Born a Crime

“My whole family is religious, but where my mother was Team Jesus all the way, my grandmother balanced her Christian faith with the traditional Xhosa beliefs she’s grown up with, communicating with the spirits of our ancestors.”

This describes the cultural diversity of South Africa. Although heavily influenced by outside cultures, the native South Africans still retain much of their original way of life.

“Apartheid was a police state, a system of surveillance and laws designed to keep black people under total control. A full compendium of those laws would run more than three thousand pages and weigh approximately ten pounds, but the general thrust of it should be easy enough for any American to understand. In America you had the forced removal of the native onto reservations coupled with slavery followed by segregation. Imagine all three of those things happening to the same group of people at the same time. That was apartheid.”

While this quote describes apartheid more generally, in Noah’s life this translates to his family registering their race with the government, being forced to live in racially segregated ghettos, and not being allowed to publicly see his dad because he’s white.

“In any society built on institutionalized racism, race-mixing doesn’t merely challenge the system as unjust, it reveals the system as unsustainable and incoherent. Race-mixing proves that races can mix—and in a lot of cases, want to mix. Because a mixed person embodies that rebuke to the logic of the system, race-mixing becomes a crime worse than treason.”

This idea hits close to home for Noah, since his mom is black and his dad is white, and it explains why he feels like he was “born a crime,” in reference to the title of the memoir. Although many citizens of South Africa didn’t agree with the rules of apartheid, people of different races mingled secretly. The government strictly prohibited race-mixing of any sort, going so far as to segregate every facet of life, including what neighborhood a person lived in, what restaurants a person could eat in, etc.

“But only black people were permitted in Soweto. It was much harder to hide someone who looked like me, and the government was watching much more closely. In the white areas you rarely saw the police, and if you did it was Officer Friendly in his collared shirt and pressed pants. In Soweto the police were an occupying army. They didn’t wear collared shirts. They wore riot gear.”

This demonstrates the pervasive racism that was sewn into the very fabric of apartheid. Not only were the police harsher with Black people than with white people, but they also specifically targeted Black people. This moment also illustrates why Noah never feels like he belongs anywhere. When he visits his mom’s family in Soweto, he is one of the only boys of color in the entire area, and he isn’t allowed to be outdoors very often for fear of being taken by the police. Despite having a Black mom and a white dad, he is considered neither Black nor white, despite identifying as being Black.

“There were so many perks to being ‘white’ in a black family, I can’t even front. I was having a great time. My own family basically did what the American justice system does: I was given more lenient treatment than the black kids. Misbehavior that my cousins would have been punished for, I was given a warning and let off.”

This illustrates just how deeply racism is engrained into the minds of the South African citizens; even members of Noah’s own family think higher of him because he’s light-skinned with a white father. Noah says that this is the evil genius of apartheid: getting Black people to turn on each other and see themselves as less than white people.

“Food, or the access to food, was always the measure of how good or bad things were going in our lives.”

When Noah’s family is at their poorest, they’re forced to live on Mopane worms, the cheapest food available. However, once he starts making money selling mix CDs, he eats at McDonald's every day and considers it a luxury. This idea is furthered when he starts making even more money in Alexandra by DJ’ing and giving out loans. Despite eating the cheap food in Alexandra, he puts cheese on everything. The ability to afford cheese is viewed as a sign that a person has money, and they’re referred to as a “cheese boy” (207). Noah says that without access to cars or nice clothing, the small things, such as the ability to afford cheese, are demonstrative of a person’s wealth.

“Apartheid, for all its power, had fatal flaws baked in, starting with the fact that it never made any sense. Racism is not logical. Consider this: Chinese people were classified as black in South Africa. I don’t mean they were running around acting black. They were still Chinese. But, unlike Indians, there weren’t enough Chinese people to warrant devising a whole separate classification. Apartheid, despite its intricacies and precision, didn’t know what to do with them.”

Under apartheid, Black people were considered the lowest class. In this system, “colored” people, because they are biracial, have their own classification, rather than being classified as Black. However, colored people could also, eventually, be classified as white if society perceived them as such. To become classified as white, a person would have to dress, talk, and reflect white culture. This example, combined with the above quote, demonstrates just how trivial the government’s classification system was during apartheid.

“I believed that Fufi was my dog, but of course that wasn’t true. Fufi was a dog. I was a boy. We got along well. She happened to live in my house. That experience shaped what I’ve felt about relationships for the rest of my life: You do not own the thing that you love.”

This realization happens after Noah catches his dog, Fufi, jumping into the backyard of a boy down the street. Unbeknownst to Noah, Fufi had been living a double life, getting food and love from Noah and another boy, so much so that both boys believed Fufi belonged to them. The idea that something as seemingly loyal as a dog could betray him and find love somewhere else is so haunting for Noah that it has influenced his thoughts on relationships ever since.

“One thing I do know about my dad is that he hates racism and homogeneity more than anything, and not because of any feelings of self-righteousness or moral superiority. He just never understood how white people could be racist in South Africa. ‘Africa is full of black people,’ he would say. ‘So why would you come all the way to Africa if you hate black people? If you hate black people so much, why did you move into their house?’ To him it was insane.”

This moment reveals Robert's perception of the absurdity of apartheid and racism in South Africa. Rather than embracing the native South African culture and people, white settlers, namely the original Dutch traders that ended up staying in South Africa to become the white South Africans, develop their own language and look down on Black South Africans. However, the white South Africans are a minority compared to the original Black South Africans, and Noah’s dad points out this general absurdity in the above quote.

“[C]olored people had it rough. Imagine: You’ve been brainwashed into believing that your blood is tainted. You’ve spent all your time assimilating and aspiring to whiteness. Then, just as you think you’re closing in on the finish line, some fucking guy named Nelson Mandela comes along and flips the country on its head. Now the finish line is back where the starting line was, and the benchmark is black. Black is in charge. Black is beautiful. Black is powerful. For centuries colored people were told: Blacks are monkeys. Don’t swing from the trees like them. Learn to walk upright like the white man. Then all of a sudden it’s Planet of the Apes, and the monkeys have taken over.”

Like previous quotes, this moment demonstrates how the South African apartheid turned people against each other, but how it was most devastating for colored people, who were brainwashed to believe that half of themselves was less than human and that they should forsake that side and instead nurture their white side. However, once apartheid ended, everything the colored person had been taught to believe was suddenly turned upside down, leaving them with a crisis of identity.

“Being a Model C school and not a government school, Sandringham drew kids from all over, making it a near-perfect microcosm of post-apartheid South Africa as a whole—a perfect example of what South Africa has the potential to be.”

Model C schools are like American charter schools, which means that they attract a diverse group of students from different neighborhoods. Noah sees people from different racial and cultural backgrounds openly interacting, something that was previously unheard of during apartheid, for the first time at Sandringham.

“That’s what the government did. They would find some patch of arid, dusty, useless land, and dig row after row of holes in the ground—a thousand latrines to serve four thousand families. They they’d forcibly remove people from illegally occupying some white area and drop them off in the middle of nowhere with some pallets of plywood and corrugated iron.”

Along with forcing Black South Africans to relocate to race-specific ghettos, the government also forced them onto settlements, which were essentially empty, barren plots of land that were far from white-populated areas.

“The colonial powers carved up Africa, put the black man to work, and did not properly educate him. White people don’t talk to black people. So why would black people know what’s going on in the white man’s world? Because of that, many black people in South Africa don’t really know who Hitler was. My own grandfather thought ‘a hitler’ was a kind of army tank that helping the Germans win the war. Because that’s what he took from what he heard on the news.”

In South Africa, most people have an African name and an English name. Noah explains why Hitler is a common English name and why the name doesn't hold a stigma for Black people. He also indirectly touches on how the government isolated the Black South African population from world events. Not all Black people were taught about global events in school, so some had to glean information from television.

“I often meet people in the West who insist that the Holocaust was the worst atrocity in human history, without question. Yes, it was horrific. But I often wonder, with African atrocities like in the Congo, how horrific were they? The thing Africans don’t have that Jewish people do have is documentation. The Nazis kept meticulous records, took pictures, made films. And that’s really what it comes down to. Holocaust victims count because Hitler counted them. Six million people killed. We can all look at that number and rightly be horrified. But when you read through the history of atrocities against Africans, there are no numbers, only guesses. It’s harder to be horrified by a guess.”

Noah observes that everyone in the West knows about the Holocaust and considers it the worst tragedy in human history because Hitler documented the atrocities. However, the atrocities in Africa weren’t meticulously documented, meaning people, especially in the West, aren’t as aware of them as they are the Holocaust. When weighing the Holocaust against enslavement, apartheid, and violence in Africa, Noah points out that judgment seems to boil down to which tragedy has more publicity and public awareness.

“The walls of apartheid were coming down just as American hip-hop was blowing up, and hip-hop made it cool to be from the hood. Before, living in a township was something to be ashamed of; it was the bottom of the bottom. Then we had movies like Boyz n the Hood and Menace II Society, and they made the hood look cool. The characters in those movies, in the songs, they owned it. Kids in the townships started doing the same, wearing their identity as a badge of honor: You were no longer from the township—you were from the hood.”

This explains Noah’s initial fascination with Alexandra, one of the most notoriously violent and poorest townships in South Africa. It also helps to explain Noah’s success as a DJ in Alexandra. Because he wore a nice pair of shoes that American hip-hop artists were known to wear and had the latest American hip-hop music, he was a highly sought-after DJ.

“In the hood, even if you’re not a hardcore criminal, crime is in your life in some way or another. There are degrees of it. It’s everyone from the mom buying some food that fell off the back of the truck to feed her family, all the way to the gangs selling military-grade weapons and hardware. The hood made me realize that crime succeeds because crime does the one thing the government doesn’t do: crime cares. Crime is grassroots. Crime looks for the young kids who need support and a lifting hand. Crime offers internship programs and summer jobs and opportunities for advancement. Crime gets involved in the community. Crime doesn’t discriminate.”

This describes why crime seems to run rampant in places like Alexandra, a place forgotten by the government and society. Because people in Alexandra can’t expect help from anyone on the outside, they help each other in whatever ways they can. He elaborates to say that crime is ubiquitous in this city and that in one way or another, the people of Alexandria are dependent on crime to survive because it offers the only prospects for improving one’s life.

“It’s easy to be judgmental about crime when you live in a world wealthy enough to be removed from it. But the hood taught me that everyone has different notions of right and wrong, different definitions of what constitutes crime, and what level of crime they’re willing to participate in.”

Noah makes this observation based on his time in Alexandra, one of the poorest townships in South Africa. Because Alexandra is segregated and cut off from society, without any hope or help from the government, the people are forced to take matters into their own hands to survive, developing a hierarchy of crimes and a system of personal morality that governs the extent of their participation in illegal activities.

“The hood is a low-stress, comfortable life. All your mental energy goes into getting by, so you don’t have to ask yourself any of the big questions. Who am I? Who am I supposed to be? Am I doing enough? In the hood you can be a forty-year-old man living in your mom’s house asking people for money and it’s not looked down on. You never feel like a failure in the hood, because someone’s always worse off than you, and you don’t feel like you need to do more, because the biggest success isn’t that much bigger than you, either. It allows you to exist in a state of suspended animation.”

This describes how Noah allowed two years to slip away without saving money or planning for college, and it’s also the very reason that his mom hates the hood. His mom notices that when Noah spends time in Alexandra, no one pressures him to do better. Because people are meeting the minimum requirements for survival in Alexandra, the idea of bettering oneself isn’t realistic. His mom believes that if Noah would spend time with his cousin in college, it would inspire him.

“Hustling is to work what surfing the Internet is to reading. If you add up how much you read in a year on the Internet—tweets, Facebook posts, lists—you’ve read the equivalent of a shit ton of books, but in fact you’ve read no books in a year. When I look back on it, that’s what hustling was. It’s maximal effort put into minimal gain. It’s a hamster wheel.”

After high school, Noah originally plans to sell CDs and DJ in Alexandra to save up money for college. However, after nearly two years of hustling, he realizes that he hasn’t saved any money and that he had stopped planning for college altogether. He realizes that this is the trap that so many people fall into in places like Alexandra. While it may seem like they’re getting ahead, they are no further along than when they started, akin to a hamster spinning on a wheel.

“Nelson Mandela once said, ‘If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.’ He was so right. When you make the effort to speak someone else’s language, even if it’s just basic phrases here and there, you are saying to them, ‘I understand that you have a culture and identity that exists beyond me. I see you as a human being.’”

Noah has this epiphany while in jail, after being the interpreter between the guard and the Tsonga man. Noah and the man become instant friends because Noah is able to speak his language, something no one else in the jail can do.

“Tsonga culture, I learned, is extremely patriarchal. We’re talking about a world where women bow when they greet a man. Men and women have limited social interactions. The men kill the animals, and the women cook the food. Men are not even allowed in the kitchen. As a nine-year-old boy, I thought this was fantastic. I wasn’t allowed to do anything. At home my mom was forever making me do chores—wash the dishes, sweep the house—but when she tried to do that in Tzaneen, the women wouldn’t allow it.”

Abel’s family is Tsonga, and when Noah’s mom meets them for the first and only time, she doesn’t get along with them. She is the complete antithesis of their values in that she is a strong-willed, independent woman who makes her son do chores. Seeing the family Abel comes from helps explain the difference between Abel's and Patricia’s values.

“The Abel who was likable and charming never went away. He had a drinking problem, but he was a nice guy. We had a family. Growing up in a home of abuse, you struggle with the notion that you can love a person you hate, or hate a person you love. It’s a strange feeling. You want to live in a world where someone is good or bad, where you either hate them or love them, but that’s not how people are.”

Here, Noah explains the complexities of living inside an abusive family. On the outside, Abel is charming and likable, but when he drinks he becomes abusive and angry. This means that everyone outside Noah’s family likes Abel, which is upsetting for Noah since he and his mother know the man’s secret dark side.

“I didn’t understand what she was going through. I didn’t understand domestic violence. I didn’t understand how adult relationships worked; I’d never even had a girlfriend. I didn’t understand how she could have sex with a man she hated and feared. I didn’t know how easily sex and hatred and fear can intertwine.”

When Noah finds out that his mom is pregnant with Abel’s second child, despite Abel’s increasingly brutal abuse, Noah is initially angry with her. He assumed that once his little brother Andrew was old enough, his mom would leave Abel, but being pregnant meant that she would be stuck with Abel for another 18 years. It’s only in hindsight that Noah realizes the complexities of an abusive relationship. He realizes his mother couldn’t just leave Abel because she feared him.