Living In Apartheid

What I Read: In the new book I've started reading called Born a Crime by Trevor Noah, the author talks about his life in South Africa.  He was born in the early 1980s when apartheid was still happening.  This was a major problem for so many people but especially for him since his father is a white man from Switzerland and his mother is a black Xhosa woman from South Africa.  that's why the book is called Born a Crime - because Trevor was literally born a crime in his country.

Trevor Noah today

Trevor as a little boy with his mother

Trevor and his father

In the first chapters of this book, there's a lot of information. Trevor starts the story by talking about going to church with his mother. They went to three different churches every Sunday - white church, black church, and mixed church.  Trevor's mother is very religious and believes that God controls their lives and destinies.

Trevor and his mother were very poor when he was a child.  She was a single mother with a mixed child and all of that made life hard.  Still, they had lots of family around them.  They often lived without running water and electricity and they had an outhouse. Trevor tells a really funny story about going to the bathroom on the kitchen floor because he it was raining and he didn't want to go to the outhouse and get wet.  The other members of his mother's family didn't really know how to treat him since they thought of him as the "white" member of the family.  He didn't get beat by his grandmother, aunts and uncles as much as the other grandkids in the family because they were afraid to hit a "white" person.

When Trevor was growing up he and his mother moved a lot and he went to a few different schools.  It was always hard for him to fit in, especially in a new school because he didn't know if he belonged with white kids or black kids.  Most people thought he was "coloured," which is the word for people with two mixed parents in South Africa. but really he wasn't because he wasn't part of that group and culture in his country. 

Children who were classified as "coloured" under apartheid

At school one time, a white woman talked to Trevor about the class that he was in.  He got put in the A Class for smart students and it was mostly white kids.  He wanted to move to the B Class.  The passage below comes from the book:

     "Oh, no," she said.  "I don't think you want to do that."
     "Why not?"
     "Because those kids are... you know."
     "No, I don't know.  What do you mean?"
     "Look," she said, "you're a smart kid.  You don't want to be in that class."
     "But aren't the classes the same?  English is English.  Math is math."
     "Yeah, but that class is... those kids are gonna hold you back. You want to be in the smart class."
     "But surely there must be some smart kids in the B Class."
     "No, there aren't."
     "But all my friends are there."
     "You don't want to be friends with those kids."
     "Yes, I do."
     We went back and forth.  Finally she gave me a stern warning.
     "You do realize the effects this will have on your future?  You do understand what you're giving up?  This will impact the opportunities you'll have open to you for the rest of your life."
     "I'll take that chance."
(Noah, Location 900-914).

What I Thought About:  In the passage above, it's clear that even after apartheid ended, racism was and still is a real problem in South Africa.  This reminds me of Ecuador and the United States and most other countries that I've seen.  Sometimes people aren't openly racist but like the lady in the quote above you can tell that people have racist attitudes right under the surface.  She might not have said anything racist, but she showed racism in her attitude about the white class and the black class.

The other thing that I really thought about when I was reading this book is the part when Trevor talks about language.  He says that in his life, it's language and being able to talk to people that unites people even more than race.  "That, and so many other smaller incidents in my life, made me realize that language, even more than color, defines who you are to people.  I became a chameleon.  My color didn't change, but I could change your perception of my color.  If you spoke to me in Zulu, I replied to you in Zulu.  If you spoke to me in Tswana, I replied to you in Tswana.  Maybe I didn't look like you, but if I spoke like you, I was you" (Noah, Location 853).

I can apply this quote to my own life because if I weren't bilingual, I wouldn't be able to communicate with my mom's or dad's side of the family because if I spoke only English, I couldn't talk to my dad's family and vice versa.  When I think about my friends, I realize how lucky and I am to be able to communicate with them.  If I go out in the world and meet someone who looks like me and I want to be friends with them, if that person speaks a language I don't understand, we're not likely to end up becoming friends.

What I Conclude:  In conclusion, I've already learned a lot from the first five chapters of this book.  I didn't used to know about the classifications of race under apartheid in South Africa and I especially didn't know about people who were called "coloured."  Trevor Noah thinks of himself as black and I think of myself as black too, but under apartheid, we would both be classified as a crime.  This is weird to think about because we both look most like the group called "coloured."  It's hard for me to accept a government deciding my race for me and I can't believe that Trevor Noah and everyone else in South Africa had to put up with that.  I also can't believe that apartheid happened so recently.

Below is a video of Trevor Noah singing a song in Xhosa with clicks in it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baEiWB2aM9Y