escaped the slums

"And we, the aspiring, were ashamed to see ourselves as we had once been. We resented being reminded of our origins. Having escaped the slums, we dreaded slipping back, and we resented savagely the turning of our new homes into a new slum area. All this resentment was flung at the new arrivals. Had they left their junk, dressed in their best and moved in with even one suite of new furniture bought on the installment plan, the women would have turned out with cups of tea. For then the new arrivals would have been, like us. the aspiring. But they had brought the slums with them, defiantly. So the voices of the women were bitter against them. And they, sensing hostility, became aggressively louder and more vulgar."

~~ from Tell Freedom: Memories of Africa by Peter Abrahams

honorary white status

"Apartheid, for all its power, had fatal flaws baked in, starting with the fact that it never made any sense. Racism is not logical. Consider this: Chinese people were classified as black in South Africa. I don't mean they were running around acting black. They were still Chinese. But, unlike Indians, there weren't enough Chinese people to warrant devising a whole separate classification. Apartheid, despite its intricacies and precision, didn't know what to do with them, so the government said, 'Eh, we'll just call 'em black. It's simpler that way.

"Interestingly, at the same time, Japanese people were labeled as white. The reason for this was that the South African government wanted to establish good relations with the Japanese in order to import their fancy cars and electronics. So Japanese people were given honorary white status while Chinese people stayed black. I always like to imagine being a South African policeman who likely couldn't tell the difference between Chinese and Japanese but whose job was to make sure that people of the wrong color weren't doing the wrong thing. If he saw an Asian person sitting on a whites-only bench, what would he say?

"'Hey, get off that bench, you Chinaman!'

"'Excuse me, I'm Japanese.'

"'Oh, I apologize, sir. I didn't mean to be racist. Have a lovely afternoon.'"

~~ from Born A Crime: Stories From A South African Childhood by Trevor Noah

the hood

"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. I was out there every day from seven a.m. to seven p.m., and every day it was: How do we turn ten rand into twenty? How do we turn twenty into fifty? How do I turn fifty into a hundred? At the end of the day we'd spend it on food and maybe some beers, and then we'd go home and come back and it was: How do we turn ten into twenty? How do we turn twenty into fifty? It was a whole day's work to flip that money. You had to walking, be moving, be thinking. You had to get to a guy, meet a guy. There were many days we'd end up back at zero, but I always felt like I'd been very productive."

~~ from Born A Crime: Stories From A South African Childhood by Trevor Noah

my whole childhood

"My relationship with my mom was like the relationship between a cop and a criminal in the movies—the relentless detective and the devious mastermind she's determined to catch. They're bitter rivals, but, damn, they respect the hell out of each other, and somehow they even grow to like each other. Sometimes my mom would catch me, but she was usually one step behind, and she was always giving me the eye. Someday, kid. Someday I'm going to catch you and put you away for the rest of your life. Then I would give her a nod in return. Have a good evening, Officer. That was my whole childhood."

~~ from Born A Crime: Stories From A South African Childhood by Trevor Noah

Letter from Cape Town, profile from France

For recent online reading, I appreciated the comical moments in Adam Gopnik's portrait of the far-right Algerian immigrant, media celebrity, and French presidential candidate in The New Yorker as well as this South African business about Nikolai Gogol and stolen noses in Harper's Magazine.