon, who is now going to be appointed Chief Strategist to donald trump at the white house, chairman of breitbart news, the conservative website, where one headline said the Confederate Flag proclaims a glorious heritage. And of course the Confederate Flag was used by the southern states, the slave owning states. Are you worried about that combination between right wing rhetoric . Definitely. Definitely. Because, essentially, donald trump may not be saying it using his words, but the people hes surrounding himself with echo the sentiment that he is not creating an inclusive america, does not plan to be a president that unifies america. Well, he has said he wants to unify america, and im not saying that he himself has got far right views, im just saying that there are those from the far right who have hailed his victory. Yes, but you see this is interesting because look at you now as a news person. You are in the uncomfortable position where you have to appear to not say anything that implies anything, even though it is laid out before us. So i ask you this question. You will go, somebody is not racist, nor are they. Im not saying that. Im just saying. No, no, im saying, as an example, someone goes, youre not far right, but if you surround yourself with those people, if you are at meetings with these people, if these people are having events where they are heiling, if the rhetoric that is around you completely is that, are you not that . Im just saying that there are those of the far right who are using his victory to legitimise their discourse. Definitely. You backed Hillary Clinton, you urged your viewers to vote for Hillary Clinton in the president ial campaign. We already know donald trump has criticised the Saturday Night Live for running a sketch about him, saying he was totally unprepared for the presidency, and so on and so forth. Finally, are you trevor noah going to be careful with what you say about President Trump because the space is shrinking for you . I will say this. I will be as careful in talking about donald trump as he was when he was speaking about barack obama. Because at the end of the day, free speech, and that is something i appreciate and celebrate, free speech means that you have the right to speak out against things that you see. You know, any ludicrous ideas are any instances where there is hypocrisy within politics. I have that right and i intend to use it. I am not fundamentally opposed to donald trump as a human being, but i am in a position where every single day i will be living in a country that is under his presidency and so if he affords me comedic material, then i will only do what i can do, which is turn that into fodder and put it on a tv show, that is a fake news show. Trevor noah, thank you so much for coming on hardtalk. Thank you for having me. Hello. Well, many of us had a bit of a wet new years day, but that wet weather was courtesy of a cold front. The cold front has cleared through, introducing much chillier air, but much clearer, sunnier conditions as well for many of us today. A bright, crisp, but distinctly chilly start to your monday. Some ice around after yesterdays rain, so watch out for that. Could be quite slippery, particularly across the north and the east, where weve got some wintry showers, in actualfact. So it is not dry everywhere, but for the majority there will be blue skies as you step out first thing in the morning. This is 9 00am. A lovely start to the day, if you wear a few layers, that is, across most of wales and northern ireland. Some of those wintry showers still peppering some Northern Areas of the province. The snow settling on the highest ground of northern ireland, and down to quite low levels, actually, across the north of scotland. So yes, it could be an icy start here, but for the central belt southwards, it should be largely clear and sunny. Some showers, wintry showers, will be pecking away at the north east coast of england, a few making it inland. But for most of us, actually, it will be a dry start to the day, with a lot of sunshine. A bit of patchy cloud, perhaps, filtering down across east anglia, but it should stay largely dry here. Further west, though, temperatures close to freezing, so as i mentioned, watch out for one or two slippery surfaces. But it should be dry, and stay dry, for the majority of us as we go through the day. The wintry showers continuing across the north of scotland, though i think that the snow will tend to turn back to rain, at lower levels, at least, and most other places will stay fine. Still some showers down that east coast of england, and maybe one or two filtering through the irish sea, eventually, into some North Western coasts of england. A cold feeling day, despite all that sunshine. Temperatures much, much lower than they have been for the last couple of days in many places, so three to five degrees will be typical. We soon go into frost across the southern half of the uk, and there could well be some slippery surfaces, so watch out for those. If anything, though, temperatures will recover further north, with increasing cloud, and a somewhat milder wind pushing in from the north west, carrying some showers, principally to the west of scotland. So a different sort of day here as we go through tuesday, a lot more cloud around. Some showery rain for a time, on a stiff old breeze, especially across the north of scotland. Some of this cloud will filter its way down across england and wales. But, bar the odd shower, actually, still plenty of dry weather, with some sunshine across these more southern and eastern areas. After that chilly start, temperatures slow to recover, but a degree or so higher than they will be today. But on wednesday we see some cold air coming back in again, particularly into the more northern and eastern areas. Here the best of the sunshine. Further south and west, we will hold onto a bit more cloud. Hello. Youre watching bbc world news. Im chris rogers. Our top story this hour Turkish Police are hunting for the gunman who opened fire on new year revellers in istanbul. Cctv footage has emerged of the moment the gunman launched the attack at the reina nightclub that killed 39 people and injured more than 70. Welcome to the programme. Our other main stories this hour more than 50 officers injured as over 1000 african migrants make a mass bid to break into the spanish enclave of ceuta. Another twist in the south korean Corruption Scandal as Danish Police arrest the daughter of president parkss closest friend. Im sally bundock. In business free cash if you get a job or not