In his Twitter bio, Roy Wood Jr. says he tells the truth like “white draws,” which seems to be his mystical calling, pointing out the excrement in our lives. As a correspondent since 2015 for Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, a veritable white pop-cultural institution, Wood Jr. is particularly subversive and incisive because he universalizes the specifics of everyday Black life in the form of dramatic and explorative narratives. And his wry, observational humor, skits, and absurdist commentary elucidate American life, particularly as it relates to race and bigotry. Take a segment he did after white supremacists held a deadly rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. The joke shifts from the comedian ignoring the shock and horror of the rally to the farcicality of what it means to be a master race. Wood Jr. mocks the racists’ bravado, and suggests that if white supremacists were truly indomitable, then the rally should have been held in a Black city instead of a white college town. He then critiques the redundancy of a master race that can’t craft torches and instead has to buy them from a gardening store.

In addition to working on The Daily Show, Wood Jr. is crafting his as-yet-unnamed, third one-hour stand-up special for Comedy Central, which is set to air this year. It follows his previous two specials: 2019’s No One Loves You and his first, 2017’s Father Figure. (Both premiered as the network’s highest-rated original stand-up special.) Wood Jr. had just celebrated his forty-second birthday when we spoke by phone in December 2020. It was close to dinnertime, and Wood Jr. was setting up cameras in a bedroom in the Harlem apartment he shares with his girlfriend, shoe designer Salone Monet, and their young son. We talked about his writing process, comedy as a form of journalism, and one joke he tells in Father Figure, which details why he always asks store clerks for a receipt and a plastic bag. This joke is framed as a tug-of-war with a concerned Best Buy clerk, who insists Wood Jr. doesn’t need a bag for a purchase. When confronted by the cashier about not caring for the earth, Wood Jr. has to decide between saving the environment and risking a dalliance with security. He retorts, “It’s about safety. I’m Black. I don’t get the luxury of just walking out with shit in my hand.” The concept resonated so much with the audience that they joined in to say the punch line at the end of the setup: “I need the receipt!” Leaving without conspicuously holding a bag—and a receipt—could result in a deadly misunderstanding with store security. The joke illustrates the small ways racism affects how people move through the world, especially in stores with high-value items. It’s an observation that’s at once hilarious and heartbreaking because it is so clear that many of us live in two separate Americas.