Comedian Trevor Noah has responded to criticism of a racist joke he made about Aboriginal Australians in 2013, after footage of the routine was circulated on social media, saying he had “vowed never to make a joke like that again.”
A number of prominent Indigenous Australians called for the boycott of Noah’s upcoming tour of Australia after the video of a standup routine in which he made racist jokes about Aboriginal women and their appearance resurfaced online.
“All women of every race can be beautiful,” the comedian and host of The Daily Show said during the routine from five years ago.
“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?” he said.
“Plus it’s not always about looks, maybe Aborigine women do special things, maybe they’ll just like, jump on top of you,” he said.
Noah also imitated the sound of a didgeridoo to imply oral sex during the routine.
The routine was shared on Twitter by former National Rugby League player Joe Williams, who called it “utterly unacceptable.”
Williams, an Aborigine, wrote to Noah that “as a man of colour, you are usually in point with racism & divide — here you are perpetrating & encouraging racial abuse.”
The tweet prompted anger on the social media site and calls to boycott Noah’s appearances next month in Australia.
Writer and academic Anita Heiss wrote that she was “disgusted and appalled” by Noah’s comments and called on fans to boycott his show.
“That kind of ‘humour’ is not funny and does damage!” she wrote.
Noah responded to the criticism in the early hours of yesterday morning in Australia, saying that the routine was inappropriate.
“After visiting Australia’s Bunjilaka museum and learning about Aboriginal history firsthand I vowed never to make a joke like that again,” he wrote to Williams and Heiss.
“And I haven’t. I’ll make sure the clip from 2013 is not promoted in any way,” he said.
The South African-born comedian rose to prominence after he took over hosting Comedy Central’s The Daily Show in 2015 following Jon Stewart’s retirement.
Immediately after the hosting gig was announced, Noah was criticized for many tasteless jokes he had previously made on Twitter about women, Jews and other groups.
Noah also made headlines recently after he quipped that Africa had won the World Cup, not France, a reference to the soccer side’s racial diversity.
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