Born A Crime By Trevor Noah

In Eden Park, everyone looked like me, but we couldn’t have been more different.” (Noah 173) In this quote demonstrates Trevor’s experience as a mixed person. This quote establishes the ethos of what he had to go through growing up, these emotional stories build trust with the reader. Pathos was also used the most effectively.

What if we could walk in each other’s shoes? What if we could truly understand what our brothers and sisters are going through? These questions and more are what John Howard Griffin strived to answer when he surgically changed his complexion to resemble that of a black man in his book, Black Like Me. He set out to write a biting commentary about the state of race in the United States, but what he experienced changed his life forever. Griffin learned two very valuable lessons that dominated his experience; good can exist in the midst of suffocating evil and to bridge the gap between races there must be mutual understanding. To analyze such a powerful book, I will start with a summary and then explain my thoughts on the text.

In Chapter 9 of Trevor Noah's "Born a Crime," Trevor explores the complexities of identity and belonging by explaining how the perspectives of others and himself about his race influenced his identity and belonging. Everyone seemed to have differing views of Trevor's identity, but Trevor was sure he identified more with black people than anything. Instead of calling himself colored, he called himself mixed. Language and appearance helped him navigate his mixed-race heritage in a society defined by racial segregation. When discussing race, Trevor describes himself as "mixed but not colored—colored by complexion but not by culture" (120).

Race plays a large role in who and how we define ourselves. The question time and time again asked is who hold the key in deciding who do someone allow to define along with the limitations of such assumptions us and can the limitations how society views us hold the black individual(s) back. In this response I will focus on the idea of “Racism and its effects on individual experience”. Throughout the novel Wright tries to come to terms with the idea to come to terms with individual identity, conformity/rebellion, and revaluation of the self.

When he tells his teacher he might want to be a lawyer, he is rebuked with racism: “‘A lawyer-- that’s no realistic goal for a n****r.’”(38) He sees then that his work to become the top student and class president has all been for naught. It doesn’t matter how hard he tries: “They didn’t give me credit for having the same sensitivity, intellect, and understanding that they would have been ready and willing to recognize in a white boy in my position.”(28) This realization breaks something in him: when he realizes that whites will never deign to accept him into their society, he loses trust in what his father stood for. “‘You’re acting so strange,’” his classmates and coworkers tell him.(37) Malcolm changes; he rejects all outer stimuli and retreats deeper into himself, hopeless without a paragon of success to emulate. “‘You don’t seem like yourself, Malcolm. What’s that matter?’”(37) In losing his role model, Malcolm has become a wanderer without a path to follow.

In the memoir Born a Crime, by Trevor Noah, his relationship with his mother represents the idea that “love is a creative act”. This idea states that when you love someone, you create a new world for that person. Throughout the book, there are many ways that Trevor’s mom created that new world for him. Trevor’s relationship with his mother represents “love is a creative act” by showing how many things Patricia did for Trevor in his youth. At the beginning of the book, Trevor explains how his mother would hide him from his entire childhood.

Weaving in the importance and invaluable lessons that struggle has to give everyone who experiences it through his book. Focusing particularly on part three of Trevor Noah's Born a Crime, we will see the predominance of what he is trying to show through his struggles. Chapter fifteen begins by detailing Trevor taking up side hustles

In Richard Wright’s Black Boy, you see not only the transformation of a young boy going into adulthood, but a fascinating story of a hero on a journey to discover his true identity and his part in society. “Heroism is not about rising to the top, fighting for one's rightful place in society, but rather about making one's society and one's self whole. There is, however, also the notion that the right person can solve even global problems single-handedly. If the right person attempts such a feat, it will usually be successful” (Haberkorn). Wright goes from an ordinary world of struggles with hunger and poverty to a life of unfair treatment due to the color of his skin. This only leads Wright to take on the world with his head held high and

“If the police showed up she would have to drop me and pretend I wasn’t hers, like I was a bag of weed”(28). Humor like this in Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime, produces easier to absorb content since his memoir is full with hard to swallow concepts. The story he shares follows him, a half black and half white child, growing up in South Africa during apartheid. For this reason Trevor was quite literally born a crime. He writes about the struggles he had to face growing up with his mother side of the family, the black side. Although the odds were against him the day he was born, he is able to accomplish many things thanks to the help from his mother who would literally take a bullet for her children. Although many writers use dark humor to tell

While some people might start to degrade themselves because of rejection, one can also take the opportunity to fight against the stereotype which makes him or her more confident in his or her identity. Wright was an African women who faced stereotypes in her childhood and developed the ability to stand ‘against’ stereotypes of her heritage and herself as an individual. Wright defends, “I was African. A defiant pride became my shield. The more I was called an African in epithet, the more obligated I felt to excel and contradict the notions of what an African was supposed to be” (32). She used her background as her pride to excel and to prove her identity of being an African. Not being an American or white doesn’t make one less of who they really

It may not always be easy for you to find your identity. In the movie Finding Forrester, Jamal, a young African American teen that lives in the Bronx, discovered what it was like to be challenged with challenges he would not have expected. Jamal was dared by his friends to break into an old man’s apartment. The old man always watched the boys play basketball. While Jamal was in his apartment the old man found him and Jamal dashed out and forgot his school bag. The old man went through his bag and corrected his papers then gave it back to Jamal. The old man and Jamal grew and developed a strong relationship. People can be influenced on what shapes their identity.

However, as his journey continues and he faces more and more oppression constantly, he begins to understand how African Americans feel on a daily basis and comes to the realization that even though we have no control whatsoever of the color of the skin we are born with it plays such an integral role in how each person is treated and the opportunities that will be available to each person during their lifetime at this point in history. When the author comes to this realization, he states, “When all the talk, all the propaganda has been cut away, the criterion is nothing but the color of skin. My experience proved that. They judged me by no quality. My skin was dark.” (115) Another theme that John Howard Griffin addresses is how people interact with one another when members of differing races are not present. For example, until he went undercover as an African American, John Howard Griffin had never experienced such hate from people of his own race whereas that was the only side of his race that some African Americans ever observed.

Due this unique circumstance, the narrator begins to question his path of life and struggles with what to make of himself as well as his future. It is clear that this unknowing of his roots has set an impact on the narrator. The narrator describes it as “the miracle of my transition from one world into another; for I indeed pass into another world” (Johnson 9). How society viewed him- whether as a white male or black male- determined the fate of his future and what the outcomes could possibly be if he were to choose either racial identities. Kathleen Pfeiffer, English professor and journal article author of “Individualism, Success, and American Identity in The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man” discusses how the narrator embodies the “paradox of race and color” (Pfeiffer 403) due to his mulatto identity. As stated previously, the author questions his life paths and decisions due to being biracial. Pfeiffer renounces his blackness as either an “’authentic identity’- in favor of whiteness, an ‘opportunistic one’” (Pfeiffer 403). The narrator has yet to decide whether or not to embrace his blackness or take advantageous of his white colored skin in order to possess such opportunities and rights that black people lacked in the past. This flip flop between races pushes the narrator into a tight spot. Pfeiffer questions whether the

Born A Crime by Trevor Noah, is a compelling memoir allowing its readers insight into Noah’s daily life, under apartheid. Just like the title, Trevor Noah was born a crime. To explain, “During apartheid, one of the worst crimes you could commit was having relations with a person of another race…my parents committed that crime” (Noah 21). Trevor Noah was a mixed child. As a child, he had difficulties fitting in, but that didn’t stop him from identifying with both races. Trevor Noah became a chameleon. Although, some may say it’s impossible to identify and relate to various cultures- Trevor Noah proved them wrong. He says, “My color didn’t change, but I could change your perception of my color” (Noah 56). Trevor Noah used language and behavior tactics to become a cultural chameleon.

We live in a society where race is seen as a vital part of our personalities, the lack of racial identity is very often an important factor which prevent people from not having their own identity (Omi & Winant, 1993). Racism is extemely ingrained in our society and it seems ordinary (Delgado & Stefanic, 2000), however, many people denounce the expression of any racist belief as immoral (Miles & Brown, 2003) highlighting the complicated nature of racism. Critical Race Theory tries to shed light on the issue of racism claiming that racism is ingrained in our society both in legal, cultural, and psychological aspects of social life (Tate, 1997). This essay provides us the opportunity to explore this theory and its