Member-only story
The Apartheid for Dummies
7 Things I learned from Trevor Noah’s “Born a Crime”
Admittedly, before I had read this book I had little information on what apartheid was. It was a time of institutional racial segregation that lasted until 1994, prior to philanthropist Nelson Mandela’s elect and that’s all I really knew. It always boggled me that the Canadian curriculum called for ancient world history but rarely discussed racial, cultural, and religious segregation during the 20th century. Sensitive topics such as conflicts between Tibet and China, Israel and Palestine, India and Pakistan, and slavery in America went unheard of. It seems the affairs of our country only pertained to Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Cold War Russia.
It is rare to come by a recounting piece with such an eclectic mix of rawness, wit, and humor. Daily Show’s stand-up comedian, Trevor Noah details noteworthy moments from his Black South African upbringing as a mixed-race child. SPOILER ALERT: Just a few include when he and his mother almost got killed by a minibus driver, when he became a popular DJ in the township, when he went to jail and when his mother survived a miraculous gunshot to the head. Although, comedic these stories also taught the reader a lot about the pre and post-apartheid era.
