Trevor Noah's joke was racist and his defence does not stand

Trevor Noah's response to French ambassador's complaint about his racist joke does not stand up to scrutiny

Original joke (1st minute only):

Noah's response to complaint by French ambassador:

OK, I had to unpack this response..



The French football team represents France. Obviously.

In his response to the French ambassador's complaint, Noah has tried to redefine his joke premise to a different idea about shared identity traits, but what he said here was not the premise of the joke. Noah's joke was premised on the idea that the players were not French and the win represented a win for Africa (his word).

"Africa won the World Cup... they have to say it's the French team but look at those guys, huh? You don't get that tan by hanging out in the South of France, my friends."
- Trevor Noah

Individuals, (including the individuals in the French team) have many many characteristics and traits that make up their identity, as any clinical psychologist will tell you. However the team that the individuals played in (and manager etc) that won the World Cup represented France. So.. yes.. an individual can be French and of African ancestry.. and male.. and tall.. and right handed and bilingual and heterosexual etc etc.. the characteristics that make up an individual's identity are not necessarily 'erased' (Noah's word) by being French nor by representing France. The ambassador's response was somewhat zealous about the primacy of French identity, but he was basically correct because citizenship is the social contract with the state that includes the protection of the citizen's rights, and in order to protect these rights for all citizens, citizenship has primacy.

Africa is not a country, it is a vast continent so what Noah means by 'Africans' requires some unpacking: it is pretty apparent from what he says in his original joke that he is not talking about people from (or with ancestry from) places like Libya or Tunisia or Morocco, ie he means sub-Saharan African ancestry. Doesn't that fall under the definition of a race? The premise of Noah's original joke would therefore be that the World Cup was not won by France but by a race, which would be racist. It makes no sense either, else I could claim the French victory because most or all of the winning side were right handed like me. Claiming the victory because you share an immutable characteristic with most of the players in the winning team while sidelining that which the team (and its supporters) represents as part of the game is, at best, unsporting.

Noah acknowledges that sidelining the French status of 'Africans' (his word) is equivalent to the racism of the French far right. However, instead of conceding the mistake, Noah makes an appeal to context. His claim is that the context is that it is him saying this, so it makes the bad idea on which the joke is premised different and therefore acceptable (ie the argument reduces to 'its ok for me to give primacy to race but not for you to give primacy to race') which is unprincipled, an appeal to identity fallacy and a genetic fallacy. The context he argues that makes a difference is that he is including the African (his word) players in his group in order to share in the victory, rather than excluding or sidelining them. However, (and in spite of Noah's attempts to redefine it in his response) the premise of the joke was to give primacy to the idea of a win for 'Africa', and necessarily does sideline what the players represent in the game (ie France). In any case, as per the fallacy of the argument, the validity of an argument (or lack thereof) is independent of the identity of the arguer (it doesn't matter if it is a painter or a physicist says 'the Earth is flat because the horizon is straight', it is wrong either way). That the claim is made by Noah does not affect that the argument itself is not different to the French far right argument that individuals with the immutable characteristics that both they and Noah identify ("You don't get that tan by hanging out in the South of France.") are to be primarily regarded as something other than French ("they have to say it's the French team but look at those guys").

The French ambassador is correct. I would say the French football team and their manager are entitled to be upset by Noah's joke. If they are, then Noah personally owes them each an apology (unless he has privately apologized to them already).

It maybe described as 'just a joke', but jokes are based on ideas. This one was based on a bad idea.