The Perception of Color By Joshua Evers

As interesting as I found Trevor Noah’s elongated writing on his fecal matter incident at the age of five, I will write on something more appropriate. First, I would like to applaud Noah for the transparency and humor he takes in retelling his childhood. He manages to be serious, honest, and somehow prevent the reader from bogging down in sorrow. At the beginning of Chapter 4, Trevor and his cousins do something stupid, as they play with matches and perforate his cousin’s eardrum. However, his grandmother beats the daylights out of all of the kids except Trevor. His grandmother said to Trevor’s mom “...I don’t know how to hit a white child,”. This reveals a pretty difficult understanding for both Trevor and the reader. Trevor is being alienated from his family, which he already has very little of, but also the reader is able to understand what he stated earlier concerning mixed children. Trevor wasn’t seen as black and was distanced from his family. His grandfather also called him “Mastah” and wouldn’t let him sit in the front seat. At first I found this awful, but soon Trevor explains it as being fantastic, using this separate treatment to escape punishment at every turn. What he said earlier is only becoming more clear: The Apartheid was designed to pit Africans against Africans in order that the White minority could rule the Black majority. Evidence of this is even found in his own family. This is an amazing read, and Trevor Noah’s personal experiences are backing up many of his claims. What do you think about his experience of the Apartheid?

I commented on the posts of Jamie and Caroline.