Stephen Colbert On Charlotte: This Keeps Happening No Matter How Many Times We Do Nothing

Stephen Colbert’s opening segment last night was a lot more serious than his viewers are used to. Colbert responded to the state of emergency in Charlotte, North Carolina and the apparent racist killings of young African-Americans across the country in a short but heartfelt segment.

“The last 24 hours, the news has been really, really rough,” Colbert said. “Angry people in the streets, some of them in riot gear. And the governor of North Carolina has declared a state of emergency in Charlotte. The shooting of African Americans by police officers and the community outrage that follows seems to keep happening over and over again no matter how many times we do nothing.”

Colbert showed a tweet from a USA Today columnist calling on cars to run down protesters and wondered if there wasn’t a better way. “I just wish there was some sort of respectful, silent, civil protest that people could engage in that wouldn’t enrage the other side,” Colbert said. “Yeah, nope, that’s not gonna work either.”

He then turned to Donald Trump’s black outreach and noted that Trump’s solution was stop and frisk policies in black communities. “That’s a bad idea,” Colbert said. “Not only has it been found Unconstitutional, if Trump’s doing the frisking, it’ll take him hours with those tiny hands.”

Colbert also discussed the now notorious former chair of Trump’s Ohio campaign, who claimed there was no racism before Obama became president. “That’s right, there was no racism until Barack Obama was elected! Martin Luther King didn’t just have a dream, the whole thing was just a hallucination! An illusion!”

You can watch the segment below.