The Daily Show’s Roy Wood Jr.: “Racism is Getting Craftier”

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: And sticking with politics now, but with some much-needed comic relief inserted, stand-up, Roy Wood Jr. is best known as a correspondent for “The Daily Show” with Trevor Noah. Who said, I never dodges the tough topics. And his new hourlong special for “Comedy Central” is no exception. It’s called “Imperfect Messenger” and it tackles everything from race and police reform to mass shootings and celebrity activism. Here he is talking to Hari Sreenivasan.

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HARI SREENIVASAN: Christiane, thanks. Roy Wood Jr., thank you so much for joining us.

ROY WOOD JR., Comedian, “Imperfect Messenger”: Thank you all for having me.

SREENIVASAN: All right. So, you know, this — when I was watching it, I could almost feel the heat from the TV. I mean, this is fresh from the oven, so to speak. I have never heard of a comedy special being done so close. I mean, we’re talking now and it’s less than a month old. How did that happen?

WOOD JR.: The idea at the time, back in February, when we were kind of figuring out, OK, I know I should have the material ready by October, but when do we want to air it? And at that time, in February, the news cycle was turning over fast. And my stand-up isn’t introspective. It’s about the world around us.

SREENIVASAN: Yes.

WOOD JR.: So, the world changes. Like I’m liable to have a joke about the Delta variant and then we’ve moved on to lambda, echo, Charlie, omega, zeta. So, at no point, that I want this material to feel out of touch.

SREENIVASAN: Yes.

WOOD JR.: So, I wanted to do — you know, and I had to give hats off to “Comedy Central” and the production company to make this turn happen. I mean, there is always some hiccups and things like that, but it was important to me to have material that was comedy is at its best when it is a reflective of the time we are currently in.

SREENIVASAN: I want to play one of the clips that you talk about a little bit and the first clip here, it’s something that we really haven’t thought about when it comes to police reform. Let’s take a look at the ways that police speak to each other.

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WOOD JR.: I got two cops in my family, which is kind of like saying some of my best friends are black. Well, I do. I got two cops in my family. Chicago Suburb and a Mississippi State Trooper. We get to talking about everything that’s going on. And I was trying to explain to him, it’s base level [bleep] the police could be doing. We are not talking legislation and policy. Just base level [bleep] that you could do to help build a bridge, to make things a little better. First thing the police need to do. This is the one thing I think the police should start doing. Stop talking in code on the radio. Use regular words. Why you all talking all these abbreviations and [bleep]? Why you keeping secrets? Secrets is what got you in trouble all this time. Stop keeping secrets. You are not in Iraq. You aren’t giving away your position to the enemy. Use regular words. You’re in front of the Walgreens. I could see you. Everybody could see you. But that ain’t what the police do. You’re at the police (INAUDIBLE) teacher on the radio. It’s gibberish. Any time the police talk to each other, it’s just gibberish. And we’ll be watching the police in the grocery store. They see us looking at the radio. Th police love to play it off like they understood what dispatch talking about. 3 Adam David, 3 Adam David. Respond code 2. 10-4. You don’t know what she just said. Stop [bleed] around. You don’t know what she just said to you. And you wonder why the police show up and shoot the wrong person.

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SREENIVASAN: So, I got to ask, with these two officers in your family, what’s the Thanksgiving table like?

WOOD JR.: It’s fine. We’ll start there. Just a base level statement. It’s fine. It’s all love. But there are two different mile markers in their career, you know, one is a couple years from retirement while the other one is just starting to hit the stride and get the promotions and, you know, trying to head towards lieutenant. We talk a lot about what’s going on. You know, we don’t get into a lot of the nuance, but I think it’s helped round out my view on policing a little bit, to have two cops in my family, to be able to sit and listen to their stories of what they deal with, because I know their intentions to be pure, and there’s definitely a lot of influences that keep them from doing everything, and I think that’s the part that I think where policing is, I don’t want to say misunderstood, but there is a lot of nuance that we aren’t privy to as civilians to what that job is like and what cops have to do and what they’re also up against to a larger degree, from the government and politicians.

SREENIVASAN: What do you think the structural barrier is? I mean, right now, you had the George Floyd, the justice and policing act, that didn’t move. The John Lewis Voting Rights Act, that’s stuck.

WOOD JR.: I think that there has to be more appeal to getting politicians in place. You know, I sometimes feel like I don’t know if we can leave righteousness up to the American voter. I don’t know if a policy is solely rooted in the American people voting on it, I don’t know. But I do trust that politicians have, there are more levelheaded politicians than not. And finding those and giving those — and even centrists, like I’m not even talking about just — everything’s got to be blue or else it’s going to be crazy, but just you don’t need anybody that’s just going to aliens are coming, let’s go to — like, you have to remember, the people we’re expecting to vote on making this country a better place are the same people who went to Dallas, Texas, to wait and see if John F. Kennedy’s dead body was going to appear at the assassination site so that he could take the presidency back from Joe Biden. This is a fact. Everything I just said is true. So, you’re going to be hard pressed to speak logic into people sometimes. And so, it’s almost like you need — it’s almost a situation where you need more responsible parents to come in and straighten out the kids. You know, I do think that there’s a high degree of performative wokeness in this country. A lot of people wearing shirts, how you vote. Show me your ballot. Take a picture of that. Put that on your shirt. If you want it like — we’re talking allyship, like that’s the stuff that, you know, we can be whatever we want to be out here in the world but when you get into the voting booth, that’s who you really are and the fact these acts have stalled and the fact that certain laws didn’t pass after huge monumental movement, we’re having a moment and this country is finally reckoning with this recent — is it though? Is it?

SREENIVASAN: We just had an election where there are members now elected into state offices, school boards that were at the January 6th riot, they’re not this prison. They have been — they have won the confidence of their neighbors

WOOD JR.: Yes. And these are the parents showing up to the school meetings to make sure X, Y, Z is not enforced. Oh, we had a women’s march. I think we made some progress. I think they heard us. Texas didn’t hear you. So, that becomes this place where, you know, are our voices enough? Do we need better politicians in office to help change this? But getting them in office because North Carolina’s gerrymandering. Like they got it down to the point where they could split a building into two different districts. What side of the hallway do black people work on? All right, that’s not in my district. I’ve got to give it up to them. Racism is getting craftier and craftier though.

SREENIVASAN: Pre-pandemic, maybe #MeToo or post #MeToo, there was — I don’t know you want to call it accountability culture or cancel culture, I’m wondering where you think about that. I mean, should the standards be different for artists? Should a Roy Wood Jr. or Dave Chappell be able to say things in a satirical form or humorous way that shouldn’t be the same as what a CEO does than when they’re sitting at their desk and talk to employees?

WOOD JR.: I think performers should be given certain guardrails. And I think what’s happening, my opinion is that, you know, we’re just in a time now where people, members of marginalized communities they’re like, I don’t like that joke. I don’t want to hear that. You know what? I’m going to type something really quickly to let everybody know I don’t like that. And I think that’s the only difference between now and the ’60s and ’70s, but you also had a time where comedians were being arrested. Comedians were being taken to jail for the things that they were saying. To me, that’s cancel culture. What’s happening right now, in my opinion, with comedy is just people having an opinion. All right. You go to college, show them college kids didn’t want to hear that edgy joke that would have flown in 1995. They don’t want to hear it. So, they have a right to that. So, you can adjust to the market or you can perform solely to people who like that type of humor and more often those are outside of the mainstream and it’s not going to be on TV and you’re going to have opportunities taken away from you from groups and entities that care about the opinions for others, if not for morality, solely for the fiscal purposes of it. And to me, that’s the bigger issue when we get into a lot of the righteousness that comes from cancelling someone and believing that a corporation actually cares about your ideals. I don’t believe for one moment that most of these companies care about that, these companies care about making money and if something controversial makes them a little bit of money, they’re going to do it, unless enough people on the other side go wrong, wrong, wrong, and the company doesn’t want to look bad because the (INAUDIBLE) of the stock price, OK, you know what, we’ve thought — well, they say, we’ve heard your cries and we have decided to take that wrongful thing off the platform. I mean, there’s a lot of hypocrisy, you know, in that.

SREENIVASAN: You’ve got a funny bit in the special about allyship and, again, sort of arena of police reform, what police could do. Let’s take a look at that clip.

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WOOD JR.: The other thing the police could do, this would really build a bridge, every cop in this country once a month, let it [bleep] go. I’m serious. Not every day, not every shift, not every week but just once a month, let it [bleep] go. And not for every crime. I’m not saying for all crime. There are certain crimes that have to be — like murder, ATF, SVU, like you keep the hits. You know, the major crime, you still got to go to jail for that. But a lot of crime that’s out there that cops take us to jail for, you ain’t got to take me to jail for this, man. Come on, dog. Just because it’s a crime don’t mean that you’ve got to enforce it. Really, dog. Crack, you’re going to take me to jail for some crack? Like, crack. That’s what you’re arresting people for still? Crack, cocaine? I’m talking about my own personal allotment for me. My own — my A crack. One — a single rock. A crack. You’re going to take me to jail for a crack, sir? That’s what you’re going to do? It’s drugs, dog. It’s an addiction. It’s not criminal. Drop me off at the don’t do crack no more bill and go fight the real crime. Because that’s how you build the bridge. Because the rift between good cop and bad cop and the argument, it just boils down to who had a good interaction with the police. That’s all it boils down to. And if once a month, you let [bleep] go, you ar creating allies out the [bleep].

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One of my cousins agrees with this policy.

SREENIVASAN: Well, you know, in a strange way, it’s also a little bit of the privileges that we kind of know exist in society, right? I mean, we all have a friend who tell us about something that they got away with. The time that they got pulled over and they just said this and just did this and the cop let them go.

WOOD JR.: Yes.

SREENIVASAN: It just depends on who you are and what you look like and what — you know, sort who wants turns the other way.

WOOD JR.: You know, I just think — you know, awareness aside, where we have to have more people positive interactions that feel genuine and regular and not force propaganda, like when you get into the cops playing basketball in your neighborhood or, you know, when you get into passing out the ice cream and, you know, like speaking with one of my cousins, the younger cop, you know, his assertion and this gave me a little bit of perspective, was that more often than not, when the police are doing something that is morally sound, there are no cameras present for that and there is not a lot of praise there for that and we’re not talking, like, I give you a perfect example. So, we did a story about — for “The Daily Show.” We did a story about ice deportations that were happening in the neighborhood in Jersey.

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We’re looking for people who look undocumented. What do they look like?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It’s not really any type —

WOOD JR.: What about that? What about that, right there?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We don’t know that. We don’t know that, right?

WOOD JR.: So, then, you got to pull them over. We got to talk to them.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: For what?

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WOOD JR.: Through the course of that, we met a local cop who was part of the people that are pushing that against this federal thing that’s coming in and ruining a lot of the brown community in this New Jersey town. And just in casual chitchat, we find out, oh, yes, this cop coaches a baseball team from free on the side between shifts and it’s like straight mentoring half the neighborhood. And it’s like, that’s the stuff a camera should be pointed at as well to help give, you know, some degree, you know, of perspective, so that it doesn’t feel — like, that, to me, that’s not performative because that’s your time. You are really invested in people.

SREENIVASAN: You mentioned the allyship in kind of a funny context about police and we’ve talked a little bit about this but what is an appropriate allyship? How can people express that in a meaningful way, not just a virtue signaling way?

WOOD JR.: I think it’s just about educating yourself on what people are going through and immersing yourself in those worlds. So, it could be something as Googling and reading a book. It could be simple as volunteering somewhere. It could be something as simple as educating yourself on more programs, which could be a part of. You know, it’s not a t-shirt and money. That’s part of it. You know, I’m not saying don’t wear your shirt because that’s also an important message to other people that are in your community that aren’t even thinking about the things that you’re thinking about. So, you know, I’m not saying go home for Thanksgiving and pop in “Selma” and then “Roots” and then, “When They See Us,” but, you know, if conversations come up and the opportunity starts presenting themselves about voting and trying to put all that black history in the history books, well, that’s just history. It’s not black history, it’s just history. You know, so, I think having those conversations, and I joke about that in the special about how, don’t talk to your black friends about race, talk to your forefathers. And so, that’s just kind of a tongue in a cheaper way of saying, talk about this to the people in your community because they’re the ones that are going to be disseminating back out into the world and interacting with us and we want them to be a little more educated. Create more U’s (ph).

SREENIVASAN: The special is called “Imperfect Messenger,” it’s on “Comedy Central” now. Roi Wood Jr., thank you so much.

WOOD JR.: Thank you.