The Challenge Of Fitting In And Finding Your Identity

The Challenge of Fitting In and Finding Your Identity

In the book, Born a Crime by Trevor Noah, there is a recurring theme of the author struggling to find his own identity when others only take his race and skin color into account. Trevor realizes that the combination of social class and race determines people's identity and he didn't want that. This book shares Trevor’s stories of his childhood during the Apartheid of 1984 in South Africa. Trevor is a young boy during this time of segregation and felt the effects of it even while being young. During the Apartheid black, white, and mixed people were separated to fit into their own groups with different rights. During this time period, mixed marriage and sex was illegal. This made Trevor

Instead of being pushed into the category of mixed people, he wants to find his own identity and fit in with the people he connects with. Throughout his story, we see Trevor take us through multiple accounts and examples of his experiences with trying to fit into a racial group and sometimes classifying his own identity as something bigger than just his race. His first experience with this separation of racial groups and parties that he witnessed was his elementary school. Being a young boy Trevor hasn’t found out who he wants to be and what his own identity is. In Born a Crime, Trevor writes, “the white kids I’d met that morning, they went in one direction, the black kids went in another direction, and I was left standing in the middle, totally confused ” (57). In this quote we are shown how identity is racially dividing through his black and white friends walking away in opposite directions, symbolizing the different racial group’s polarity of thought. Rather than joining one of the groups, Trevor is left in the middle feeling “confused”. This symbolizes the identity crisis he is suffering from due to not being able to neatly place himself into

Later, at this elementary school, he gravitates towards the black kids more and spends less time with the white kids, although he still doesn't pick one group. Once again, this isn't because he is more physically black than white, but he associates and shares more in common with them. The way they grew up, the things they enjoy doing, the things they speak about, all traits that make up someone's true identity. This idea is shown again when Trevor writes, “So you can imagine how weird it was for me. I was mixed but not colored-colored by complexion but not by culture. Because of that I was seen as a colored person who didn't want to be colored” (120). This shows Trevor's insight on what his true identity is. He comes to the conclusion that his identity really isn't just his race. It's shown right in the quote when he writes “Colored by complexion but not by culture”. The