BORN A CRIME by Trevor Noah
4 TOTAL THEMES (very detailed)
, RACISM, APARTHEID, AND THE CYCLE OF POVERTY
Born a Crime recounts South African comedian Trevor Noah’s childhood as his nation
transitioned from apartheid, a white supremacist system of government based on racial
segregation, forced labour, and the disenfranchisement of non-whites, to a tenuous
democracy led by the black majority. Noah is mixed-race, with a white father (Robert)
and a black Xhosa mother (Patricia), making his very existence a violation of the
apartheid laws against interracial sex. With his single mother, Noah suffers a kind of
poverty by design: the apartheid laws are designed to ensure that non-whites remain
too poor and resourceless to fight the government. But the end of apartheid does not
end this poverty or inequality; rather, it leaves lasting wounds, especially in the native
African communities that remain stuck in a world circumscribed by violence, poverty,
and suspicion.
The apartheid government under which Noah is born does everything in its power to
systematically repress and disempower non-whites, forcing them to constantly live
under siege. Noah explains that apartheid exploited the minor differences among
groups to keep them focused on one another, and not on the government: it separated
blacks, Indians, and coloureds into separate territory and ensured that groups like the
Zulu and Xhosa remained at one another’s throats. Apartheid is a uniquely cruel system
that combines the three stages of American racism—segregation, forced displacement,
and slavery—into one. Most notably, it forces native Africans to move to rural
“homelands” that are too depleted to farm or slums called “townships” that are
intended to be unliveable. For instance, Noah notes that Soweto, the enormous
township where his grandmother lives, was “designed to be bombed.” There are only
two roads in and out, in case the government wants to respond to unrest by confining
people inside and killing them en masse from the air. During apartheid, the police
already routinely massacre Soweto’s residents; Noah sees apartheid’s worst, gratuitous
violence. Strangely, because he is mixed-race in a black family, he also directly sees
“how easy it is for white people to get comfortable with a system that awards them all
the perks.” His grandmother gives him as much food as he wants and never disciplines
him “because [she doesn’t] know how to hit a white child,” for instance, and he
becomes famous in Soweto for his light skin.
Even after South Africa becomes a democracy, in many ways apartheid conditions
continue; black natives, in particular, are now “free” but lack the opportunities or
resources they would need to make anything out of this “freedom.” They lack white
families’ intergenerational knowledge about how to advance in a capitalist society and
continue to face severe discrimination. When Noah accidentally burns down a white
family’s house, luckily the family loses nothing because they have insurance; in contrast,
when Noah’s mother is shot at the end of the book, she does not have health
insurance, and Noah has to foot the entire bill. Similarly, white businesses continue to
dominate the economy, while Noah’s family becomes penniless because they never
4 TOTAL THEMES (very detailed)
, RACISM, APARTHEID, AND THE CYCLE OF POVERTY
Born a Crime recounts South African comedian Trevor Noah’s childhood as his nation
transitioned from apartheid, a white supremacist system of government based on racial
segregation, forced labour, and the disenfranchisement of non-whites, to a tenuous
democracy led by the black majority. Noah is mixed-race, with a white father (Robert)
and a black Xhosa mother (Patricia), making his very existence a violation of the
apartheid laws against interracial sex. With his single mother, Noah suffers a kind of
poverty by design: the apartheid laws are designed to ensure that non-whites remain
too poor and resourceless to fight the government. But the end of apartheid does not
end this poverty or inequality; rather, it leaves lasting wounds, especially in the native
African communities that remain stuck in a world circumscribed by violence, poverty,
and suspicion.
The apartheid government under which Noah is born does everything in its power to
systematically repress and disempower non-whites, forcing them to constantly live
under siege. Noah explains that apartheid exploited the minor differences among
groups to keep them focused on one another, and not on the government: it separated
blacks, Indians, and coloureds into separate territory and ensured that groups like the
Zulu and Xhosa remained at one another’s throats. Apartheid is a uniquely cruel system
that combines the three stages of American racism—segregation, forced displacement,
and slavery—into one. Most notably, it forces native Africans to move to rural
“homelands” that are too depleted to farm or slums called “townships” that are
intended to be unliveable. For instance, Noah notes that Soweto, the enormous
township where his grandmother lives, was “designed to be bombed.” There are only
two roads in and out, in case the government wants to respond to unrest by confining
people inside and killing them en masse from the air. During apartheid, the police
already routinely massacre Soweto’s residents; Noah sees apartheid’s worst, gratuitous
violence. Strangely, because he is mixed-race in a black family, he also directly sees
“how easy it is for white people to get comfortable with a system that awards them all
the perks.” His grandmother gives him as much food as he wants and never disciplines
him “because [she doesn’t] know how to hit a white child,” for instance, and he
becomes famous in Soweto for his light skin.
Even after South Africa becomes a democracy, in many ways apartheid conditions
continue; black natives, in particular, are now “free” but lack the opportunities or
resources they would need to make anything out of this “freedom.” They lack white
families’ intergenerational knowledge about how to advance in a capitalist society and
continue to face severe discrimination. When Noah accidentally burns down a white
family’s house, luckily the family loses nothing because they have insurance; in contrast,
when Noah’s mother is shot at the end of the book, she does not have health
insurance, and Noah has to foot the entire bill. Similarly, white businesses continue to
dominate the economy, while Noah’s family becomes penniless because they never
