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Quote by Trevor Noah

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Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood

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Trevor Noah
Trevor Noah

Trevor Noah is a South African-born comedian, writer, and television host. He is known for his unique sense of humor and insightful commentary on social issues. Born on February 20, 1984, Noah grew up in Johannesburg, South Africa. He began his career performing in comedy clubs in Johannesburg and has since gained recognition in the television and radio industry. more

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“A slick BMW 5-Series pulls right by the traffic light. As the car comes to a halt, a bunch of kids, street kids, go to work. One of them, a young boy no more than eight years old kisses the BMW emblem on the hood. The driver, drenched in apathy, doesn’t even look up. Another kid comes by the side, begging the beamer’s owner for some cash. Everybody in Tehran knows that to pay these kids is bringing Slumdog Millionaire’s silver screen to the silver smog city.”

TehranPoverty InequalityTajrishSlumdog MillionaireHomeless Youth
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“For Marin, the city had an almost medieval look. The effect was belied by the swarms of hopjets, and Taxi-Airs, and other aircraft, large and small. But his training had sharpened his ability to shut out extraneous material and to see essentials; and so, he saw a city pattern that had a formal, oldfashioned beauty. The squares were too rigid, but their widely varying sizes provided some of the randomness so necessary to achieve what was timeless in true art. The numerous parks, perpetually green and rich with orderly growth, gave an overall air of graceful elegance. The city of the Great Judge looked prosperous and long-enduring. Ahead, the scene changed, darkened, became alien. The machine glided forward over a vast, low-built, rambling gray mass of suburb that steamed and smoked, and here and there hid itself in its own rancorous mists. Pripp City! Actually, the word was Pripps: Preliminary Restriction Indicated Pending Permanent Segregation. It was one of those alphabetical designations, and an emotional nightmare to have all other identification removed and to find yourself handed a card which advised officials that you were under the care of the Pripps organization. The crisis had been long ago now, more than a quarter of a century, but there was a line in fine print at the bottom of each card. A line that still made the identification a potent thing, a line that stated: Bearer of this card is subject to the death penalty if found outside restricted area. In the beginning it had seemed necessary. There had been a disease, virulent and deadly, perhaps too readily and too directly attributed to radiation. The psychological effects of the desperate terror of thousands of people seemed not to have been considered as a cause. The disease swept over an apathetic world and produced merciless reaction: permanent segregation, death to transgressors, and what seemed final evidence of the rightness of what had been done: people who survived the disease . . . changed.”

PandemicsMarginalizationGhettoesApharteid
Book:The Mind Cage
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