““Which seems ridiculous, but it would happen. Every year under apartheid, some colored people would get promoted to white. It wasn’t a myth; it was real. People could submit applications to the government. Your hair might become straight enough, your skin might become light enough, your accent might become polished enough—and you’d be reclassified as white. All you had to do was denounce your people, denounce your history, and leave your darker-skinned friends and family behind. The legal definition of a white person under apartheid was “one who in appearance is obviously a white person who is generally not accepted as a coloured person; or is generally accepted as a white person and is not in appearance obviously a white person.” It was completely arbitrary, in other words.””
![“So what you do [under apartheid system] is you convince…” quote by Trevor Noah](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/691/trevor-noah-1603_apartheid_so-what-you-do-under-apartheid-system-is_448153.jpg)
