Trevor Noah slams Atlanta shootings: ‘Please don’t tell me that this thing had nothing to do with race’

‘Why are people so invested in solving the symptoms instead of the cause? America does this time and time again’

Trevor Noah delivered a powerful monologue around the recent shootings in Atlanta, where eight people, six of whom were of Asian heritage, were killed in a rampage at three area spas.

America, Noah argued, should have seen this coming.

“We see these things happening,” Noah said in the Daily Show monologue on 17 March. “People have been warning, people in the Asian community have been tweeting, saying please help us.”

“Why are people so invested in solving the symptoms instead of the cause? America does this time and time again. A country that wants to fight the symptoms and not the underlying conditions that cause those symptoms to take effect,” he said.

The Daily Show host continued, pressing the issue that, despite any vague rhetoric given by authorities, the Atlanta shootings were clearly racially motivated.

“Whatever you do, please don't tell me that this thing had nothing to do with race. Even if the shooter says that – he thinks it had to do with his 'sex addiction' – you can't disconnect this violence from the racial stereotypes people attach to Asian women. This guy blamed a specific race of people for his problems, and then murdered them of it.

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“If that's not racism, then the word has no meaning.”

The alleged shooter, identified as Robert Aaron Long, 21, was arrested in southwest Georgia after the killings in Atlanta on Tuesday evening (16 March).

“He was pretty much fed up and kind of at the end of his rope,” Captain Baker from Cherokee County sheriff’s office said, talking about the accused on Wednesday. “Yesterday was a really bad day for him and this is what he did.”

The deputy also said Long had “understood the gravity” of the accusations when he was interviewed by investigators on Wednesday morning.