Born a Crime

Before Chapter 25 begins, Noah says that “[i]n Germany, no child finished high school without learning about the Holocaust. Not just the facts of it but the how and the why and the gravity of it—what it means. As a result, Germans grow up appropriately aware and apologetic” (183). However, in South Africa “the atrocities of apartheid have never been taught that way. We aren’t taught judgment or shame. We were taught history the way it’s taught in America […] facts, but not many, and never the emotional or moral dimension” (183).

Noah opens Chapter 15 by talking about Bolo, Bruce Lee, and John, three Chinese kids who transferred to Sandringham when he was in the ninth grade. They were the only Chinese kids out of a thousand students. Noah gets to know Bolo because he’s one of his tuck-shop clients. Bolo and a white kid named Daniel sell bootlegged CDs, and one day Noah overhears them complaining about the Black kids at school because they take their merchandise but never pay. Noah tells Bolo and Daniel that he’ll be their middleman with the Black students. After working loyally with Bolo and Daniel for a year, Daniel gives Noah his CD writer, an expensive 2,000-rand gift: “The day Daniel gave it to me, he changed my life.