Trevor Noah is currently mired in a welter of petty stuff. Noah, a South African comedian, was picked to succeed Jon Stewart at the helm of The Daily Show. Shortly thereafter, the internet unearthed a number of tweets in which Noah made anti-Semitic and misogynist jokes.

I should probably put that word “jokes” in quotes; the tweets are little more than tedious ritualized restating of stereotypes: Jewish people are rich, “fat chicks” are unattractive. Still, no matter how unfunny they are, a couple of bad social media jokes are only a couple of bad social media jokes. Compared to actual apartheid (which was abolished during Noah’s lifetime) they seem relatively minor. Elahe Izadi at The Washington Post points out that “the handful of tweets that have Trevor Noah in the hot seat represent less than one percent of Noah’s entire Twitter output.” Comedians sometimes make bad jokes. If Noah stumbled into stereotypes on a few occasions—well, people make mistakes. Do we really need to make a big deal about it?

I certainly don’t think Noah should be fired. But I think it’s appropriate to criticize him for his public statements. Yes, it’s petty to call him out over a handful of tweets—but society, as a web of interpersonal relationships, norms, and small daily interactions, is, again, built around petty stuff. Women have their physical appearance policed, not through violence, but through offhand comments and shaming. When Noah writes, “'Oh yeah the weekend. People are gonna get drunk & think that I'm sexy!' - fat chicks everywhere”—that’s not just a joke. It's part of a system of norms that says that guys have a right to comment on women’s bodies and to sneer at them for being insufficiently sexual, or too sexual, or unattractive, or too attractive, or for expressing sexual desire, or for not expressing sexual desire.

The joke, in other words, is part of an etiquette, or ties into an etiquette, whereby women in public are supposed to feel ashamed for being women. Discrimination, stigma, and sexism—like segregation—function through small-bore norms, which determine what you can wear, or think, or feel, without being jostled, censured, or shamed.

And if prejudice is a norm, then ending prejudice has to involve etiquette as well. Should women feel shame for existing? Or should people feel shame for spouting sexist garbage? The answer is governed by etiquette—by what behaviors and what kinds of language are seen as publicly natural or acceptable. Noah is soon going to have a massive national platform. Is it okay for him to use that platform to sneer at women and Jews? Many are currently insisting, as a matter of etiquette, that it is not.

You might argue that this is superfluous; that everyone knows that it is not okay to insult Jews or women. But in fact, social norms change quickly and are constantly contested. Part of the way you can tell that etiquette is important is that it’s such a battleground. The controversy around the new Indiana religious-freedom law is a good example.