HBO's upcoming documentary, "Southern Rites", delves into the role of race in modern day America. It's a hefty subject, but the film has been expertly handled by a talented team of individuals, which includes Grammy Award-winning singer John Legend.
Legend, who is an executive producer of the film, joined “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” on Monday to discuss the project and his thoughts on people who dismiss today’s race issues.
“Some racism is very easy to identify… but a lot of racism is structural, and in the criminal justice system it often plays out in sentencing and who gets charged for what, in how juries are picked,” he explained. “All these things that end up discounting the value of black lives versus other lives.”
In light of Glenn Beck's take down of Michelle Obama for speaking about her experiences with racism during her commencement speech at Tuskegee University earlier this week, Legend gave his perspective on the defensiveness of white conservatives.
“We don’t want to talk about racism all the time. If it weren’t here, if we didn’t have to deal with it everyday, we would love for it not to be a subject of conversation,” Legend admitted. “We would love to just live our lives in equality and in justice for all. We would love that…but it’s killing our kids, it’s resulting in so much pain and suffering for our community so we have to bring it up.”
Check out more of John Legend’s interview segment in the clip above.
Before You Go
