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praying continued. It went on for some time. Pray, sing, pray. Sing, pray, sing. Sing, sing, sing. Pray, pray, pray. Then everyone finally felt that the demon was gone and life could continue, and we had the big “amen” and everyone said good night and went home. That night I felt terrible. Before bed, I quietly prayed, “God, I am so sorry for all of this. I know this was not cool.” Because I knew: God answers your prayers. God is your father. He’s the man who’s there for you, the man who takes care of you. When you pray, He stops and He takes His time and He listens, and I had subjected Him to two hours of old grannies praying when I knew that with all the pain and suffering in the world He had more important things to deal with than my shit.
W hen I was growing up we used to get American TV shows rebroadcast on our stations: Doogie Howser, M.D.; Murder, She Wrote; Rescue 911 with William Shatner. Most of them were dubbed into African languages. ALF was in Afrikaans. Transformers was in Sotho. But if you wanted to watch them in English, the original American audio would be simulcast on the radio. You could mute your TV and listen to that. Watching those shows, I realized that whenever black people were on-screen speaking in African languages, they felt familiar to me. They sounded like they were supposed to sound. Then I’d listen to them in simulcast on the radio, and they would all have black American accents. My perception of them changed. They didn’t feel familiar. They felt like foreigners. Language brings with it an identity and a culture, or at least the perception of it. A shared language says “We’re the same.” A language barrier says “We’re different.” The architects of apartheid understood this. Part of the effort to divide black people was to make sure we were separated not just physically but by language as well. In the Bantu schools, children were only taught in their home language. Zulu kids learned in Zulu. Tswana kids learned in Tswana. Because of this, we’d fall into the trap the government had set for us and fight among ourselves, believing that we were different. The great thing about language is that you can just as easily use it to do the opposite: convince people that they are the same. Racism teaches us that we are different because of the color of our skin. But because racism is stupid, it’s easily tricked. If you’re racist and you meet someone who doesn’t look like you, the fact that he can’t speak like you reinforces your racist preconceptions: He’s different, less intelligent. A brilliant scientist can come over the border from Mexico to live in America, but if he speaks in broken English, people say, “Eh, I don’t trust this guy.” “But he’s a scientist.” “In Mexican science, maybe. I don’t trust him.” However, if the person who doesn’t look like you speaks like you, your brain short-circuits because your racism program has none of those instructions in the code. “Wait, wait,” your mind says, “the racism code says if he doesn’t look like me he isn’t like me, but the language code says if he speaks like me he…is like me? Something is off here. I can’t figure this out.”
Page 3 and 4: Copyright © 2016 by Trevor Noah Al
Page 5: IMMORALITY ACT, 1927 To prohibit il
Page 8 and 9: RUN Sometimes in big Hollywood movi
Page 10 and 11: like bouncers at a club, and hold t
Page 12 and 13: failed her she’d use her wits. If
Page 14 and 15: you stealing our customers? Why are
Page 16 and 17: there, this little boy and his mom,
Page 18 and 19: BORN A CRIME I grew up in South Afr
Page 20 and 21: Many of the prostitutes in town wer
Page 22 and 23: he hadn’t, but once I existed he
Page 24 and 25: Traveling around the world today, I
Page 26 and 27: TREVOR, PRAY I grew up in a world r
Page 28 and 29: That’s all she did, all day, ever
Page 30 and 31: speakeasy. The shebeens were where
Page 32 and 33: using sonar. Every time she called
Page 36 and 37: CHAMELEON One afternoon I was playi
Page 38 and 39: As a kid I understood that people w
Page 40 and 41: was an ocean of black, like someone
Page 42 and 43: Before apartheid, any black South A
Page 44 and 45: and uncles had gone off to the citi
Page 46 and 47: through those. My books were my pri
Page 48 and 49: If we weren’t at school or work o
Page 50 and 51: Apartheid, for all its power, had f
Page 52 and 53: at school used overhead projectors
Page 54 and 55: She shrugged again. “So sad. I ho
Page 56 and 57: “What?” “Look, did you or did
Page 58 and 59: When I was seven years old, my moth
Page 60 and 61: I grew up in a black family in a bl
Page 62 and 63: oth. She brought them home, and I w
Page 64 and 65: They went back and forth. This woma
Page 66 and 67: ROBERT My father is a complete myst
Page 68 and 69: dad’s, where we’d watch Formula
Page 70 and 71: A bottle of Sprite. Custard with ca
Page 73 and 74: W hen Dutch colonists landed at the
Page 75 and 76: your grandfather couldn’t keep hi
Page 77 and 78: Things like that happened a lot. I
Page 79 and 80: Revenge truly is sweet. It takes yo
Page 82 and 83: A YOUNG MAN’S LONG, AWKWARD, OCCA
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Valentine’s card and the flowers
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OUTSIDER After finishing primary sc
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work for it—and I still get my br
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A YOUNG MAN’S LONG, AWKWARD, OCCA
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me the digits one by one as I wrote
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COLORBLIND At Sandringham I got to
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pedestrian out for a stroll. Once I
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“Is it David?” “No.” “Ria
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A YOUNG MAN’S LONG, AWKWARD, OCCA
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I got up onstage and Tom did some t
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There was a red Mazda that we’d h
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hair and started painting this crea
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“Are you ready?” I said. “Let
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I’d been dating a girl for over a
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GO HITLER! When I was in grade nine
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Business was booming. By matric I w
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Back then, most DJs could spin for
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someone must be the toughest guy of
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My mind was racing, trying to figur
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THE CHEESE BOYS My friend Bongani w
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settlement going on. Third, Fourth,
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In the hood, even if you’re not a
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“But who did this belong to?” I
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“Hey, let’s make a deal. We’l
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Everyone must know that your succes
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e a whole lot harder for an investm
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O nce, when I was ten years old, vi
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lesson, and now that lesson is the
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me aside and told me what I was in
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first night, everyone was giving me
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couldn’t afford anything but a st
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“I-I’m not fine, Your Honor. I
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M y favorite thing to eat as a kid,
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could lift car engines and gearboxe
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Xhosa woman no less, a culture whos
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“Respect?! You almost burned down
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She gives and gives and gives; that
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on it as well. Clients were getting
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Bramley, three neighborhoods away,
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wouldn’t happen again, but it was
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“This is all I can do,” she sai
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“Where are you now?” I said.
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times he pulled the trigger, and fo
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emergency room to give us an update
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W hen my mother was shot, so much h
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For my mother. My first fan. Thank
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR TREVOR NOAH is a c
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