Good morning/afternoon everybody. Good to have you. This is weird 'cause I'm just gonna talk to your phones and we're right here. It's a strange experience. Welcome to the millennial age. You'll have the picture and you'll show it to your friend and they'll go what does he look like in person? You go, I don't know, I was also looking at my phone when I should have been there with him. First of all, thank you very much, Bill and Melinda for having me. When I was first asked to be here they said hey, we want you to come and speak at this event, Goal keepers, and talk about what'shappening in the world and I looked through all of the people speaking and I said butI have nothing. I do not have a fridge that can change lives,I do not have a plan to eradicate HIV in South Africa and in southern Africa and the restof the continent and I most definitely cannot ride a motorbike so I don't know what I cando for you. Bill just said come and share your thoughts,your stories, your ideas and I guess that's how I process information. That's how I process my world, so, I'll tellyou a little bit about myself and why Goalkeepers means so much to me. So, in case you don't know me, my name isTrevor Noah, I grew up in South Africa during a time known as apartheid and for those who don't know, apartheid was a system of laws which made it illegal for black people andwhite people to integrate with each other amongst other things.
Black people lived in separate areas to whitepeople, they had different rules, they were segregated and this was particularly toughfor me because I grew up in a mixed family, well, with me being the mixed one in the family. My mother's a black woman, a Xhosa woman fromSouth Africa and in case you're wondering, Xhosa is one of the languages with the clicksin it, Xhosa. Xhosa but not like in American movies. I've seen those movies where they have theAfricans and they're like. That's not a language, alright? No, even we watch those movies and we're likeI wonder what they are saying. It's not a language but my mother's a Xhosa woman, South African, my father's Swiss from Switzerland and was a white man and stillis a white man, he didn't change and so they got together during this time which was against the law and they had me and it wasn't easy growing up in this family and that's really where our journey began because we were a family that couldn't be together, we werea family that was for all intents and purposes a crime that existed, me being the born frommy mother because of my father was me being born a crime and one of the biggest things I connected with when reading about Goalkeepers and learning about the organization was theoptimism, was the ability to see what no one could see at a time when no one should almosthave the right to see it and my mother was one of those people. My mother's a beautiful, powerful woman who endured a lot during her life. We lived through apartheid in South Africa,we lived through her going on to marry a man who was extremely abusive, an alcoholic andthroughout all of that the one thing that I always admired in my mom was that she had the ability to appreciate the reality of the world she was in but also optimistically pursue the future that she wished to exist in and that's for me what Goalkeepers is all about,optimism. People always ask, they go is the world going to be in a better place? Is the world getting better or is it getting worse. Now, depending on who you ask there will alwaysbe a different answer. I've come to find one of the reasons I believe the world is getting better is because we have access to information on how bad the world actually is which I know is a strange thing to say but that's honestly what I believe. As a young person and as someone who makes a show for young people, one of the most powerful tools I've realized is information. We come from an age where there was misinformation,disinformation and there is some of it today but now more than ever young people communicate across borders, across continents, you see people in England and in America and SouthAfrica tweeting, talking to people in Myanmar.
You see people speaking out about what theysee happening in Sudan, you see people commiserating and sharing with victims of hurricanes acrossthe Caribbean or across Texas and whenever I look at that I go it's one of the most powerful tools that if harnessed correctly can lead to a completely new way that we communicate and that we change the world. And young people are driven. That's one of the most beautiful things I'verealized is that we live in a new age. Millennials often times are marked as they'relazy, they believe that they're entitled and they cry about small things which is truebut they're also driven, they also wish to make a change, they also believe that they can make a change. I believe that information and these tools that we possess today have helped increase that. More than ever we see that in America. As the host of The Daily Show I'm obviously in a world where we comment on news and politics and one thing I've noticed with my audienceis not only are young people growing into the world of politics but they're engaged,engaged in a way that people were never engaged before, engaged in a way where they understandthat they can actually change the course of history as opposed to just being a part of it. It's a beautiful experience to see that'staking place across continents. In my home country South Africa we see the same thing, young people standing up and saying we don't accept the status quo, we can changeour destiny, we can change the future, we can be a part of this world and essentially that's what's happening in America right now, you feel it. People always come up to me and they go, Trevor,as the host of The Daily Show how do you feel about Donald Trump? I say well, I don't know how to feel about him that's the honest truth. He's a paradox for me emotionally. One part of me is terrified at the notionthat he is president of the most powerful nation of the world, the other side of me knows that every day he's going to make me laugh. I cannot deny this. The best way I can put it is it's almost like there's a giant astroid headed towards the Earth but it's shaped like penis. I think I'm gonna die but I know I'm gonna laugh. And this is a tough place to be in becauseyou have to process the very real situation that you are in and that is a dangerous one but at the same time you can acknowledge that when you laugh, you're not controlled by fearand that's something that I've always lived with in my life, in my family. My mother always said to me, she said whenwe are laughing, we are not afraid. When we are laughing we are experiencing our truer selves. It doesn't mean what I happening to us isnot real but it means that we can process the very real world that is happening to usand in many ways I try and look at the positives. People go, is the world getting better? I go I believe it's always getting better but in many ways the world is like the body.
You cannot see the change when you look atit every single day but if you take snapshots you can see how things are getting better. you can also see how some things are getting worse, climate change is one of those and that's where young people are stepping upand saying hey, hurricanes are a good example, the intensity of these once-in-a-lifetime events has increased, maybe it's time to do something. Young people are speaking up. Donald Trump is doing that. People are speaking up, they're engaging likenever before. For the first time in history we're living through a time period where we're learning about the presidency at the same time as the president which is engaging people like never before. You wake up, you read the newspaper and yougo I never knew this before and somewhere at that exact same moment the president isreading that same newspaper saying the exact same thing and that for me is exciting. Is it scary? Yes, but most exciting things are scary but honestly, I saw it over the last few weeks and I mean it's still unfolding now. You have Hurricane Maria which is wreaking havoc and moving to Puerto Rico now and we're seeing the devastation but we've also seenthe giving. I was touched by how many people even on our show reached out and there is an opportunity for everyone to become a goal keeper whichis what excites me and that is in this new world of technology we have the opportunityto engage with activists on the ground level. People often mock millennials and they say these are hashtag activists and I argue they're hashtag activists until they're given theopportunity to take it from a tweet into the street and so I urge every single one of youin this room if you have the power, if you have the ability, if you have the informationor the knowledge, take these people up on what they're offering. They're energized, they're optimistic, they'repowerful beyond all measure and I'm proud to say that I am one of them, I am a millennialand by proxy I hope to be a goalkeeper. Thank you very much for having me and congratulationson everything today.
Comments
Post a Comment