John Legend on Why Racism Needs to Be Discussed: "It's Killing Our Kids"

John Legend stopped by The Daily Show to talk to Jon Stewart about his upcoming documentary, Southern Rites, on Monday, and the singer got candid about how racism continues to affect society. He's an executive producer for the HBO documentary, which covers segregated proms in Georgia. During the interview, John talked about the nature of racism, saying, "Some racism is easy to identify, the Donald Sterlings of the world, the people who use the N-word in a malicious way. . . . But a lot of racism is structural." He referenced the criminal justice system and "things that end up discounting the value of black lives."

At one point, Jon mentioned how some people get frustrated by the race conversation, and John said, "We don't want to talk about racism all of the time. If it weren't here, if we didn't have to deal with it every day, we would love for it not to be the subject of conversation . . . We would love to not have to keep bringing this up but it's killing our kids, it's resulting in so much pain and suffering for our community, so we have to bring it up." Watch the full clip above, then watch Michelle Obama's Tuskegee University commencement speech, in which the first lady addressed some of the questions and issues she faced going into the White House.