Over the past three days,?? ?? ??? as protests against police brutality and racism continue to sweep America and the globe, Late Night with Seth Meyershas been starting each show differently.
After a very short introduction from Meyers, the program has pivoted over to Late Nightwriter Amber Ruffin, who has taken a few minutes each night to share her own experiences with the police in America.
She started on Monday, with a story about being pulled over by a police officer shortly after she'd learned how to drive.
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"To my right there is an old, white cop standing on the side of the road," says Ruffin, "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."
Ruffin says the police officer was so angry and aggressive she thought he was going to kill her — and he only calmed down and changed his demeanour when he approached the window and saw that she was crying from the encounter.
"Every black person I know has a few stories like that," she says. "Many have more than a few."
SEE ALSO: How to find a protest near you to seek justice for George FloydOn Tuesday, Ruffin described an encounter from a few years ago when a different officer pointed a gun at her.
Ruffin says she was skipping down an alleyway to make her friend laugh, when a police car suddenly began flashing its sirens.
"A cop gets out and his gun is drawn, and he goes, 'Put your hands on the hood of the car! Put your hands on the hood!'" says Ruffin. "This man is furious."
Eventually, after being patted down and questioned, Ruffin says the officer saw her white friend standing at the end of alleyway, and quickly changed his attitude, though still reprimanded her for the perfectly legal act of moving quickly down an alley. Ruffin notes again how many stories there are like this, but also how many of them go untold.
"There's this unspoken rule that black people are supposed to take it in stride. Can you imagine having someone pull a gun on you and being expected to take it in stride? Now imagine a bunch of incidents like that over one lifetime, multiple that by 43 million African-Americans, and that is why things are like this right now."
Finally, on Wednesday, the comedian told a story about a police officer stopping her outside her own house, in her pyjamas, while she was handing her friend his wallet.
"Everything she says to us, she says with her hand on her gun," says Ruffin, explaining that the officer was convinced she'd caught Ruffin and her friend doing something illegal.
Ultimately, after Ruffin had proven she lived at the house, the officer went away — but not before telling Ruffin and her friend: "From now on, when I tell you to stop, you stop." Although she hadn't actually told them to stop anything, Ruffin and her friend decided to say "OK" in response.
"That's the kind of thing you have to do to stay alive when you're black," finishes Ruffin. "You have to let the police lie to you at your own house."
From the looks of Ruffin's Twitter feed, there will be more stories like this to come.
"If you're tired of hearing these stories, do something," she says. And you can.
Topics Late Night With Seth Meyers