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Trevor Noah

My speech today will focus on one of the most remarkable personalities in the comedy world, Trevor Noah. You certainly would enjoy learning much about this South African comedian, writer, television host, producer just to mention. His journey to his present glory is one which has been marked with determination, resilience, and self-discovery.

Early Life and Identity Dilemma

 Trevor Noah’s early life was filled with racial identity dilemma. He was divided on whether to identify himself with the White or the Black race. He grew up during the apartheid regime where racial isolation and discrimination was rife in South Africa.  (Christian Century, 2017).  When he was young, he never understood why he could interact with his father comfortably while indoors but not when outdoors; especially in public (Dockterman et al., 2017). He also observed that his father and mother were walking apart in streets like strangers in public places (Stern, 2016). Noah was in a dilemma that he was not White enough to be White and that he was neither Black enough to be Black, hence he fell in between the two racial groups (Christian Century, 2017). His Swiss-father later broke up with his mother. His mother re-married. This was a predicament since his step-mother abused both Noah and his father (Christian Century, 2017). At the moment, Noah is a citizen of the world and is no more disturbed by racial identity dilemma since he shares his experiences freely with the world.

Self-Awareness

Noah came to understand the basis of his divided identity with respect to racial issue in apartheid South Africa, and used it positively to promote his personal progress and to transform the comedy and entertainment world. Noah came to realize that he had poor understanding of his divided racial identity during his early childhood years. He has realized that he was born at a time time when inter-racial marriages and relationships were deemed illegal by discriminatory racial laws in the apartheid South Africa. His father was a Swiss-German; whereas his mother was an Africa from the Xhosa ethnic group (Christian Century, 2017).

Noah Now

Noah is the current host of The Daily Show, a role he took over from Jon Stewart in 2015 (Cagle, 2017). He is one of the interesting persons in today’s world who has contributed significantly to the society. His awakened awareness and openness makes him use his story and experiences as evidence of his crime made by his father and father in associating in inter-racial romance. At the present Noah takes an active role in shading light on apartheid racial segregation laws (Stern, 2016).

Contributions

He is a role model of how love may overcome negative energy such as feelings of revenge, hate, and emotional pain (Christian Century, 2017. Noah is feeding the American public with new topics, issues, and an insight that may have not been of focus before to other comedians in the U.S. Noah’s childhood during apartheid has impacted his personality and has led to his success today (Christian Century. 2017). At the present Noah takes an active role in shading light on apartheid racial segregation laws (Stern, 2016). Noah is a role model of how love can transform the world despite having experienced difficult humiliating conditions caused by apartheid rule and segregation laws. Segregation law and disadvantaging conditions forced Noah and his family to experience heavy odds of racism, hunger, poverty, and abuse. He was particularly abused by his step father (Christian Century, 2017). He succeeds in spreading love through self-critiquing approach. Self-critiquing technique is also used by other popular comedians such as Stewart Lee and Charlie Brooker (Brassett, 2017). Majority of comedians nowadays explore their cultural and own life experiences to write jokes or create a sense humor (Sturges, 2015). His comedic shows are largely autobiographical in nature. Noah has understood that the best way of telling his story is through comedy or jokes.  American comedy consumers are used to topics such as racial tensions and anger, but Noah offers the self-hating content to consumers. He has used his personal story as well as his family history in a positive manner to prosper in the entertainment and comedy world. He does not satisfy anger consumption by the American public that is often experienced when the victim is African-American and the perpetrator is White (Sturges, 2015). Rather than exploiting anger as a tool of expressing his difficult past, Noah uses satire and humor to tell sad stories, infuriating stories, crazy stories, and humiliating stories (Cagle, 2017). He tries to locate a joke even in most serious issues such as shootings and killings. For example he narrates in how his step father shot his mother in the head in close range. Luckily, the mother survived the ordeal (Keohane, 2016). This approach has promoted the fast rise of Noah to the peak in the comedy industry (Stern, 2016).