born a c quotes

“To prohibit illicit carnal intercourse between Europeans and natives and other acts in relation thereto.”

Pg. 0

Racism - apartheid laws

“In Soweto, religion filled to void left by absent men.”

Pg. 39

Identity

“As modestly as we lived at home, I never felt poor because our lives were so rich with experience.”

Pg. 72

Hope - making the most of opportunities

“My mom raised me as if there were no limitations on where I could go or what I could do. When I look back I realize she raised me like a white kid”

Pg 73

Hope/racist constructs

“It could have been anyone’s gun, but the guys from Alex were the only ones who got arrested. Everyone else in the car was free to go.”

Pg. 223

Racism - stereotyping

“He had the eyes of the Devil. In that moment I could tell my father was gone.”

Andrew, pg. 276

Identity - Abel’s descent

“She never let me see us as victims. We were victims, me and my mom, Andrew and Isaac. Victims of apartheid. Victims of abuse. But I was never allowed to think that way, and I didn’t see her life that way.”

Pg. 271-272

Hope - keeping head up high

“White people don’t talk to black people. So why would black people know what’s going on in the white man’s world?”

pg. 194

Cycles of poverty - apartheid effects

“These people had been so fucked by their own construct of race that they could not see that the white person they were looking for was sitting right in front of them.”

Pg. 159

Racism - racist constructs

“Afrikaners used to call them amperbaas: ‘almost-boss’. … ‘Because if you work hard enough you can erase this taint from your bloodline. Keep on marrying lighter and whiter and don’t touch the chocolate and maybe, maybe, someday, if you’re lucky, you can become white.”

Pg. 118

Racism - pencil test/race promotion

“fear of losing their status kept white people in line.”

Pg. 119

Control over white people

“That’s what apartheid did: It convinced every group that it was because of another race that they didn’t get into the club. … But the truth is that none of you were ever getting into that club.”

Pg. 120

Racism - Apartheid

“The white neighborhoods of Johannesburg were built on white fear”

Pg. 151

Control over white people

“I saw that not all families are violent. I saw the futility of violence, the cycle that just repeats itself, the damage that’s inflicted on people that they in turn inflict on others.”

Pg. 262

Hope - not submitting to violence

“The triumph of democracy over apartheid is sometimes called the Bloodless Revolution. It is called that because very little white blood was spilled. Black blood ran in the streets.”

Pg. 12

Racism - black casualties swept under the rug

“The ultimate goal of apartheid was to make South Africa a white country”

Racism - Apartheid

“Children could be taken. Children were taken. The wrong color kid in the wrong color area, and the government could come in, strip your parents of custody, haul you off to an orphanage.”

Pg. 29

Racism - children being taken

“Language brings with it an identity and a culture, or at least the perception of it.”

Pg. 49

Identity - Language

“Like indigenous peoples around the world, black South Africans adopted the religion of our colonizers. By ‘adopt’ I mean it was forced on us.”

Pg. 5

Racism - Colonization

“In the evenings my mom and I would turn on our little black-and-white TV and watch the news. A dozen people killed. Fifty people killed. A hundred people killed.”

Pg. 12

Conflict

“’Oh, you’re a Xhosa,’ he said. ‘That explains it. Climbing into strange men’s cars. Disgusting woman.’”

Zulu driver, pg. 15

Racism - between black tribes

“‘Because,’ she would say, ‘even if he never leaves the ghetto, he will know that the ghetto is not the world. If that is all I accomplish, I’ve done enough.’”

Pg. 74

Hope - knowledge of the world

“‘You need to find your father.’ ‘Why?’ I asked. … ‘Because he’s a piece of you,’ she said, ‘and if you don’t find him you won’t find yourself.’”

Pg. 101

Identity - Trevor’s lineage

“And, as thanks, he bequeathed unto me his CD writer. At the time, black people barely had access to computers, let’s start there. But a CD writer? That was the stuff of lore. Thanks to him, I now controlled production, sales, distribution – I had everything I needed to lock down the bootleg business.”

Pg. 186

Cycles of poverty - opportunity

“Until I turned twenty-five years old, I had a recurring nightmare of the look on his face as he came around that corner.”

Pg. 264

Identity - Abel’s descent

“She said the things she hated most about the hood was that it didn’t pressure me to become better.”

Pg. 228

Identity/culture - hood

“It was almost like building a driveway was a way of willing a car to happen.”

Pg. 42

Hope

“And if the monkeys ever went crazy and tried to break out of their cage, the air force could fly over

and bomb the shit out of everyone.”

Pg. 28

Racism

“Rows and rows of cinder-block and corrugated-iron shacks, practically stacked on top of one another. Its nickname is Gomorrah because it has the wildest parties and the worst crimes.”

Pg. 191

Crime - Cycles of poverty

“they’ve been taught how to fish, but no one will give them a fishing rod.”

Pg. 208

Cycles of poverty - Allegory

‘It does not serve the Bantu to learn history and science because he is primitive,’

Pg. 61

Cycles of poverty - education

“What he did, on a small scale, showed me how important it is to empower the dispossessed and

disenfranchised in the wake of oppression.” Pg. 190

cycles of poverty - escaping