Ben Carson’s ridiculous comments conflating slavery and immigration have inspired plenty of mockery and disdain, but Trevor Noah took it upon himself Tuesday night to offer our new secretary of Housing and Urban Development a sincere response. Particularly, the Daily Show host accepted Carson’s challenge of “looking up” the word immigrant, which he insisted applied to slaves. Noah’s short answer: No, it does not.
Reading the official definition of the word—“a person who comes to a country to take up permanent resident”—Noah rejected Carson’s attempted revisionism. As he quipped, “Calling slaves immigrants is like saying ‘It’s not kidnapping, that person just got a free vacation in the basement!’ ”
But Noah went further than merely issuing a correction, laying out the impact of mischaracterizing slavery as Carson did. He did acknowledge that “it’s seductive to believe that African Americans share in the American immigration story, and that trying to “sell unity” can be a natural thing to do. But Noah then provided the perfect explanation as to why it’s important to resist the temptation:
Slaves weren’t immigrants because an immigrant has choice. They choose the country they’re going to because they hope it will bring them a better life. Saying that slaves are just another group of immigrants erases how black people are uniquely oppressed in America. It helps to justify blaming African Americans for their hardships. You can’t do that.
