Nabila Tabassum Chowdhury > Recent Status Updates

"If we could see one another’s pain and empathize with one another, it would never be worth it to us to commit the crimes in the first place."

"Which was the whole reason the hood was built in the first place, to keep the victims of apartheid out of sight and out of mind. Because if white people ever saw black people as human, they would see that slavery is unconscionable. We live in a world where we don’t see the ramifications of what we do to others, because we don’t live with them."

"In society, we do horrible things to one another because we don’t see the person it affects. We don’t see their face. We don’t see them as people."

"It’s such a strange thing, but in two years of hustling I never once thought of it as a crime. I honestly didn’t think it was bad. It’s just stuff people found. White people have insurance. Whatever rationalization was handy."

"I haven’t stolen a camera. I’ve stolen someone’s memories. I’ve stolen part of someone’s life."

"And I’ll never forget thinking to myself that it felt like he did it on purpose. He sabotaged himself so that he’d get accepted back into the group again. The hood has a gravitational pull. It never leaves you behind, but it also never lets you leave. Because by making the choice to leave, you’re insulting the place that raised you and made you and never turned you away. And that place fights you back."

"The hood was strangely comforting, but comfort can be dangerous. Comfort provides a floor but also a ceiling."

"If you’re caught raping a woman, pray to God the police find you before the township does. If a woman is being hit, people don’t get involved. There are too many questions with a beating. What’s the fight about? Who’s responsible? Who started it? But rape is rape. Theft is theft. You’ve desecrated the community."

"The biggest thing in the hood is that you have to share. You can’t get rich on your own. You have money? Why aren’t you helping people? The old lady on the block needs help, everyone pitches in. You’re buying beer, you buy beer for everyone. You spread it around. Everyone must know that your success benefits the community in one way or another, or you become a target."

"Then she gives you some money and you go buy milk and bread. As long as you aren’t busy and it doesn’t cost you anything, you don’t say no."

"You never feel like a failure in the hood, because someone’s always worse off than you, and you don’t feel like you need to do more, because the biggest success isn’t that much higher than you, either. It allows you to exist in a state of suspended animation."

"The hood is also a low- stress, comfortable life. All your mental energy goes into getting by, so you don’t have to ask yourself any of the big questions. Who am I? Who am I supposed to be? Am I doing enough?"

"Because I didn’t live in the hood I was technically an outsider in the hood, but for the first time in my life I didn’t feel like one."

"If I’d put all that energy into studying I’d have earned an MBA. Instead I was majoring in hustling, something no university would give me a degree for."

"Hustling is to work what surfing the Internet is to reading. If you add up how much you read in a year on the Internet— tweets, Facebook posts, lists— you’ve read the equivalent of a shit ton of books, but in fact you’ve read no books in a year. When I look back on it, that’s what hustling was. It’s maximal effort put into minimal gain. It’s a hamster wheel."

"If a crackhead comes through and he’s got a crate of Corn Flakes boxes he’s stolen out of the back of a supermarket, the poor mom isn’t thinking, I’m aiding and abetting a criminal by buying these Corn Flakes. No. She’s thinking, My family needs food and this guy has Corn Flakes, and she buys the Corn Flakes."

"if copying CDs is wrong, why would they make CD writers?"

"The hood made me realize that crime succeeds because crime does the one thing the government doesn’t do: crime cares. Crime is grassroots. Crime looks for the young kids who need support and a lifting hand. Crime offers internship programs and summer jobs and opportunities for advancement. Crime gets involved in the community. Crime doesn’t discriminate."

"It wasn’t, “Hey, that’s a crack dealer.” It was, “Oh, little Jimmy’s selling crack now.”"

"The hood was a complete sensory overload for me, but within the chaos there was order, a system, a social hierarchy based on where you lived."

"The characters in those movies, in the songs, they owned it. Kids in the townships started doing the same, wearing their identity as a badge of honor: You were no longer from the township— you were from the hood."

"All I was hearing was some white lady shouting about how white people beat us before and they’ll beat us again. I said, “You will never stop us again, lady”— and here’s where I played the trump card—“ You’ll never stop us, because now we have Nelson Mandela on our side! And he told us we can do this!”"

"She was talking, of course, about stopping the Nazis in World War II, but that’s not what I was hearing. Jews in South Africa are just white people."

"And there it was. You people."

"But when you read through the history of atrocities against Africans, there are no numbers, only guesses. It’s harder to be horrified by a guess."

"The thing Africans don’t have that Jewish people do have is documentation. The Nazis kept meticulous records, took pictures, made films. And that’s really what it comes down to. Holocaust victims count because Hitler counted them. Six million people killed. We can all look at that number and rightly be horrified."

"But if black South Africans could go back in time and kill one person, Cecil Rhodes would come up before Hitler. If people in the Congo could go back in time and kill one person, Belgium’s King Leopold would come way before Hitler. If Native Americans could go back in time and kill one person, it would probably be Christopher Columbus or Andrew Jackson."

"Every country thinks their history is the most important, and that’s especially true in the West."

"There is also this to consider: The name Hitler does not offend a black South African because Hitler is not the worst thing a black South African can imagine."

"This Hitler was so powerful that at some point black people had to go help white people fight against him— and if the white man has to stoop to ask the black man for help fighting someone, that someone must be the toughest guy of all time. So if you want your dog to be tough, you name your dog Hitler. If you want your kid to be tough, you name your kid Hitler."