Week 2 Assignment – Asha Ighodaro

The excerpt “Chameleon” in Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime is about Noah’s experience with living in South Africa as a mixed child. In the excerpt Noah goes into great detail about how he was treated at home, at school, and in his neighborhood. He explained that because he LOOKED different than those he grew up around he was treated differently, in both good and bad ways, though he never understood why, he didn’t understand the concept of “race” he just knew being black, he explained that after watching his mother he discovered that language was the tool he would use to bridge the gap (his skin colour) between he and his fellow black friends and acquaintances as well as using language as a survival mechanism.  

One issue that I found to be very prevalent in the excerpt was the fact that people just assumed that he was some special being and he was better than his black peers and family members and that was even seen in the anecdote where the counselor at his new school told him he would do better in an “A” class rather than a “B” class where all the other black children were, despite the fact that he had grown up around other black children, she just assumed that because he was lighter skinned he was “allowed” him to be in a class that she assumed would take him farther because he’s around other white people. 

The personal and political are intertwined in micro-aggressions such as the part where he and his mother went to the shop and the guards weren’t aware that she spoke Afrikaans and he told the other guard to follow them so they don’t steal things after the mother confronted them back in Afrikaans he proceeded to apologize for mistaking her for “the other blacks” who “love to steal”. Or when even when his own family would treat him better and more delicately because they were literally afraid of the repercussion or hurting him. 

One quotation I found extremely significant in the excerpt was for me the entire last paragraph of the chapter but specifically where he said “i didn’t belong with the white kids […] But the black kids embraced me…” at the beginning of the paragraph he says he chose being black because in this quote he states why, because they accepted him. 

I chose this text because in all honesty since he was speaking about Africa although not my country, I still felt connected to it and wanted to read it but I also liked it because he spoke about language and how he and his family used it and I resonated with that because my mother also speaks about the importance of understanding your native language and I always knew it was important and I feel connected to others who speak the same language.