Controversial Issues In Trevor Noah's 'Born A Crime'

At this time, controversial topics are really hard to talk about without offending someone. Nowadays you could potentially offend someone just by saying one wrong word. But some comedians are able to talk about these controversial topics in a way that doesn’t spark negative backlash. Trevor Noah is a comedian from South Africa who talks about his life during apartheid. In his comedic bits he talks about apartheid and he is able to make fun of it even though he grew up in apartheid. In this essay I will use Trevor Noah’s book, Born a Crime, and one of his stand up bits to show that humor is an effective way to talk about sensitive or serious topics or events. In Trevor Noah’s book, he said “Whenever the kid on the streets saw me they would yell, “the white man!”. Some would run away. Other would call out to their parents to come look. Others would run up and try to touch me to see if i was real.” (Noah 35). Now in this scenario, it seems pretty funny that kids would be amazed by the fact that Noah was colored, meaning his skin color was tan. But he later discovered that the kids in his village have never seen any other skin color other than black. Because of apartheid, the kids never left the town and because most of the families were

He says he’s learning german to reconnect with his father. During his stay in Germany he goes to a sandwich shop and orders his things. But he does so in a Hitlerish vibe and this makes the lady in the store scared and she calls him the black hitler. He says he was happy she called him that. Although he was called Hitler he was at least called black, which is what he wanted to be. Joking about Hitler is pretty serious because he was tied to the Holocaust and white supremacy and starting world war two. But here he jokes about how he picked up Hitler’s nuances when he speaks and he makes it fun and laughable even though there is a strong stigma behind Hitler’s