Strollerderby : black

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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Babble Talk – The Color Blind Kid

Brett Singer — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 19:00:00 GMT

I'm not one of the people who thinks that racism is over now that Barack Obama is President. (Call me when Black people can hail a cab in Manhattan.)

That said, I do think that it's fair to hope that future generations will be less inclined to judge others by the color of their skin. This quote from Kids Say The Cutest Things illustrates this point:

Six year old Hanna.."Daddy why are Black people Black and White people White"...Daddy "Well because that is the way God made us"...Hanna "Oh..well can you tell God that my favorite color is PINK!"

Aw. Maybe one day we can all just get along. Or at least get a cab.

Read more stuff from kids that will give you nachas for the future of our nation right here. You can also submit your own aspirational aphorisms.

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Does Obama's Election Mean Black Kids Now Have "No Excuses"?

Kate Tuttle — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 16:00:00 GMT

Op-ed contributor Charles Blow, writing in the New York Times, recently assailed comments by South Carolina Congressman James Clyburn that, in a post-Obama age, "every child has lost every excuse." In other words, if a blak man can become president, you -- black child, Latino child, poor child -- can scale every mountain, too. I can see what Clyburn meant, that his aim was to both exhort and inspire (and he spoke these words at a BET event, which I think is significant), but Blow's right: "no excuses" is a vast overstatement of how even the playing field now is.

The statistics Blow cites can make you cry: 60% of black kids grow-up in low-income homes, half of them in what the government offically calls "poor" households (believe me, what the Feds call poor is several steps more grim than what you or I would). Black kids are twice as likely as their white and Latino counterparts to be the victims of mistreatment, ranging from neglect to physical abuse. They are far more likely to be raped.

I don't think it's an excuse to say that the circumstances in which a child grows up have an overwhelming influence on her or his opportunities to lead a happy, healthy life. Nor do I think that acknowledging the inequalities that still exist in our society is in any way throwing a damper on the incredibly inspiring story of Obama's rise to the presidency, nor on the real-world solutions all of us hope his adminstration can bring to bear on them. And while I like Clyburn's old-school call for kids to overcome whatever obstacles they face, I cringe at how a slogan like "no excuses" sounds in the mouth not of a black warrior for equal rights, but yet another clueless white conservative pundit. So yes, I hope that President Obama means, among many other things, that nobody will ever again assume a black child can't get there, but I also hope it means we can all work together to improve the chances that she or he will be able to.

And besides, it didn't seem to me as if having a President Bush in office prompted academically sub-par rich white kids to stop making excuses.

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Does Quoting Steve Martin's The Jerk Make This Politician a Racist?

JeanneSager — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 12:30:00 GMT

By all accounts, Paul Pugmire might be a jerk. But a racist? I'll let you be the judge.

The Salt Lake City Utah City Council candidate quoted Steve Martin's classic The Jerk on the Website reunion.com early in 2006 - not in campaign-related literature. Pugmire, who is white, began an introduction to his old classmates "I was born a poor black child in Mississippi. No wait, that it something else. Quick summary since HS . . . "

It was almost word for word how Martin began The Jerk, the '79 classic that sits on the American Film Institute's top 100 funny movies (100 Years . . . 100 Laughs). And, surprise, surprise, the person slamming Pugmire most for the comment isn't the NAACP representative in Salt Lake City but the chairman of the city's Republican party. The Republican Chair is black, yes, but he's put up a candidate against Pugmire for council. Pugmire is a Democrat.

Although dubbing a movie (or book) a classic doesn't mean it can't be racist, The Jerk (in case you've been living under a rock) is pretty harmless. It might be the guy's version of Clueless. Or maybe the 1979 version of Forrest Gump? White guy Navin Johnson was adopted by black sharecroppers in Mississippi as a child. The movie begins with him living away from his family, a homeless bum telling his story (hence the narration, "I was born a poor black child . . . "). As dumb as a box of rocks (but apparently not the ones you've been living under), he stumbles from one adventure to the next and comes out on top of the world in the end - back with his family in Mississippi and thanks to his foster father's wise investments, much wealthier. It's one of those stories that lends credence to the thought that racism isn't something our kids are born with. It's something they (unfortunately) learn as they grow up. Martin's Navin never learned a difference between black and white, and he's proud of his family.

Of course, the movie was a comedy. And an often quoted comedy at that. The NAACP is Salt Lake City readily accepted Pugmire's apology and issued statements saying his comments might have been in poor taste but were not mean-spirited. I'd tend to agree with them - especially in light of the feelings I had walking away from the Jerk (and not the ache in my ribs from laughing so hard). Republican Chair James Evans says they show Pugmire thinks poorly of African Americans. What do you think?

Source: Salt Lake Tribune

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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