Born a Crime: Chapter 15 Summary & Analysis

In his preface, Noah notes that the history of the Holocaust is a central part of a German high school education, like the British Empire in the current British school system. But South Africa, like the United States, does not critically teach about its past: there are “facts, but not many, and never the emotional or moral dimension.”

Three Chinese kids start at Trevor’s school while he is in the ninth grade: Bolo (a nickname), Bruce Lee (his actual name), and John (who “was just John”). Bolo is busy starting his own business, selling pirated PlayStation games and CDs with a white kid named Daniel. But Bolo and Daniel are afraid to confront the black kids, who promise to pay later but never do, so they enlist Trevor’s help. Daniel helps Trevor improve his computer and then, when he is ready to graduate, gives Trevor his expensive CD writer.

Trevor now has everything he needs to control the bootleg business top-to-bottom, but he also has zero music knowledge, since he is only allowed to listen to church music. To remedy this, he starts listening to the CDs while he burns them; many are black American albums. Sizwe gives Trevor some ideas that prove quite successful, such as making a compilation album, or having the tracks fade together.

Trevor is making 500 rand a week, a “dream” salary, which is “the most liberating thing in the world” because now he can afford choice. He goes to McDonald’s—which is all the rage in South Africa—and soon gets addicted: “McDonald’s is America.” He refuses to eat much else. In the era before cellphones, he even buys a cordless phone, which lets him talk to his friends on his walk to and from McDonald’s.

Trevor has Daniel to thank for his newfound comforts; Daniel’s generosity shows “how important it is to empower the dispossessed and the disenfranchised in the wake of oppression.” Daniel has access to all the resources that Trevor and his family have always lacked, and by getting those resources (the CD writer), Trevor has managed to succeed where “talent alone would have gotten [him] nowhere.”

Sizwe soon recommends that Trevor start DJing. Sizwe lives in the dense, dangerous, and hard-partying shantytown of Alexandra; in Alex, unless “someone gets shot or a bottle gets broken on someone’s face […] it wasn’t a party.” Most DJs are stuck with vinyl, so can only play for a few hours, but with his computer, Trevor can play all night. He and Sizwe throw Alexandra’s biggest party on New Year’s Eve and immediately build a reputation. While the white kids take a gap year to travel, Trevor takes one to sell CDs by day and DJ parties by night.

Trevor and Sizwe decide to form a dance crew to teach people new moves mentioned in their music, and the best dancer among their friends is a guy named Hitler. Hitler is incredible, like “a jellyfish if it could walk on land,” and is “incredibly handsome.” He “almost always” wins the neighborhood dance competitions and becomes the dance crew’s centerpiece; the whole neighborhood chants, “Go Hit-ler! Go Hit-ler! Go Hit-ler! Go Hit-ler!”

The legendary dancer is named Hitler because, since the earliest days of colonial South Africa, black people were forced to take a European name “that white people could pronounce.” They often choose these at random, from the Bible or the news. This is “a case of the West reaping what it has sown”—black South Africans really have no idea who Hitler is at this point in time, and mostly think of him as someone so powerful that he almost made the Allies lose their war. He “must be the toughest guy of all time,” and South Africans want to seem tough, so they name their children “Hitler.”

At Trevor’s comparatively sophisticated school, they learned some facts about World War II, but nothing about Hitler’s racist policies (on which apartheid was largely modeled). People think in terms of their own history, and “Hitler is not the worst thing a black South African can imagine” compared to the Europeans who colonized their people. Westerners often “insist that the Holocaust was the worst atrocity in human history” but forget about colonialism, which is different only because it lacks detailed records, which the Nazis kept religiously. For Africans, Hitler is “just another strongman from the history books.”

As the dance crew multiplies Trevor and Sizwe’s success, they begin playing more gigs in the suburbs, for wealthier black families but also white people. And they soon get booked to play a “cultural program” at a private Jewish school. They start their set, and ten minutes in, Trevor announces, “Give it up and make some noise for HIIIIIITTTTLLLLEERRRRRRRRRR!!!”

The room falls silent as Hitler and the crew start their routine; a teacher unplugs Trevor’s microphone and calls him a “horrible, disgusting, vile creature.” Trevor realizes the problem: Hitler’s signature, gyrating, erotic dance move. But this is “part of our [African] culture.” Trevor tells the woman to calm down, and she says that “you people are disgusting.” Clearly, she is racist, Trevor concludes, and they continue arguing. She promises that “my people” will defeat “people like you,” and Trevor assumes she is talking about white people, since “Jews in South Africa are just white people.” He announces that “now we have Nelson Mandela on our side!” The woman is horribly confused, and the crew dances their way out of the school, chanting, “Go Hit-ler! Go Hit-ler! Go Hit-ler! Go Hit-ler!”