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Are Interracial Couples Afraid of Bringing Biracial Children Into This World?

Posted by Sidney, 17 Jul

After the recent shootings, a black man who is dating a white girlfriend wrote Slate's Dear Prudence column wondering whether he should break up with his girlfriend whom they have been taking marriage with. The girlfriend told him that "...she couldn’t have a black baby in this world. She is too afraid."

Much as we cannot generalize because of the above, this is not the first incident of its kind. Ebony magazine put up an article last year by a white man married to a Haitian woman who said: “I Hope My Son Stays White,” explaining if their child is light skinned, he or she wont have to deal with racism. He went...

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"I want my son’s skin color not to matter, but the truth is that it does. If he gets darker – if his skin eventually comes to resemble my wife’s more than mine – there will be consequences for him. People will fear him... It will only be worse if he wears a hoodie and sags his jeans, and so shamefully I also hope that he’ll be “culturally white,” following the trends of the suburbs and not the inner city.
If he does darken, women will cross the street when they see him coming, the way they sometimes do when they pass my wife’s brother on the sidewalk. Convenience store employees will follow him suspiciously around the aisles. Cops may hassle him for things I don’t think twice about, like jaywalking.
And, if any of these people decide they need a gun to defend themselves against my scary, black, unarmed son, a large segment of society will assume he deserved to die.
That’s what troubles me so much about the Michael Brown case. His death is tragic, but it’s the reaction to his death that makes me afraid for my son."

A black and white lesbian couple also had a similar issue. The white partner wanted them to use a white sperm donor. “She says, adamantly, we should try our best to use a white sperm donor. My wife isn’t racially prejudiced at all, but she makes the point that it is a known fact that in this world, especially in Texas where we live, it is a lot easier to be white. Especially if we have a son, it is factually safer to not be black . . .,” said the black partner.

Also, there was a case of a woman who sued a sperm bank for "wrongful birth" because they accidentally sent her a black man's sperm instead of the white one she had ordered. The child she referred to as a "wrongful birth" is their mixed race daughter. She argued that she and her white partner don't possess the "cultural competency" to assist their mixed race daughter with typical African American features to cope with the challenges of racial segregation and prejudice in her "all-white community" and "often unconsciously insensitive family."

Is this becoming a thing for interracial couples (especially black-white couples) who are planning to have children? Are interracial couples afraid of raising black looking children for fear of anticipated prejudice and violence against their mixed race children? If you are an interracial couple, does this bother you?

2 responses to "Are Interracial Couples Afraid of Bringing Biracial Children Into This World?"

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Chimera13 says:

Posted: 15 Aug 16

Re-read the article. Nowhere do they concede fully that a child with black/white genetics is a mixed person WHO WILL REFLECT THE CULTURE IN WHICH THEY WERE RAISED, not the culture of their presumed race. Mixed suburban kids are generally like white suburban kids. Inner city mixed kids are generally like inner city black kids. It's community and culture, not skin tone.

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ladybarb says:

Posted: 22 Jul 16

Why would they be afraid? This just doesn't make sense. There have been mixed people since the beginning of time...

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