Strollerderby : biracial

Another Hospital Baby Mix-Up, Now With Added Racism!

Kate Tuttle — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 14:01:00 GMT

Despite all the modern technology that's meant to keep newborns from being given to the wrong parents in the hospital, there seems to be a rash of inadvertent baby swaps going on. The latest took place in New Hampshire, at the Portsmouth Regional Hospital, late last month. And the parents of the newborn in question -- a baby girl who was handed to the wrong mother for either five minutes (according to the hospital) or significantly longer (according to her parents) -- are hopping mad.

Calling it "every parent's worst nightmare," the father has taken to the media to publicize the mistake, because, he says, "the public has a right to know." Also, I'm guessing, to lay the groundwork for a lawsuit. Because here's the crux of the matter: when their baby, whom they had sent back to the nursery after the mother had ("reluctantly"!) taken a sleeping pill, was given to another mother, that mother did something truly horrific. She breastfed the baby. Now the parents are waiting for results of tests for HIV and Hepatitis C (despite the fact that doctors estimate a risk of HIV transmission at one thousandth of one percent per liter of breastmilk consumed). They are terrified the other mother took drugs during her pregnancy (although it's not clear how this would affect their baby). They feel violated, assaulted, scared. The father says his wife is "physically sick" over it.

Could it be because they are both white, and the other couple is a white woman and a black man? I'm sensitive to making unwarranted charges of racism (it's too easy, and not fair), but in this case it's hard to escape the feeling that the parents' overwrought horror of contagion may have something to do with their (all white! 100% caucasian!) baby's having been sullied by the possibly unclean nipple of a race traitor, a nipple meant for another, darker baby. The racial difference has the white baby's parents especially confused as to how the other mother (and the nurse) could have made this error. Why didn't she notice, he asks, and "give our baby back?"

The thing is, biracial babies aren't necessarily any darker at birth than white babies -- believe me, I've given birth to both! My children, born 13 years apart and with different husbands, looked enough alike as newborns to be twins, and it's a well-known fact that many black and biracial babies don't come into their skin tone until they're older. At any rate, newborns are newborns -- the reason hospitals go to such trouble to set up systems to avoid baby-swapping is because they do tend to look so much alike.

Of course, now I guess I'll have to believe something a little bit uglier: that hospital policies to avoid baby mix-ups exist to allay the fears of parents who think that another woman nursing their child for five minutes is their "worst nightmare" (I can think of worse, and have friends who have lived through worse, and I'm sure you all do, too). I genuinely hope this is the worst thing that ever happens to this family; if it is, they'll have lived a blessed life.

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Biracial Twins -- Is One "Black" and One "White"?

Kate Tuttle — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 21:30:00 GMT

Okay, this story is mostly worth commenting on because the picture is so damn adorable -- all four of these girls are just so lovely -- but also because it uncovers lingering racial attitudes that beg for examination. English interracial couple Dean Durrant and Alison Spooner have just welcomed their second set of twin girls, and for the second time, one is noticeably light-skinned while the other is darker-complected. The media loves this story, using expressions like "two-toned miracle" and proclaiming one girl "black" and the other "white" -- it's pretty much the same kind of coverage they would give, for instance, a mother cat who nurses an orphaned litter of puppies. Aw, so sweet, they're the same but they're diferent!

But hold up. Dogs and cats are different species, cannot mate, and are (if Tom and Jerry cartoons are to be believed) mortal enemies. But black people and white people are obviously all humans, can and do mate, and can and do love one another, as they do in this family. And the children those couples give birth to aren't forced to hew to one side or other of the color line, except of course by American (and other) cultural legacies of the so-called "one-drop rule," designed to keep all folks with black heritage in a position of subordination. (It also inspired a mass of light-skinned black people to leave their race, history, and families and pass for white.)

As things have improved in this country with regard to race, the situation has gotten more confusing for white people (who make up most of the mainstream media, as they always have). If Halle Berry has a black father and a white mother, is she black? Can she ever be white? Or will we just call her biracial, and claim her half-whiteness with pride when she's playing non-humans in movies like X-Men (but not when playing a crackhead in movies like Losing Isaiah)? The black community has never been confused about this sort of thing -- Barack Obama is black and biracial, as is Rashida Jones, and as for ancestors like Walter F. White, the pale-skinned, blond-haired, blue-eyed general secretary of the NAACP in the 1920s, well, he was black too (even though he looked so white he could sneak into lynchings and observe them with the white spectators while doing research).

So to call one of these babies "white" and the other "black" is just as naive and foolhardy as calling Rashida Jones white and Halle Berry black -- it's neither necessary nor sufficient. If "race" itself is a social construct, as it surely is, then demarking the line where one race begins and the other one ends will always be a dangerous game -- just as dangerous as pretending the social construct itself doesn't exist. Colorblindness is just as crazy a response to "race" as thinking it's all about skin color (a strange misreading we had to hear a lot about during the Obama campaign). The Durrant-Spooner family has four gorgeous daughters, all of them biracial, all of them (in this country, anyway) welcomed as members of the black community. And all of them simply lovely.

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Twins Born with Different Skin Colors

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 19:20:00 GMT

On July 11, a German couple found out what it feels like to be the "one" of one in a million odds. Florence Addo-Gerth, a black woman from Ghana, gave birth to twin boys with strikingly different features: Ryan has blue eyes and light skin, like his father Stephan Gerth, while Leo has brown eyes and dark skin, like his mother.

Although this is an extremely rare occurence, Leo and Ryan are not the first set of fraternal twins to have different skin colors. And it doesn't only happen to twins: it's possible for any baby of biracial parents to inherit the genetic coding of only one skin color.

Although Gerth and Addo-Gerth anticipate the incredulous stares they'll get when they introduce Ryan and Leo as twins, for now they are simply overjoyed to have two healthy baby boys.

Check out a video of the adorable babies and proud parents below.

Photo: Sky News