“The Daily Show” host Trevor Noah welcomed singer India Arie to address the recent Joe Rogan-Spotify controversy. Arie was the one that made the compilation of the podcast using the n-word on several occasions.
During the interview, Arie stated that she believes Rogan is “consciously racist,” and some media outlets, like Mediaite, ran with the quote; however, Noah did his best to let everyone know that the interview consisted more than that quote.
“WTF???,” Noah tweeted. “She also said she doesn’t hate Joe Rogan. She also said we need a path to redemption; she also said it’s a complex issue. Stop using clickbait to make people angrier and hate each other. Her comments have nuance, and your tweet robs her of that!”
Arie also stated in her interview with Noah that Rogan was saying the racial slur to get a rise out of people and understood it was inappropriate to say that word.
“I think he was saying it because it got a rise out of people. That’s why he would say it. He knew that it was inappropriate, and I think the fact that he did it repeatedly and was conscious and knew, I think that is being racist,” Arie said.
But as Noah stated, Arie adds that being a racist doesn’t make Rogan a bad person necessarily.
“I don’t think being a racist makes you a bad person, necessarily,” Arie said. “It makes you a person who was raised in our society (…) I don’t believe Joe Rogan didn’t know it was the atomic bomb of racial slurs.”
However, she did provide a call to action for Rogan to tell his audience to stop harassing her online with the N-word.
“If you want to really lead your listeners down a new path, then lead them to the point where they don’t feel that is the right language to come in my DMs and call me an N-word, ” Arie said.
Eduardo Razo
Eduardo Razo is the Assistant Content Editor for BNM, which includes writing daily news stories on the news media industry. He can be found on Twitter @eddierazo_ or you can reach him by email at [email protected]
