Born A Crime/Synthesis Essay Examples

Mr. Benham-Baker

English 1

28 April 2023

Born a Crime/Synthesis Essay Introduction

Starting in 1948 and ending in 1994, Apartheid was a policy of complete racial segregation in South Africa, allowing political and economic discrimination against non-white people (Burns). The government ruled by the white minority, or the Afrikaans, installed Apartheid to build an excellent standard of living within South Africa for the white minority, while the non-white majority struggled (“South Africa: Revolution”). From the first colonization of South Africa by Dutch Settlers in 1650 to the British capturing the colony for their empire in 1910, Apartheid was inspired by the white supremacist ideologies that first placed South Africa into white control (Noah

For example, Rudyard Kipling promotes the ideals of white supremacy, by encouraging imperialism and urging the United States to “Take the White Man’s burden/ Send forth the best ye breed/… Your new-caught sullen people’s half devil and half child” (Kipling 1-2). In Kipling's diction in the first line, he refers to imperialism as a “burden”, portraying colonization as a selfless act to help others. Portraying white men as the building blocks of society who will modernize the world, Kipling ignores the many benefits the European countries gain from imperialism, as well as the suffering, erasure of culture, and gentrification of native peoples, such as what occurred in Apartheid. Additionally, referring to “best ye breed”, Kipling’s diction implies his perspective, in calling out white men as the “best” of mankind. Contrastingly, Kipling refers to the colonized people as “half devil and half child”, his diction revealing his perspective on non-white people. With “devil” and “child” connoting evil and immature or ignorant, Kipling alienates non-white people with inhuman characteristics. In referring to colonization as a“burden”, Kipling hints that non-white people are undeserving of humanity, which serves as a common viewpoint in the early 1900s, and a building principle of Apartheid.

Firstly, Ngozie Adichie repents on the single story, and how growing up with a certain perception of a group of people “robs people of dignity. It makes our recognition of equal humanity difficult. It emphasizes how we are different” (Adichie). With the power of media and influence on the white minorities side, the government was able to spread “single stor[ies]” of groups of people and create harmful stereotypes of each one. This dehumanization “robs people of dignity”, as poets like Kipling had done. People's recognition of “equal humanity” lessened, allowing for violence and hate to grow in Apartheid society. With little or harmful representation of nonwhite groups, white supremacy was able to grow with a large amount of representation in European countries. The spread of single stories was exactly what happened in Apartheid, as Trevor Noah points out how Apartheid viewed biracial and black people. Apartheid let biracial people move up to white status under certain conditions, creating conflict within themselves and their communities. Noah expresses Apartheid’s ability to create hate among a community, by mentioning common slurs of biracial people, such as “boesman … Because it called out their blackness, their primitiveness”(Noah 119-120). Apartheid created hate in communities for those “lower” than