Trevor Noah, the main character in the book, “Born a Crime” was born in Johannesburg, South Africa on February 2o, 1984. With this in consideration, Trevor Noah was born during a time when Apartheid was at its height. Apartheid, in South Africa, is a policy or system of institutionalized segregation that existed from 1948 to the early 1990s. Trevor Noah was born to a South African mother and a father of Swiss-German descent, making Trevor mixed, or in Apartheid terms, “colored”. Being colored was forbidden during the time of apartheid.
While reading “Born a Crime” and learning about Apartheid, I couldn’t help but relate it to the racial segregation that occurred in America during the mid-1900s. Both of these events occurred around the same time (Middle to late 1900s) and both of them involved the racial segregation of the blacks and the whites. The two ethnicities could not do as much as live in the same city during Apartheid in South Africa or share the same water fountain in the US.
By making this connection, I was able to better understand and relate to this text and Trevor Noah’s situation because I was already familiarized with a similar subject that happened in our very own country. I have previously been exposed to the US racial segregation era through my history classes in high school, middle school, and even elementary school. I have also learned about the segregation when I was taught about Martin Luther King Jr. and his teachings/values.
While reading this section of “Born a Crime”, I was wondering, why was it so forbidden to be “colored” during Apartheid? My assumption is that it was so forbidden because the whole goal of Apartheid was to keep the whites and the blacks separate from each other, and since a colored person was a mix of a white parent and a black parent, this completely went against the rules of Apartheid, because it indicated that interracial relationships were happening like Trevor Noah and his family.
A Day in The Life of Abby 