Leslie Jones Says We’re Not Talking Enough About Racism

Leslie Jones returned to The Daily Show this week to discuss a topic she says most people are afraid to talk about: racism. “Buckle up, bitches,” she warned, “‘cause I’m not scared.”

What’s really got Jones on a rant are recent remarks by President Trump about what he calls “the last remaining segment of woke” — in other words, history museums. In a Truth Social post, Trump railed against the Smithsonian for focusing on negative aspects of America’s past, including “how horrible our country is, how bad slavery was.”

“Oh, are we hurting your little feelings, you bitch?” Jones asked. “Well, Mr. President. Slavery feels bad to talk about because slavery was bad.”

In Jones’ view, museums don’t go nearly far enough in explaining the atrocities of slavery. “If you don’t leave an African-American history museum weeping and wanting to give your closest Black friends reparations,” she said, “then they didn’t do the museum right.”

Jones also has a problem with the overuse of the term “woke.” In the case of the Black Little Mermaid, she concedes that maybe there’s a point. But “teaching slavery is not woke,” she says. “It’s history.” Erasing Black history from museums leads to idiotic comments from wannabe pundits like Jillian Barberie, who complained to CNN about exhibits that blame racism on just one race. That's unfair, she argued, because “less than 2 percent of white Americans owned slaves.” 

Jillian Barberie? “Isn’t that the fitness bitch who lied about how I could get abs in 60 minutes?” Jones asked. “How did you go from counting calories to counting slaves?” 

Barberie is off-base, of course, using slanted statistics from conservative memes that Snopes and others have debunked. 

Another Barberie appearance made things worse, blaming Black degeneracy for “white hostility that then validates and begets white degeneracy.” In other words, Jones said, Barberie is trying to convince Black people that it’s their fault that white people are racist. “Woo, you mother(bleep)ers are good at gaslighting,” Jones conceded.

Why should everyone care about continuing racist attitudes in America? Jones pointed to recent labor statistics that show unemployment rising among Black women in disproportionate numbers. The news story also reported that, “Economists have told us that when we see the unemployment rate going up for Black people, it’s a sign that it could soon go up for all people.”

“America, you in danger, girl,” Jones warned. “We keep trying to tell you this is a horror movie. Just because the Black guy got killed first doesn’t mean that the white people are safe. Because if the Black person can’t outrun the chainsaw killer, none of y’all can.”

Racism isn’t going away any time soon, she concluded. One solution might be for everybody to take time to visit a Black history museum. “Go learn, go study, educate yourself,” Jones said, “while they’re still here.”