Women held the community together. “When you strike a women, you strike a rock.” As a nation, we recognized the power of women, but in the home they were expected to submit and obey.
Trevor Noah, Born a crime
His unique experience as a colored kid living in a black neighborhood:
“Because I don’t know how to hit a white child,” she (Trevor’s grandma) said. “A black child, I understand. A black child, you hit them and they stay black. Trevor, when you hit him he turns blue and green and yellow and red. I’ve never seen those colors before. I’m scared I’m going to break him. I don’t want to kill a white person. I’m so afraid. I’m not going to touch him.” And she never did
Trevor Noah, Born a crime, p.52
Relatable to my Cornell experience:
It was a wonderful experienceto have, but the downside was that it sheltered me from reality. Maryvale (Trevor’s Primary school) was an oasis that kept me from the truth, a comfortable place where I could avoid making a tough decision. But the real world doesn’t go away. Racism exists. People are getting hurt, and just because it’s not happening to you doesnt mean it’s not happening. And at some point, you have to choose. Black or white. Pick a side. You can try to hide from it. You can say, “Oh, I don’t pick sides,” but at some point life will force you to pick a side.
p.57
Being chose is the greatest gift you can give to another human being.
Chapter ROBERT, p.110
What I wanted was a relationship, and interview is not a relationship. Relationships are built in the silences. You spend time with people, you observe them and interact with them, and you come to know them – and that’s what apartheid stole from us: time. You can’t make up for that with an interview, but I had to figure that out for myself.
Chapter ROBERT, p.110
The invisible restriction for people from underprivilege groups:
The tricky thing about the hood is that you’re always working, working, working, and you feel like something’s happening, but really nothing’s happening at all.
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.
C. The cheese boys, p.217
The whole tradition of women bowing to the men, my mom found that absurd. But she didn’t refuse to do it. She overdid it. She made a mockery of it. The other women would bow before men with this polite little curtsy. My mom would go down and cower, groveling in the dirt like she was worshipping a deity, and she’d stay down there fore a long time, like a really long time, long enough to make everyone very uncomfortable.
That was my mom. Don’t fight the system. Mock the system.
C. My Mother’s Life, p. 253
Toward violence:
I grew up in a world of violence, but I myself was never violent at all. … I saw the futility of violence, the cycle that just repeats itself, the damage that’s inflicted on people that they in turn inflict on others.
I saw, more than anything, that relationships are not sustained by violence but by love. Love is a creative act. When you love someone you create a new world for them. My mother did that for me, and with the progress I made and the things I learned, I came back and created a new world and a new understanding for her.
In all the times I received beatings from my mom, I was never scared of her. … I understood that it was discipline and it was being done for a purpose. The first time Abel (Trevor’s stepfather) hit me I felt something I had never felt before. I felt terror.
C. My mother’s life, p. 263
Natalie's Island 