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How does 'Born a Crime' offer insights and challenges? - Coggle…

- - - - Environmental effect on behaviour
        
        Trevor Noah shows how environment can severely impact morality. The people in the ‘hood’ see crime as a part of daily life, and as a way to get by. Their environment forces them to have a different moral code. In some ways, Trevor was faced with something similar in his upbringing - poverty encourages crime like hustling and illegal copying of CDs. “We like to believe that we live in a world of good guys and bad guys, and in the suburbs it’s easy to believe that, because getting to know a career criminal in the suburbs is a difficult thing. But then you go to the hood and you see there are so many shades in between. In the hood, gangsters were your friends and neighbors.” [209]-Grace
        
        Trevor Noah discusses how people who lived in Alexandra (‘the hood’)engaging in criminal activity were morally ambiguous since they didn’t have much other choice/options. They also don’t have many other opportunities and therefore turn to crime.
        
        “The hood made me realise 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 programmes and part-time jobs and opportunities for advancement. Crime gets involved in the community. Crime doesn’t discriminate.” (Page 209)
      - How Experiences shape people
    - - Language
        
        language allowed Trevor to navigate between the different tribes and feel a sense of belonging due to his ability to speak different languages
        
        “I became a chameleon. My color didn’t change, but I could change your perception of my color”(56).
        
        “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.” (47)
        
        “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”
        
        Language can bridge the gap between multiple cultural groups.
        
        This is seen when Trevor says, “racism teaches us that we are different because of the colour of our skin…[but language convinces us we are the same]” (p. 49). Another point proving this was when he says, “so many other smaller incidents in my life made me realize that language, even more than colour, defines who you are to people” (p. 56).
    - - Relationship with mother
        
        Trevor mom raises him to view the world and his opportunities as a white person but to behave like a person of color.
        
        “My mom raised me as if there were no limitations on where I could go or what I could do. 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 matter. (73)
        
        His mother did everything possible to help Trevor have a sucessfull future
        
        “‘I know you see me as some crazy old bitch nagging at you,’ she said, ‘But you forget the reason I ride you so hard and give you so much shit is because I love you. Everything I have ever done I’ve done from a place of love. If I don’t punish you, the world will punish you even worse. The world doesn’t love you. If the police get you, the police don’t love you. When I beat you, I’m trying to save you. When they beat you, they’re trying to kill you.’” (243)
        
        revor Noah’s mum taught Trevor about grown up relationships to make sure he treated people well. This would make sure that Trevor would be respectful in the future and could navigate relationships well. “Trevor, remember a man is not determined by how much he earns. You can still be a man of the house and earn less than your woman. Being a man is not what you have, it’s who you are. Being more of a man doesn’t mean your woman has to be less than you” (127)
  - - - Challenges of Identity//The Neef of Belonging
        
        As a coloured child in South Africa, it was very difficult for Trevor to figure out if he was part of the 'white' people or the 'black' people or the 'coloured' people who were often assoicated with heavy criminals. He doesn't really know where he can fit in.
        
        “The history of colored people in South Africa is, in this respect, worse than the history of black people in South Africa. For all that black people have suffered, they know who they are. Colored people don’t”(116).
        
        Challenges of Identity can lead into how language has helped him fit in as well
        
        I wasn’t popular, but I wasn’t an outcast. I was everywhere with everybody, and at the same time I was all by myself. (141)
        
        The political influence of Apartheid on society is discussed in the book. There was such major indoctrination going on that even black people believed they were worth less than white.
        “ Colored people had it rough. Imagine: You’ve been brainwashed into believing your blood is tainted. You’ve spent all your time assimilating and aspiring to whiteness” (120)
      - Gender Inequality
        
        Trever mother experiences segregation due to being a woman. When she was getting abused by her boyfriend/husband she went to the police. They turned her down stating that it was a normal thing for husbands to beat their wives.
        
        “When they were just dating, my mother was still the free spirit, doing what she wanted, going where she wanted. Slowly, those things got reined in. I could feel that he was trying to rein in our independence” (252)