-Hi, everyone. We were on hiatus last week.
And I want to start tonight by saying
how happy and lucky I feel to be back with you,
as well as how upset I am by this incredibly sad moment
of American history we're all living through.
Many events brought us here,
but the focus is the brutal killing of George Floyd,
a black man, at the hands of a Minnesota policeman.
As a white man, I can't speak
of the deep-rooted and justified fear African-Americans have
when encountered by police,
so here is "Late Night" writer Amber Ruffin.
-Let me tell you a story.
So, once when I was a teenager, I was brand-new to driving,
and I dropped my friend off at work.
And I'm coming back home,
and I'm in morning rush-hour traffic,
and everybody is going over the speed limit.
I think it's like 40, and everyone is going 50.
And I hate it because I'm new to driving.
It's too scary.
When I slow down, it disrupts traffic, so I speed up to 45.
That's five miles over the speed limit.
That's as fast as I'm willing to go.
And I know I'm going too slow,
and I'm in an unfamiliar part of town
and people are whizzing by me.
So to make myself feel better, I turn on Busta Rhymes,
and I friggin' blast it so that, you know, I can calm down.
And blasting Busta Rhymes is something that I recommend
if you're a teenager who is unsure of themselves.
So, I get to a good pace, and I start feeling normal.
And just then, I encounter a speed trap.
And no one is slowing down.
We are all speeding, me least of all.
So, to my right, there is an old, white cop
standing on the side of the road.
And out of these tens of cars, he sees a young, black person
driving a purple car blasting rap music.
And he chooses me. And he's screaming at me.
He is shouting, as if I have murdered someone.
Like, on a scale of 1 to 10, he is at a 27.
And he goes, "Pull the car over!
Pull the goddamn car over right now, mother [bleep]!"
That is what this cop is screaming at me,
and I think, "This is how I die. This man is going to kill me."
And I start crying.
I am bawling, because I am 100% sure
that this man is going to
drag me out of my car, beat me to death,
and, you know, tomorrow on the news, everyone will be like,
"She didn't seem angry, but who knows?"
So, I pull over, and I stop.
He goes, "Pull over the [bleep] car! [Bleep]!"
He's shouting. It does not stop.
So, he gets up to the car, and he puts his hand on the door.
And he goes to start yelling, and he sees me.
He sees a teenage girl whose face is wet with tears.
And I'm just braced,
trying to think of all the good things that have happened
in my life so that I get to heaven thankful,
instead of angry.
And he looks me in the eye.
And he drops it and goes, "Oh, okay, well, just --
It's okay. Just let me have your I.D."
And, you know, he's taken aback.
He goes from a 27 to a negative 2.
His whole demeanor changes, and it's as if
he wasn't the guy who was just screaming at me.
He's a totally different guy.
All of a sudden, he's nice.
So I give him my I.D.
He sends me on my way without a warning,
because once he saw a teenage girl...
shouting was no longer fun?
Look, I have a thousand stories like this.
The cops have pulled a gun on me.
The cops have followed me to my own home.
And every black person I know has a few stories like that.
Many have more than a few.
Black people leave the house every day
knowing that at any time,
we could get murdered by the police.
It's a lot.
And sometimes when you see news footage
like we have seen the past week
and you hear people chalking it up to a few bad apples
instead of how corrupt an entire system is,
it becomes too much.
And that's what I wanted to say.
And I wanted to end this with something hopeful
to, you know, provide some comfort,
but maybe it's time to get uncomfortable.