Mixed Race Family Under Apartheid

The standup comedian Trevor Noah’s parents (white Swiss father, black African mother) loved each other, yet had to think long and hard before deciding to have a child. It was a criminal act under apartheid for a black and white to have relations, let alone a child. But they decided to have one anyway, with the understanding that they could never be a family (Criminal act, remember?), writes Noah in Born a Crime.

 

After he was born, the father found himself wanting to be near his son. But he couldn’t do so openly. So they’d all meet up secretly. As a toddler, when Trevor went to play in a park, his dad would follow at a distance, careful never to come too close to draw attention. It was a police state like situation, you never knew who might call the authorities. Inevitably, the kid (Trevor) would sometimes notice his dad in the distance and start shouting, “Daddy! Daddy!” upon which his father would panic and run away…

 

Much later, Trevor would learn what happened to many such colored children. Unlike Trevor’s parents, if the parents wanted to live together as a family, they’d emigrate to the white parent’s native country where mixed race marriage wasn’t illegal. Having faced all the hardships of staying on in South Africa as a colored kid (no dad, not fitting into any racial group etc), when Trevor learnt later in life the emigration option could have been chosen, he angrily asked his mom why she didn’t do that. To which she responded that South Africa was where her family, friends and life was, so why should she have left?

 

We read a million accounts of the horrors of Nazi concentration camps and Soviet gulags. Yes, those were terrible atrocities and warrant the writeups. But none of apartheid or of blacks during segregation in America. The color of the victim matters, and sadly the West/white dominates the narrative.