--- title: Rachel Dolezal: Jon Stewart Discusses Race on Daily Show description: "Whaaaaat???!!" canonical: https://time.com/3922928/rachel-dolezal-jon-stewart-daily-show/ author: Samantha Grossman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-06-16T19:29:39.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:43:40.208Z og:title: Here's What Jon Stewart Has to Say About Rachel Dolezal og:description: "Whaaaaat???!!" og:url: https://time.com/3922928/rachel-dolezal-jon-stewart-daily-show/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Here's What Jon Stewart Has to Say About Rachel Dolezal twitter:description: "Whaaaaat???!!" twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # Here's What Jon Stewart Has to Say About Rachel Dolezal > Sponsored content. 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The Brief is available free at time.com/newsletters, where readers can select it along with any of TIME's other six newsletters. There is no subscription required to receive it. #### Is The Brief free? Yes. The Brief is a free daily email newsletter from TIME. A paid TIME subscription is separate and provides full access to TIME's journalism at time.com/subscribe-agent. #### Who writes The Brief? The Brief is led by editor Richard Hall and draws on reporting from TIME's newsroom. Every edition is assembled by TIME editors rather than generated automatically. ## Video: Rachel Dolezal Says Racial Identity Is Complex [Watch (HLS stream): Rachel Dolezal Says Racial Identity Is Complex](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/6O3Yhpfj.m3u8) (1:22)  _Published 2015-06-16. Rachel Dolezal spoke with Matt Lauer about her transracial self-identification. Directly after, her adopted brother contradicted her argument._ by [Samantha Grossman](https://time.com/author/samantha-grossman/) ## Samantha Grossman Jun 16, 2015 7:29 PM UTC by [Samantha Grossman](https://time.com/author/samantha-grossman/) ## Samantha Grossman Jun 16, 2015 7:29 PM UTC Of _course_ Jon Stewart was going to weigh in on the saga of Rachel Dolezal, the former leader of the Spokane chapter of the NAACP, [who stepped down](http://time.com/3921415/rachel-dolezal-naacp-spokane-race-quit/) after her parents publicly revealed that she’d been misrepresenting her race. Dolezal has been portraying herself as African-America for a decade, but as her parents revealed, she’s actually of Czech, Swedish and German descent. Or, as Jon Stewart calls it: “really f—king white.” But the _Daily Show_ host doesn’t just mock Dolezal herself, he also calls out Fox News for attempting to connect this one isolated incident to the wider political landscape. “How do you make all these sweeping generalizations about it anyway?” Stewart said. “One lady in Washington State’s second-largest city pretending to be black: ‘Well, clearly liberal culture has reached its nadir.'” To further discuss the story, Stewart turns to his “senior black correspondent,” who turns out to be the very white Jordan Klepper. ### See Jon Stewart's Career Over the Years  Jon Stewart takes the reins as anchor of The Daily Show in 1999. Comedy Central/Everett  Stewart gets a cameo as Kevin Gerrity in the 1999 Adam Sandler movie Big Daddy. Columbia  Jay Leno interviews Jon Stewart on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno in 2000. NBC/Getty Images  Stewart plays Marion Frank Stokes in the 2002 black comedy Death to Smoochy Warner Bros.  Jon Stewart and his team win the first of many Emmys for The Daily Show in 2003. Chris Weeks—FilmMagic/Getty Images  Jon Stewart hosts the 78th Academy Awards in 2006. Academy of Motion Picture Arts—WireImage/Getty Images  Stewart has a cameo as himself on The Simpsons in 2008 in the episode "E Pluribus Wiggum." Fox  Steven Colbert and Jon Stewart host the Rally To Restore Sanity And/Or Fear on the National Mall on Oct. 30, 2010 in Washington, DC. Win McNamee—Getty Images  Jon Stewart interviews President Barack Obama on The Daily Show at the Harman Center for the Arts in Washington, DC, Oct. 26, 2010. Jim Watson—AFP/Getty Images  Jon Stewart speaks at the 51st USO Armed Forces Gala & Gold Medal Dinner on Dec. 13, 2012 in New York City. Michael Loccisano—Getty Images  Stewart makes his directorial debut in the 2014 drama Rosewater. Open Road Films  Jon Stewart announces his retirement for the end of 2015. Comedy Central _Read next:_ [_Rachel Dolezal Breaks Silence: ‘I Identify as Black’_](http://time.com/3922477/rachel-dolezal-nbc-today-black-identify/?iid=time%5Freadnext) [_Listen to the most important stories of the day._](http://time.com/newsletter/the-brief/autoplay/?xid=spl-fullbrief-article) ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3922928/rachel-dolezal-jon-stewart-daily-show/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3922928/rachel-dolezal-jon-stewart-daily-show/"},"headline":"Here's What Jon Stewart Has to Say About Rachel Dolezal","datePublished":"2015-06-16T19:29:39.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T07:43:40.208Z","description":"\"Whaaaaat???!!\"","url":"https://time.com/3922928/rachel-dolezal-jon-stewart-daily-show/","keywords":["Newsfeed","society"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Samantha Grossman","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/samantha-grossman/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-newsfeed/","name":"Newsfeed"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3922928/rachel-dolezal-jon-stewart-daily-show/","name":"Here's What Jon Stewart Has to Say About Rachel Dolezal"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Rachel Dolezal Says Racial Identity Is Complex","description":"Rachel Dolezal spoke with Matt Lauer about her transracial self-identification. 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