Trevor Noah is a half-white half-black boy born in South Africa during a time known as apartheid. Apartheid was the extreme segregation of black African people in South Africa by the white African people of South Africa known as the Afrikaaners. Trevor’s mom wanted to have a child with a white man however, even though it was illegal at the time for that to happen, but she did it anyway. When Trevor was a child he was taught many different languages in order to fit in better. He learned to speak English, Zulu, Xhosa, Tswana, and Afrikaans in order to help him fit in with the people he was with and potentially get himself out of bad situations. Depending on who he was around he would speak their language with the exact same accent in order to make them think he was like them. “I became a chameleon. My color didn’t change, but I could change your perception of my color. If you spoke to me in Zulu, I replied to you in Zulu. If you spoke to me in Tswana, I replied to you in Tswana. Maybe I didn’t look like you, but if I spoke like you, I was you.” (p.56) I feel like I do this a lot, not to the same degree of extremity, but on a smaller scale. For example, I have a ton of friends who love sports, so when I am with them I talk about sports, and fantasy leagues, I’ll also play sports with them. I also have a friend who loves coding, so when I am with him we talk about coding and computer things, and I code stuff with him. If I were to just talk about sports with my coding friend or just talk about coding with my friends who love sports they would become uninterested and probably not as good friends. There are also certain things that I couldn’t say to a teacher that I would say to my friends. Just like how Trevor would never speak in Xhosa around Zulu people, I would never say certain things and act in certain ways around different people.
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