Trevor Noah used the recent Philando Castile verdict as an opportunity to open up about his own experiences with police officers in the US during a behind-the-scenes clip from "The Daily Show."
The comedian, who was born in South Africa, revealed that in the six years he has lived in the US, the police have stopped him "8 to 10 times."
His statement comes after the news that Castile, someone who Noah calls "a model citizen," had been pulled over 49 times by the police before being shot and killed in 2016. The police officer who fatally shot Castile during a routine traffic stop was acquitted of all charges.
Noah said he personally has been stopped in a number of places, including but likely not limited to: his own car; rental cars; a car with tinted windows; a car with rims; a car with no rims; and one place he found most surprising -- a Tesla. "I don't know what silent crime I'm on my way to commit, but I've been stopped in a Tesla," he said.
And while the locations have varied, his reaction stays the same, which is to throw his arms out the window.
"It look so stupid when you see me," he said. "I would rather have the cops go, 'You are weird.' Every cop that comes to my window like, 'What the hell are you doing?' And then we go from there, then I'm like, 'Alright, cool, but you saw where my hands are.'"
Such incidents, as Noah put it, are "just part of a black person's life in America," adding, "It's the truth. I've been stopped a s-- ton of times."
The problem is not rooted in the conversation of black-and-white racism, Noah said, but rather in the police force as a whole.
"It's not racism like n--," he said. "It's a very different thing."
He summed up his feelings with a South African phrase he said translates to being fed up with what's happening but not letting it break or define him as a person.
While his mom used it in reference to him "being a s--head in the house and the apartheid government," he concluded, "that's the feeling I have now."