{"id":50425,"date":"2016-12-03T23:22:41","date_gmt":"2016-12-03T23:22:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=50425"},"modified":"2016-12-04T01:25:09","modified_gmt":"2016-12-04T01:25:09","slug":"trevor-noah-on-growing-up-in-south-africa-under-apartheid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=50425","title":{"rendered":"Trevor Noah on Growing Up in South Africa Under Apartheid"},"content":{"rendered":"

Trevor Noah on Growing Up in South Africa Under Apartheid<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Literary Hub<\/a>
\n2016-12-02<\/p>\n

Trevor Noah<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

“Where most children are proof of their parents\u2019 love, I was the proof of their criminality.”<\/em><\/p>\n

When the doctors pulled me out there was an awkward moment where they said, \u201cHuh. That\u2019s a very light-skinned baby.\u201d A quick scan of the delivery room revealed no man standing around to take credit.<\/p>\n

\u201cWho is the father?\u201d they asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis father is from Swaziland<\/a>,\u201d my mother said, referring to the tiny, landlocked kingdom in the west of South Africa<\/a>.<\/p>\n

They probably knew she was lying, but they accepted it because they needed an explanation. Under apartheid<\/a>, the government labeled everything on your birth certificate: race, tribe, nationality. Everything had to be categorized. My mother lied and said I was born in KaNgwane<\/a>, the semi-sovereign homeland for Swazi people<\/a> living in South Africa. So my birth certificate doesn\u2019t say that I\u2019m Xhosa<\/a>, which technically I am. And it doesn\u2019t say that I\u2019m Swiss, which the government wouldn\u2019t allow. It just says that I\u2019m from another country.<\/p>\n

My father isn\u2019t on my birth certificate. Officially, he\u2019s never been my father. And my mother, true to her word, was prepared for him not to be involved. She \u2019d rented a new flat for herself in Joubert Park<\/a>, the neighborhood adjacent to Hillbrow<\/a>, and that\u2019s where she took me when she left the hospital. The next week she went to visit him, with no baby. To her surprise, he asked where I was. \u201cYou said that you didn\u2019t want to be involved,\u201d she said. And he hadn\u2019t, but once I existed he realized he couldn\u2019t have a son living around the corner and not be a part of my life. So the three of us formed a kind of family, as much as our peculiar situation would allow. I lived with my mom. We \u2019d sneak around and visit my dad when we could.<\/p>\n

Where most children are proof of their parents\u2019 love, I was the proof of their criminality. The only time I could be with my father was indoors. If we left the house, he \u2019d have to walk across the street from us. My mom and I used to go to Joubert Park all the time. It\u2019s the Central Park <\/a>of Johannesburg<\/a>\u2014beautiful gardens, a zoo, a giant chessboard with human-sized pieces that people would play. My mother tells me that once, when I was a toddler, my dad tried to go with us. We were in the park, he was walking a good bit away from us, and I ran after him, screaming, \u201cDaddy! Daddy! Daddy!\u201d People started looking. He panicked and ran away. I thought it was a game and kept chasing him…<\/p>\n

Read the entire excerpt from Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood<\/em><\/a> here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Trevor Noah on Growing Up in South Africa Under Apartheid Literary Hub 2016-12-02 Trevor Noah “Where most children are proof of their parents\u2019 love, I was the proof of their criminality.” When the doctors pulled me out there was an awkward moment where they said, \u201cHuh. That\u2019s a very light-skinned baby.\u201d A quick scan of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1295,12,395,8,520],"tags":[23792,15219],"class_list":["post-50425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-africa","category-articles","category-autobiography","category-media-archive","category-south-africa","tag-literary-hub","tag-trevor-noah"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50425"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50425\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50431,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50425\/revisions\/50431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}