On Wednesday night, Daily Show host Trevor Noah proposed a solution to the Confederate statues dilemma. Instead of removing the statues altogether, he said, the U.S should add a statue of LeBron James dunking on the heads of Confederate soldiers.
After showing a montage of clips, from a man referring to Martin Luther King Jr. as “Martin Luther Coon,” to a CNN interview with Stonewall Jackson descendent Warren Christian, Daily Show correspondent Roy Wood Jr. said that arguing to keep the statues in order to remember the past is “like if a woman got out of an abusive relationship and then she had to keep pictures of her ex up in her house to remember the time.”
“Like no, I don’t need pictures to remember pain,” he said.
Trevor replied, “People say we want to remember the Civil War. I always think that there is an easier way to remember what happened in the Civil War. Just walk around in the South and if you see free black people, then you know what happened in the Civil War.”
Noah and Wood Jr. then attempted to deflate arguments that removing Confederate statues will lead to removing statues of George Washington or Thomas Jefferson (which is already being proposed) to which Wood Jr. answered, “It’s not the same, man. First of all, Washington and Jefferson are known for a lot of reasons, you only know Robert E. Lee because he fought to keep slavery.”
Wood Jr. said that removing the statues are unnecessary to fix the problem and instead the country should just follow the lead of Charlottesville and throw a black tarp over them.
Noah disagreed. “Instead of hiding statues or tearing them down, maybe we should add something to them,” he said. “Like a representation of black people’s contribution to history.”
Before Noah gave his LeBron idea, Wood Jr. said that a statue of Frederick Douglass piggybacking Robert E. Lee should be added.
“Just to remind them who lost the war,” Noah said.
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