Photo: trevornoah.com
Trevor Noah – host of The Daily Show – is the child of a black mother and white father who grew up in post-Apartheid South Africa, when his mere existence as a mixed-race child was evidence of a crime.
Noah tells Jesse Mulligan how his childhood shaped his life, comedy and sense of justice.
Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah comes out in New Zealand on 29 November.
As a child, Noah was the subject of derogatory remarks about his skin tone from both black and white people.
“Everyone doesn’t realise they’re in the same boat and trying to tip it over to make the other person drown.”
Until it's understood that the concept of race was created to oppress, people will use other races as a target for their hatred, Noah says.
“Not realising that a lot of things people are complaining about aren’t created by another group of people you can distinguish by the colour of their skin, but often by groups of people you can distinguish by the size of their bank accounts.”
He describes apartheid is ‘perfect racism’.
“They didn’t just say ‘We are going to segregate people of colour. Instead what they did is said ‘We’re going to travel the world and figure out, what are the best systems to do that?’"
Apartheid’s “genius” was that it didn’t just oppress people, it convinced oppressed people to hate each other, says Noah.
He says he was lucky to have been born while racial segregation was on its last legs, yet it was another story for his mother.
“My mum just decided that having me was going to be her ultimate expression of protest and her ultimate expression of love.”
While Noah genuinely loves his home country now, he admits he’s never avidly followed the Springboks.
“To be honest with you – and this is blasphemous in South Africa – I was always an All Blacks fan. One, because as a kid, the only person I looked like was Jonah Lomu. I was like ‘That guy is my dude. He looks like me. Also because they were called the All Blacks. I was like ‘This is a fantastic team’.”
