Trevor Noah, “Born a Crime” book review
Do you find the book to be a useful lens into understanding race in the contemporary world?
To be born a crime based on the color of one’s skin is to be sentenced to a life of unwarranted social ostracization. Skin color can lead to more than social outcasting. In South Africa during apartheid, where it was illegal to have racially mixed parents, skin color could lead to legal threats as well. In the memoir, Born a Crime by Trevor Noah, the South African author’s writing is a useful lens in understanding race in the contemporary world through his explanation of the grouping of people of the same race, personal accounts as someone of mixed color, and what it was like growing up in apartheid.
Noah was racially mixed, which led him to experiencing first-hand what happened when people were racially grouped. Noah’s experience in South Africa during apartheid was rare due to the legislation that banned the act of sexual intercourse between a “native male or female” and a “European male or female” (Noah, 1). The creation of racial categories also arose with apartheid: white, black, colored, and Indian (Snyder, March 31, 2022). Noah’s life proved not only a rarity, but also serves as a way of understanding how the grouping of people and complexity of race is viewed. When Noah was forced to choose a group of people based on race during his wait in prison, “…every time and every place I ever had to be a chameleon, navigate between groups, explain who I was…Because racism exists, and you have to pick a side. You can say that you don’t pick sides, but eventually life will force you to pick a side. That day I chose white” (Noah, 240). Noah’s experience is pivotal for understanding race in the contemporary world. He clearly demonstrates what it is like for a multiracial person to choose their identity.
While Noah’s account was singular for just a moment, the mere fact that those in the prison cell had sorted themselves out by race shows how race is categorized. The contemporary world is reflective of Noah’s encounter with identity because race can be a way of organization in society today, and not just solely accepted as a means of existence demonstrated through racial equality. Similarly, Noah reflects on a time in primary school when he was told to ask another girl to be his valentine, because they both “looked the same” (Noah, 130). Noah and the girl were both colored, and their pairing for Valentine’s Day was done based on race. This reflects the contemporary world as it shows the grouping of people based on race, which is not only a societal constant, but is also used as a way to describe geographical location when categorizing people based on where they are from.
Noah’s writing is incredibly valuable because he provides the reader with personal accounts of racial discrimination and segregation as someone of mixed race. As a child, Noah explains that at school, “groups moved in color patterns across the yard, up the stairs, down the hall,” and he recalls being “rescued” from playing alone on the playground by an “Indian kid” (Noah, 57). While there was no outward verbal or physical offense to Noah individually, the societal offense took place in how the kids at school purposefully segregated Noah because of his race. This account provides the reader with a lens in understanding experiences as a child of mixed race, and the response from other children, particularly white children. Noah’s personal account can be respected as a representation of what race is really like for those of color in the contemporary world. Similarly, Noah describes a time when he was riding his bike and a young girl asked him to ride it. When he let her, she and another kid took off with the bike (Noah, 121). Due to Noah’s race, he was discriminated against at the sake of his bike by other children. Both of these accounts from Noah’s childhood shows how those who were segregating or discriminating against Noah were children. The understanding that children were capable of these actions serves as good reason to believe that Born a Crime is a useful lens into understanding race in the contemporary world because of how deeply rooted racial discrimination has become in some cultures, to the extent that even children are capable of such actions.
In tangent, readers of Born a Crime can benefit from Noah’s personal accounts of racial discrimination because Noah provides a first-hand account of what it was like to be a recipient of such discrimination. Noah was racially discriminated against by other children, starting when he was a child. This first-hand account of discrimination and segregation by children is not commonly seen in textbooks, scholarly work, and documentaries which often cover facts and lays out the history of race and racial discrimination. These personal accounts are important to digest as readers, since concrete facts cannot be the only way to gain knowledge on racial discrimination in the contemporary world. Overall, Noah’s experiences are incredibly valuable from the reader’s perspective in terms of fully understanding the racial discrimination climate of present day.
In line with Noah’s personal accounts of racial discrimination, Noah’s description of apartheid and what it was like growing up in apartheid helps the reader examine race in not only the contemporary world, but also how the world’s perspective of race has evolved. As mentioned in the memoir, “Every year under apartheid, some colored people would get promoted to white. It wasn’t a myth; it was real. People could submit applications to the government. Your hair might become straight enough, your skin might become light enough, your accent might become polished enough — and you’d be reclassified as white” (Noah, 119). The physical aspects Noah describes that make a colored person “white” are vital for the reader’s understanding of how, or if the contemporary world has changed its view of race in this aspect. Apartheid was a time of lots of racial discrimination, but it was also a representation of society’s way of life at the time. Noah also explained how he and other people of color often faced the slur, “boesman,” which was used to call out a colored person’s “blackness” (Noah, 120). In apartheid, the racial hierarchy that placed black people at the bottom serves as a focal point in today’s world in understanding the history of racial discrimination and the perspective of colored people during apartheid. This perspective is important to understand because it is imperative to recognize the historical privilege some people have received because of the color of their skin. Noah clearly demonstrates racial discrimination from his personal accounts of apartheid, which serve as a useful lens into understanding how racial discrimination has either stayed consistent with apartheid, or changed in the contemporary world.
On the other hand, Noah’s memoir is limited in its ability to explain race because it can only depict what racism and racial hierarchy looks like in South America. As Noah comes from a childhood of apartheid, it may be unfair to say that Noah’s personal accounts are a clear representation of race in the contemporary world due to the limited amount of the world that the book describes. In this sense, the narrow lens of the book is a possible limitation in using Noah’s memoir to understand racial discrimination on an international level. Either way, Noah provides international perspective of race in one aspect, but unfortunately cannot fully encapsulate the world as a whole when working to paint the picture of international racial discrimination.
When comparing Noah’s memoir and personal accounts to other sources used to learn about race, both the book and an article on Foreign Policy describe how race has been viewed over time and that there is a sense of racial hierarchy. The article mentions that, “Most IR scholars stopped engaging with the subject [race] all together” (Zvobgo & Loken, 4). In Born a Crime, Noah describes how race was heavily focused on during apartheid and then the focus became less prominent since “Soweto was beautiful because, after democracy, you watched Soweto grow” (Noah, 201). In contrast, the Foreign Policy article described the unrecognition of race, whereas Noah described growth in the positive recognition of race over time. Ultimately, both the Foreign Policy article and Born a Crime are similar in the progress that race was less of a driving factor in large-scale international relations and small-scale society. Similarly, there was a recognition of whitewashing in international relations as the article mentions, “Western concepts are prioritized at the expense of their applicability in the world” (Zvobgo & Loken, 3). The entirety of Born a Crime focuses on the whitewashing of society and the racial hierarchy that placed white people on top. After reading the Foreign Policy article, it is obvious that racial hierarchy exists with white people on top. The concept of western domination due to white skin color also falls in line with what is gathered about race in Born a Crime as the reader sees how white people have privilege during apartheid.
Trevor Noah’s memoir, Born a Crime serves as a useful lens in understanding race in the contemporary world. Noah’s explanation of the grouping of people of the same race, personal accounts as someone of mixed color, and what it was like growing up in apartheid all provide the reader with an adequate opportunity to understand how racial discrimination has evolved through history and how it is integrated in today’s world.
Works Cited
Noah, Trevor. Born a Crime Stories from a South African Childhood. Cornelsen, 2020.
Zvobgo, Kelebogile, and Meredith Loken. “Why Race Matters in International Relations.” Foreign Policy, 19 June 2020, https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/06/19/why-race-matters-international-relations-ir/.
