How many people in this room are not originally from the United States? By a round of applause. -[applause] Where are you from, bro? You right there. [man] Iraq. Youâre from Iraq? Ewww! Iâm just fucking around. How long you been here in the country? [man] Twenty-three years. Twenty-three years? Are you a citizen yet? You are? Congratulations, n***a. Congratulations. Well, welcome to this great land.
You know, Iâm gonna give you a history lesson, âcause Iâm sure this wasnât on your entry exam. But every naturalized American has heard something about what Iâm about to tell you. Picture, itâs the early â50s in the United States. This 14-year-old boy goes down⊠from Chicago to Mississippi to meet his extended family for the first time. Heâd never been to Mississippi. And before he went, his mother said to him, very pointedly, she said, âIf a white man looks you in your eyes in Mississippi, look away.â And I donât know what you know about black people from Chicago, but theyâre not a scared people. Legend has it, he was in front of a convenience store, hanging out with his cousins, having a good time, and a white woman walked out of the store, and he thought she was pretty, and he said⊠[whistles] âBye, baby.â Not realizing that he'd just made a fatal mistake.
Four days later⊠Four days later, a group of adult white men burst into this familyâs home and snatched a 14-year-old boy out of bed, in front of his family that was powerless to stop them, and he was never seen alive again. His name was Emmett Till. They found his body maybe a few days later. It was in a creek, tied to a wheel so it would sink, horribly beaten and bloated. Hideous. And lucky for everybody in America⊠his mother was a fucking gangster.
She was. If you can imagine, in the very midst of a motherâs worst nightmare, this woman had the foresight to think about everybody. She said, âLeave my sonâs casket open.â She said, âThe world needs to see what they did to my baby.â And every publication here in the United States, from Jet magazine all the way to the New York Times, had this boyâs horribly bloated body on its cover. And if our Civil Rights Movement was a car, this boyâs dead body was premium gas. This was a very definitive moment in American history, where every thinking and feeling person was like⊠âYuck! We gotta do better than this.â And they fought beautifully, and here we all are.
And the reason that I bring that up tonight and why itâs relevant now, is because less than a year ago, the woman that he allegedly whistled at⊠admitted on her deathbed⊠that she lied in her court testimony. And you can imagine, when we read that shit, we was like, âOoh! You lying-ass, bitch.â I was furious. That was my initial reaction. And initial reactions, we all learned as we get older, are often wrong or more often incomplete. They call this phenomenon âstanding too close to an elephant.â The analogy being that if you stand too close to an elephant, you canât see the elephant. All you see is its penis-like skin. You gotta step back and give it a better look. And on stepping back and thinking about it for a few moments, I realized that it must have been very difficult for this woman to tell a truth that heinous about herself at any point in her life. Even the very end. And I was grateful that she had the courage to tell it before she left this world. Because itâs an important truth and we needed to know.
And I said to myself, âWell, thank you for telling the truth⊠you lying-ass bitch.â [audience cheering] And then time goes on, and then after time, you can kind of see the whole elephant. And itâs humbling. âCause you realize that this woman lied and that lie caused a murder. But that murder set in motion a sequence of events that made my wonderful life possible. That made this very night possible. How could this be that this lie could make the world a better place? Itâs maddening.
And thatâs how I feel about this president. I feel like this motherfucker might be the lie that saves us all. Because I have never felt more American than when we all hate on this motherfucker together. Jesus Christ. Itâs good. And when it happens, I can see everybody thatâs struggling. So if Iâm on stage and I tell a joke that makes you want to beat up a transgender, then youâre probably a piece of shit and donât come see me anymore. Or if you donât understand that when a football player takes a knee during the national anthem, heâs actually standing up for me, then you might not want to fuck with me anymore. âCause I swear no matter how bad it gets, youâre my countrymen, and I know for a fact that Iâm determined to work shit out with yâall. And if that woman that said that heinous lie was alive today, I would thank her for lying..
And then I would kick her in the pussy.