Lin-Manuel Miranda to Trevor Noah about Afro-Latinos complaining that they weren’t represented in In The Heights (9:03 mark): “I am listening, and I do want to do better with each project, and I want to keep having at-bats.”

Miranda’s response was obviously polite, respectful and soft-spoken, but “I’m listening” completely sidesteps the reason[s] why he and director Jon Chu didn’t include dark-skinned Afro-Latinos in their film of In The Heights.

LMM presumably didn’t create any Afro-Latino characters in either the stage version or the film because…are you sitting down?…because they hadn’t been part of his experience while growing up in Inwood (north of Washington Heights) and so members of this ethnic group simply weren’t included in the musical…it was his choice, his decision, his way of looking at life and community.

Another way of putting it is “gee, I’m sorry I didn’t populate my musical with one or two Afro-Latino characters. I didn’t fail to do so out of malice or indifference, I assure you. Afro-Latinos just weren’t part of my growing-up-in-Inwood world…no offense but we all write about what we know, what we’ve been through, what we’ve seen and felt and tasted.

“But I have an idea…wanna hear it? My idea is this: write your own stage musical about the Afro-Latino community in Washington Heights.”

Bonus Noah question for LMM: “Lin-Manuel, everything you create turns to gold…you’re a soul man, a magic man…everything you do and everything you touch brings God’s wondrous light. So what the fuck happened with In The Heights, bruh? It didn’t even come close to making what the wokesters said it would. Nobody outside of the Dominican-Latin community, fans of musicals, gay guys, your personal friends and the friends of Eric Kohn…nobody went to see it last weekend, and it didn’t stream all that well either. It’s a flop, and that’s on you, baby. So what happened?”