Trevor Noah tried to make sense of the fatal police shooting of Rayshard Brooks on “The Daily Show” Monday. He distilled what he said was one truth about the circumstances in the high-profile police killings of Brooks and numerous other Black people.
Brooks was questioned by white officers and failed a sobriety test after he was reported asleep at a Wendy’s drive-thru in Atlanta. He was shot twice in the back after grabbing an officer’s stun gun during the arrest, running and pointing the weapon at an officer, investigators told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
But Noah questioned how an interaction between two cops and a man who probably was drunk could devolve into Brooks losing his life.
“People always say the same thing ― if you didn’t do that, then you would still be alive. They say this shit all the time ― if you didn’t do that.
“The truth is, the ‘ifs’ keep on changing. If you didn’t resist, you would still be alive. Or if you didn’t run away from the cops, you would still be alive. Or if you didn’t have a toy gun and were 12 years old in the middle of the park, then you’d still be alive. Well, if you weren’t wearing a hoodie, you’d still be alive. If you didn’t talk back to the cops, you’d still be alive. If you weren’t sleeping in your bed as a Black woman, you would have still been alive. There’s one common thread beyond all the ifs:
“If you weren’t Black, maybe you’d still be alive.”
