Trevor Noah’s “Born a Crime”

Is it true? Truths are subjective. Something may be true to the person, but that does not mean that it is the whole truth.

Perception is everything. Everyone sees differently. People can be looking at the same thing yet see something completely differently from everyone else.

The world saw me as colored, but I didn’t spend my life looking at myself. I spent my life looking at other people. I saw myself as the people around me, and the people around me were black….With the black kids, I wasn’t constantly trying to be. With the black kids, I just was.

(Noah 59)

Trevor Noah is mixed or in South Africa, referred to as colored. He is not black, but he also isn’t white. He is able to join in with the whites or the blacks. Even though his father was white, he spent most of his time with his mother who is black. Growing up with blacks, he is more comfortable among them. He doesn’t have to try to fit in like he does with the whites, he can just be himself.

Yet growing up among blacks, he was raised white:

When I look back I realize she raised me like a white kid—not white culturally, but in the sense of believing that the world was my oyster, that I should speak up for myself, that my ideas and thoughts and decisions mattered.

(Noah 73)

Noah’s mother believed that there is more to life than just what they have/know in South Africa. The world is bigger than what they know. She does not want him to be confined and sheltered. She saw him as a blank slate that she is able to mold. His mother gave him everything she was unable to have and lived vicariously through him. Trevor was able to see the world differently than everyone else in South Africa because his mother saw the world differently.

Memories may not always be accurate. Details may change over time.

My mother never sat me down and told me the whole story of her life in Transkei. She’d give me little bursts, random details, stories of having to keep her wits about her to avoid getting raped by strange men in the village.

(Noah 66)

When Trevor tells the story of his mother, how much of it is true? She told him when he was only ten. What details are actually true, and what was lost through time? Some details were probably censored. Trevor telling the story of his mother, is his version of his mother of what he had remembered. It is only one side that people are able to see of her. There is more to the story that we may never get.

Personal experiences are personal for a reason. Only the person going through it would know what they actually went through. Talking about it may be difficult. They can tell whatever version that they want to tell. No one would know the accuracy of the account unless they were there and experienced it firsthand. Truths are subjective. A person may not be lying, but they could also not be telling the whole truth.