Firstly, I have noticed that practically nothing has been said except at the beginning about Meghan Markel's divorce and that is telling in & of itself since all but one of the Queen's children's marriages has ended in divorce; a non-starter these days. So now we enter the next 'phase' of modernity: the 'pure' non-white marriages of royalty. Good for Harry for stepping over this invisible yet very visible line of the royals. And don't forget Meghan, who might well have chosen not to live in a fish bowl [with her children] for the rest of her life. Recall one of Diana's beaus who opted for his dedicated career in medicine, absent non-stop publicity as Diana's husband, for the rest of his life. So not everyone of us runs to this glamorous option.Finally it came as a surprise to read about the possibility of Meghan's hair being straightened. Many of us have straight hair so what of it? Once Meghan & Harry's baby passes muster under a microscope, I hope he will go on to live a happy life in a loving home.
3
Because all men* are brothers
Wherever they may be
One union shall unite us
Forever proud and free
No country shall divide us
No tyrant put us down
All men who toil shall greet us
The whole wide world around
* by men, we mean all people regardless of gender identification
1
Why is it that the only media that seems to give a whit about the race of the baby is the US?
For goodness sake he is a baby, perhaps a cute baby. So lets drop the racial descriptions. They simply do not mater anymore.
15
What difference does it make what Little Archie's hair looks like? Already you are labeling him and classifying him before he even has his first smile. Isn't it enough that he was born healthy and into a loving family? I think there are more important things to worry about than how Little Archie's hair will look. Just enjoy the photos and be happy for the family!!
12
I commented earlier on the ridiculousness of focusing on external characteristics as indicative of "race" - like we are not all actually descended from African primates way back. As I re-read the comments to this article, I also think it patently absurd that the mere happenstance of birth over which one has no control should make one a prince, a queen, a duke, a lord, a princess, or a whatever, entitling the person to control and command over vast wealth, influence, and other humans. Preposterous stuff, royalty! Outdated and wasteful. Oh, the drama of it all!
6
"Instead, white slave owners used black women to create their own work force — like Thomas Jefferson, who had his own sons serve at the table and freed them only upon his death."
Mixed race people of more modest means also existed in Jefferson's era, and the circumstances of their birth should not be trivialized, and cannot be stereotyped, into a one-size-fits-all caricature. That was as true in ancient Rome as in other societies that practiced slavery.
White descendants of mixed-race progeny from the slave era live on every street in this country, and just don't fit into any proposed colorist classification hierarchy.
10
Skurnick writes
"One friend of mine was relieved when a genetic test put him over the quarter line for blackness. I was shattered to find myself at a paltry 22.5 percent"
Why relieved? Why shattered? Does it produce a greater benefit than being able to check a desired box?
https://images.app.goo.gl/igV8dPPJDcSMdhhHA
12
When Prince Charles becomes King the child will automatically become a Prince so he'll be known as Prince Archie.
1
What a sad and intellectually empty op-ed.
23
I have always been appreciative of natural hair on black people. As a teen I simply did not understand why so many black people had to make such extreme adjustments to their hair. When I finally understood it, in my 20s, I was outraged.
I take no issue with people doing whatever they like with their hair for decorative purposes, but forcing people to do away with their regular hair using an unfair and incoherent standard is quite wrong to me. What's considered presentable needs to change.
2
For all the - dust - kicked up about this article - note it is an Opinion piece.
I'm happy to hear what the author has to say. It's freedom of speech, we Americans have the right to our own opinion, so abundant in the comments here.
Note that soon as race comes up in any context, commenters from every angle are flipping out.
In any case, I say - write and LET write....
Maybe we should just be happy that the two closest allies are now connected by marriage, rather than concentrating on issues of race.
4
22.5%. Whew, I was a little concerned the author might round down. Thank you to Ancestry.com for allowing us to identify ourselves to one decimal place.
7
Hope the kid is happy and his parents always doting. (It's not a given but jewels and $billions in the bank help.)
However, my favorite person in this soap opera remains Doria Ragland, who not only imbued her daughter with some keen work/life values but seems to have kept her sense of self and wits about her in a most admirable way over the last 2 years of world press laser focus. She is the one who comes off as the most genuinely nice and authentically comfortable in her own skin. Baby Archie Sussex is lucky to have her as his grandmother.
39
I will just interject my continuing objection to the attention given by the MSM to the Royals. If one is looking to break down color barriers with a focus on the English crown from which we rebelled, we're in trouble. It's all so weird to this American, sorry.
3
Thank you NYT. I enjoyed reading her personal backstory and her perspective. The reality is that everyone with eyes (vision) can “see color”; so no amount of pretense will give you a pass. African Americans, regardless of their “percentage” — simply want to be/feel “included”. As a black woman with mixed-race grandchildren, I hope that they don’t live their entire lifetime (like I have) feeling different/excluded/ostracized/underprivileged/underrated. And if you’re reading this and you’re in a position to edify or influence others .... please do. It’s tiresome pretending like we don’t notice that Caucasians (many) don’t even SEE us.
1
I just heard on local radio that the childs name is Archie.
3
My previous comment about this was not posted, but it's important, so I'll try again:
What on earth is the rationale for publishing this racist and inflammatory opinion piece? I'm seriously questioning whether the NYT is now employing trump's "shiny objects" strategy here. Of all the opinions regarding the birth of this baby, this is by far the most egregious and unworthy of the NYT.
15
Mea culpa: Odd that we hunger and thirst for universal acceptance and respect, but are unable to give it.
The wannabe psychologist in me suggests that we belittle others to make ourselves feel better, ride higher on the social scale. It works, too: My team, school, town, parents, race, looks, nation, etc., are better than yours. Ahhh, self-doubts, relieved; self-esteem, improved by that much. As a man thinketh, so is he.
Only in the USA does the baby's ethnicity matter to the extent that it does. A man and woman met, fell in love, got married and had a healthy baby boy. Lucky for them, they won"t want for money or support. End of story.
7
"not wanting for money or support." I'm sure that idea had a lot to do with the bride's decision to marry this particular guy. Regardless of the over-the-top media focus marriages between royalty & "commoners" so-called have not turned out very well in this family with some exceptions of course.
1
Yesterday, there was an op-ed article in this very paper stating that the problem isn't racism, it's race, which is a meaningless remnant of the slavery and Jim Crow eras that continues to consume us to this day.
Nice job illustrating exactly that point, NY Times editors!
The author of this article views the world through a prism of race and demonstrates her unapologetic racism. "Blackness as a Badge or Honor"? Seriously?
Any white person who said "Whiteness is a Badge of Honor" would automatically and correctly be labeled an unrepentant racist. Does the same standard not apply here?
We're all shades of the same color: Brown. Some of us are dark brown, some are light brown verging on beige, while other fall somewhere in between. But, the fact remains that we are all actually the same color!
This article illustrates and feeds the larger problem of our obsession with race in this country. And, it serves no one any good at all. When, if ever, will this end?
13
The "one drop" rule, passing - these are all part of a racist history that most of us do not agree with. If you are part black and part white, then your race is part black and part white. Not "black" if there is any trace, if there is one drop or one recognizably African feature.
There's no reason to do away with color, but I do not understand all the articles that agree with the worst of the racists.
4
For the life of me I can't understand why Americans give a rip about UK royalty. Didn't we chuck these Bozos out a couple centuries ago? White, black, pink, blue, you name it--these people are irrelevant. I'm surprised the British still support them.
8
Here's what I, a white woman, don't get, despite reading lot about it:
"black women — and black men, too — can get fired for having natural hair. The 11th Circuit Court in the United States just ruled against Chastity Jones, who lost her job when Human Resources decided her dreadlocks were a “grooming” issue. In schools, dreadlocks, braids, head wraps and even volume can be deemed “inappropriate” for girls as well as boys."
That judgement seems right to me.
Nobody got "fired for having natural hair". The issue is what people do with the hair they have.
There is nothing "natural" about dreadlocks, or braids, or head wraps. Even "volume" is a choice not to cut your hair before it gets huge and attraction-getting.
Just as a white woman makes a choice of what to do to her hair: leave it natural, but short, or natural, but long; to curl it or leave it straight; braid it or put in in a pony-tail or in a bun, or cut it in a dramatic way that attracts lots of attention, dye it blonde or red or black or pink or green or purple, make a beehive out of it, etc .
Some of these may be deemed unacceptable in different contexts.
Islam has a real issue with women's hair, requiring hiding it. So does Orthodox Judaism. THAT is having a problem with women's natural hair. Not this.
So there may be a case to be made that there should be no restrictions anywhere about any kind of hairdo, but that is different from claiming that the problem is racism and black women having "natural" hair.
8
@AG
Plenty of whites have "natural" hair, too. Travel the world - or just to Europe, the UK and Ireland - to find plenty of natural curl. It's no picnic for them either to spend time and money controlling that curl and kink, working around rainy days and the obsession everywhere since the 1960s with stick straight hair (save for that hideous perm moment in the 1980s - that looked good on no one).
2
Not the way to get to a post racial society.
8
this obsession with race identification is beyond comprehension what is important is culture!
4
My comment is not about racism, a huge problem in our society. It’s about how black or how white we are. I don’t give a damn. Because we all came from a small group of people in Africa a long, long time ago. And, over eons, our skin colors and physical characteristics changed to suit our geographic locations. So, we’re all originally black, as it turns out. Let’s celebrate that and get on with it.
Not every black/mixed person who straightens their naturally curly hair is doing it out of self-hate or politics. To assume so is naive. Some people, like myself, straighten their curly hair because it's easier to manage and can be healthier to have 20 minutes on day a week of heat compared to multiple days of product, texture manipulation, and dryness. Let's not assume that cousin Meghan is trying to assimilate with her straight hair. Curly hair is no walk in the park... despite how "cool" it is to touch.
5
That fact that so called "Progressives" are so focused on peoples color is alarming. Usually when someone is hyper-focused of separating people based upon their race we would usually call them racists..... If when you look at someone and see their color first... you're a racist. If your focus is on creating pride in your color... you're a racist. Also this is an article about a baby who is part of the elite of the elite in the world... his skin color won't be holding him back..... he has been born into a privilege... money.
8
What bothers me is this idea of "claiming". Much of the discussion of race is begins with the assumption that white is better. Why? Because white people learned how to exploit cruelty to other humans on an industrial scale? We should worship that? The idea that to be whole and equal one feels the need to "claim" relationship to someone perceived to be either 'better' or 'less than' some racial standard that we do not question is archaic. I do not know how to fully articulate the argument but it bothers me.
According to 23 and Me, I am 52% Northern European (Irish and English) and 38% African, the balance other European. I was raised as an African American. Yet both my mother and father were fair skinned with Caucasian features and often assumed to be white, as am I, by both whites and blacks. The math says that I am more white than black. I identify as "other".
Growing up in 1960s E. Orange, NJ my black friends --my best friends -- bristled at my attempts to be 'black'. If I had wanted to 'claim' them it would have been an insult to the harsher prejudice they had to deal with. They just wanted me to be Glenn.
If we are going to "claim" anything, let us claim our shared humanity.
4
OMG, I'm so incredibly tired of this. Who CARES??? Royalty is, on its face, ridiculous. We live in America and of course, racism is a problem but literally, Markle doesn't keep her hair straight because she "might lose her job"-- she probably does it because she likes how it looks. Some of this really isn't as complicated as some people want to make it out to be. Oprah straightens her hair. Lots of people, white, black, brown- straighten their hair. And lots of people curl their hair. So what? There's no danger of Markle losing her job because she doesn't have one anymore. Royals don't work. They live off of other people's money. Can we please focus on something important now, like the demise of our democracy?
7
@atb
Well, they do work as entertainment workers who help sell the UK to American, Chinese, and Japanese tourists, especially. They are simply animated English objects, like Big Ben or the Queen's Guard.
2
A comment on "No one tells women to start becoming men to defeat sexism": well, yes they have but I may know that because I'm older than the writer. I well remember a news program in the 70's when a commentator said, "Feminism encourages women to become men which will never happen." I do agree with this writer because I never wanted to be a man. I want to be respected and accepted as a woman with certain talents and abilities--as she wants to be accepted as back,also with certain talents and abilities.
5
I don't see her as Black. I see a poised, successful young woman in love with an equally poised successful young man.
It really is a beautiful thing.
Don't try to make it anything but what it is.
5
I admit to a little bit of an eye-roll here.
For someone with the privilege and physical appearance of the author, trumpeting that they are proud of their black heritage seems to be about as meaningful as trumpeting a pride in russian-jewish heritage, or dutch heritage, or their range-riding cowboy great-grandfather. Which, okay, is all fine and dandy, but is certainly not "special" and matters not at all in day-to-day life.
(writing as someone who finds their creole heritage interesting but ultimately not significant)
10
Skurnich is obviously of mixed-race heritage. She looks entirely European. She can "pass" as they say. There is nothing about her that suggests her blackness, even her name, which sounds Jewish.
Many whites have far curlier hair than Skurnick, who wears her hair in attractive tresses. Unless she has retexturized it.
Curly hair is ultimately the genetically incorporated transmission of environmental influences--heat and humidity--over centuries.
Here, Skurnick omits any mention of her paternal lineage, which would make her discussion a little more interesting.
Wonder what boxes she checks off on those applications.
5
@MD
Just checked out Lizzie's photos online.
She looks "fair" and her hair is pretty curly.
Her last name does sound - Jewish, as you say.
Ms Skurnick says she is 22.5 % black, which is apparently why she is sharing her opinion on this topic giving weight to (and "justifying") the views she expresses in the essay. Without this "qualifier" she could not write these words to be published in this newspaper.
4
Identity issues get very complicated when you are biracial or multiracial. I was born in a South American country and left when I was 15. Here in the US I am Hispanic but when I go back home I still feel the remnants of colonial Spain come alive. In colonial times Spain gave rights and privileges according to Spaniard descent, the more you had the more right and privileges and vice versa. It has been centuries since Latin America liberated itself from Spaniard rule. However. in many countries it is sort of a burden to be Indian or look Indian. What is perplexing is that most Latin Americans have Indian descent, but the majority ignore it or prefer to ignore it. In most Latin American countries it is a badge of honor to appear more Spaniard/European and less
Indian/African. And to this day, there are unspoken privileges for those of lighter complexion.
Some things never change.
Lets party on!
3
@Plebeyo
You are right! Also, in Latin America neither Megan Markle nor Barack Obama would be considered "black". They would be considered "mulatos" or whatever word a particular country has to for a person of mixed black and white heritage. And socially they would be above "pure blacks". I'm not saying this is good or right, it's how it is. So it's always strange for me to see/hear people like Halle Berry or Nicole Richie referred as blacks.
3
A name that unites Great Britain and the United States? I'm thinking first name George, with Washington somewhere in there among whatever other names follow.
@Boneisha George was the name taken at coronation and there were 6 of them. So which George, George 111 or George V1 who was given the name Albert at birth?
This is a well-written article that made me think further about my views about race. I identify as a majority person in the world but as a minority person within the confines of the USA.
What surprised me was how offended and defensive some people (apparently majority people within the USA?) get about an invitation to discuss race in the USA or, for that matter, anywhere in the world.
After reading the comments here, I bought the book "White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism." Time to learn more!
4
That is so cool that he is going to live a life of luxury that was built on the death and pillaging of the Americas, Africa, and India.
5
What's wrong with seeing color? Why can't we look around and appreciate our differences? I really enjoyed the author's perspective and with all the troubling news bombarding us, I'm thrilled to read about and see the pictures of this happy family, no matter what they look like.
32
So identity politics extends now even to the new royal baby ?
7
Here we go again..... folks demonstrate lack of awareness of the power of color or race in the world. To say it’s a social construct does not mean it has no effect in the real world silkies. (No need to keep saving that the letter writer should leave the baby alone since he is totally unaware of this conversation anyway). As for folks appalled by the article and talk of race, they are part of the problem by attempting to prevent people from being aware of a real world issue that has a tremendous effect on the lives of many people, black and white alike. Willful and/or unconscious ignorance is wonderfully on display here by those who find talk of race so disturbing. Yeah—I get it: since you are not black, why discuss issues of concern to blacks. If you are white and protected—I get it—you don’t want to be reminded of black suffering Let the blacks who suffer do so quietly, you wish, and if they can’t be happy, they should just go away and not bother you. Yeah: I get it.
4
I have found in my experience as an outsider that the most racially-correct individuals are the ones who have learned - after what?...50 years after the Civil Rights Act? - that it's not socially advantageous to be a racist.
If you refer to someone as a Mexican, they will frown and admonish you: "You mean Hispanic, I think..." No, I mean Mexican - because is there something wrong with being a Mexican from Mexico? If you really wanted to be racially hip, you could say: "Latino." But one thing they are not is hip. And what they say about Mexicans - or other outsiders - in private, no one knows.
Nobody thinks twice about referring to me as "Japanese." How did we get off so easy? They haven't called me a jap for ever so long.
See what progress we're making on the racial front with a little guidance - our ethical compass - from Donald Trump?
3
Something that has always puzzled me is how white people will describe a friend. They do not comment that they have a "white friend". Why do they tell you about their "black friend. A friend is a friend, period
6
@ house of shards
I like your post. Hair straightening came about as a result of black people being uncomfortable with their blackness and in turn felt they were assimilating into white society by changing their hair.
1
@Oliver
White AND black women have been efforting to control their curly locks since forever. Straightening has been in the form of hiding it under hats and scarfs, pinning, prodding, flattening with all manner of irons and other objects, cutting it off, chemical applications, blowing and rolling....
2
It's interesting how in recent years "blackness" has become "a bad of honor," while "whiteness" is now used as a politically correct racial slur word.
11
@Steve Sailer
Your right it is interesting,but the answer lies in the form of race based slavery practiced in the US. The classification of "white" wasn't codified into law until the Virginia Slave Codes were established to separate "white" indentured servants from "black" slaves for life. Before that time white people were British, French, Spanish, German, etc. and would murder each other on sight. However, in America as soon as 'white' immigrants arrived at Ellis Island, and lost your accent, you were eligible for all the privileges of 'whiteness' that 'black' people could never attain by law (Dred Scott v Sandford).
Plenty of non-black people have curly hair and wide hips.
Perhaps the way away from racism is not to stereotype anybody, and stimulate the better angels of everyone's nature.
5
I grew up in New York City metro area and was in classes and neighborhoods with all kinds of people. This environment has left me puzzled all my life when people make racist remarks. Now I live in a community where some people have never met a Jewish person, the KKK used to have a serious presence, and there are no blacks and few Hispanics. No one ever says anything racist (at least in public) but the lack of diversity speaks for itself. And I can't help thinking...how would Queen Mum react to a black grandchild if she has been sequestered from real life for almost 100 years, and England used native Indians and Africans as if they owned them? How will that child feel if he is hidden away all his life? How will the parents cope when William gains the throne? There was no proud introduction of this baby to the public. No photos. Meghan, unless there is a health problem, please bring him out and hold him up proudly so the universe can see his wonderful, natural face.
"I was shattered to find myself at a paltry 22.5 percent (black)..."
Shattered?
Brilliant satire!
10
Human races progressed through racial mixity. Intercourse.. Reproduction képt inside a fixed human group induces problems through consanguinity and progressive genétic dégradation. Some religions communities apparently develop some of those. I’ sûre and hope the combinatión of genétics in this royal Boy will be à wonderful mix of “reddish” haïr and a sunshined skin...
Racism is racism regardless of the color of the racist's skin. And this was one racist screed!
Generally, if a proposition is fair, it can be turned around the other way without bcoming unfair. But substitute "white" for "black" in this essay and the politically correct would be shrieking "white supremacy" and calling for the author's firing and social banishment. No college speaking engagements for her!
I think it is wonderful that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have a baby boy. I offer them my heartfelt congratulations.
Let's leave it at that!
Identity politics will be the death of us all!
5
"I don't see color" . . . yeah, right.
"There's only one race - the human race!" Sure.
"Obsession with skin color" . . . okay.
Some of you enlightened [white] readers may be oblivious to the realities of life as a person of color. Those of us who ARE people of color don't always have that luxury.
4
@Mathilda
I have no doubt about the existence of racial bigotry and its cruel impacts on the realities of life as a person of color. And I can distinguish between a person likely to suffer the harms of racial bigotry and person NOT likely to suffer such harms. I can see.
But the flaw is not in the heads of people who see all humans as members of a single race. Such people have science on their side.
The flaw is in the heads of the racial bigots who are obsessed with skin color and believe that skin color makes them 'black' or 'white.' Those people, taking pride in skin color and framing identity on that basis, are who perpetuate racial bigotry.
2
If the author wants to stop bigotry, the author should not be one. Ignorance, as displayed in this op-ed is no excuse. Humans come in all shades, and hair textures. As a person who has ancestors of many colors. I am appalled.
10
Yesterday some of my friends were talking about Baby Sussex and someone called him “Little Man”. Yes, we’re Black and the moniker is a typical title for baby boys.
Oh BTW, we also claimed Prince Harry way before he married Megan and Chris Hayes of MSNBC.
I believe there’s an official list somewhere.
1
@BJ
I've always laughed at the obvious sexist son culture "little man" nonsense.
Imagine leaning over and cooing at a 1 day old female "little woman".
2
"Claim the baby"? Isn't that what slave owners did, claim another human being?
2
This "Royal Family"! It is not that important, you know?
Wake up please Whatever the color of his skin the new royal baby will be a privileged child born in n a country with child poverty and malnutrition increasing every year. Please do not draw unsuitable associations. May this child be happy, but he does not represent a reivindication or advancement of any kind for black or for poor people in general.
4
Nonsense.
There is only one biological DNA genetic evolutionary fit human race species that began in Africa 300,000 years ago.
What we call race aka color is an evolutionary fit pigmented response to differing levels of solar radiation at altitudes and latitudes primarily related to producing Vitamin D and protecting genes from damaging mutations in ecologically isolated human populations over space and time.
What we call race aka color is a malign socioeconomic political educational demographic historical white European American Judeo-Christian myth meant to legally and morally justify humanity denying black African American enslavement and equality defying separate and unequal black African American Jim Crow.
All human beings are people of color. Even albinos who are the only real "white" people. About 3-5% on average of European and Asian DNA is extinct Neanderthal and Denovisan DNA. There is none in Sub-Saharan Africans.
By the way who cares? If America wanted royals we would not have rebelled against King George III. We got Beyoncé and JZ.
Agent Orange and his spawn are the anti-thesis of royalty. And the British royals expose the Trumps as barbarians.
See "The Race Myth: Why We Pretend That Race Exist in America" Joseph L. Graves; "Defining Watson"
4
This is how deep racism goes. Our former black president, Obama, is more white than black, by percentage. The author of this piece barely cracks twenty percent black. My granddaughter is about that also. She has curly hair, but not kinky, which seems an important marker to the author, who identifies as black. I am half Jewish, but mostly taken for Scandinavian, although I have no Viking blood. My name, which I am proud of, is Jewish and that is enough. What does that make my granddaughter, who has my surname? It gets down to the taint of blood. I am identified by those who marched down the streets of Charlottesville, chanting "Jews will not replace us!". I am identified by millions of Muslims who dream of sweeping all Jews, including me, into the sea. I am thoroughly irreligious, yet I feel my Jewishness, through the identify placed on me, by my blood enemies. How will my granddaughter identify, without kinky hair or exposure to anything vaguely Jewish. Yet, she will carry the taint in her blood. Others will identify her, with their barometer of racism. And, that is how deeply racist we all are.
4
Harry has kinkier hair than Meghan.
If he were black, he would've been under similar pressure to straighten out his, and possibly bleach it blond in the interest of assuaging all public unease.
So if the 20th in line to the British throne has kinky hair, it is not obvious that those tight little curls descended from mother.
4
Only a vapid, celebrity-addicted culture gives a whit about "royal" families, their assignations, their spawn or their hair. What we DO give a whit about is the theft, the obscene wealth, the unearned privilege and the assumption to relevance they claim. As to the drooling lemmings either obsessed or dispossessed, you are roundly mocked and then ignored as is the fate of many a serialized inanity.
2
Princess Diana broke the barriers after she married Charles. She kissed and comforted people regardless of race. She was hands-on rather than aloof like the Royals. I suspect she would have been delighted by the sight of the heir Charles escorting the bi-racial bride down the aisle. And I suspect she would be thrilled by the mingling of the blood of an American actress with the Royal blood.
The Royals are undoubtedly muttering under their weak chins that this is Princess Diana's legacy. Yes and a great one it is. Harry lives up to his Mother's ideals, and rejected the old stuffy ways of the Royalty.
4
I like that we as part of a racial group has the ability to "claim" someone. Like Chappelle's Racial Draft skit. Maybe it just isn't a joke anymore.
I think having your racial identity given a thrill simply because a biracial baby is now part of the tippy-top pinnacle of elite, white privilege - that being the British royal family - is eye rolling ridiculous.
When, oh when will our obsession with racial identity end?!
5
Are we really going back to the world of the late ‘40s? Mom was rejected from Harvard because it “had filled its quota for females of the Jewish Race”?
Or to the days of asking if it’s legal for a “Quadroon” or “Octoroon” are “white’ enough to take the British throne?
Guess not.
Donald “the Nationalist’ Trump owes Sen. Elizabeth Warren $1 million to her favorite charity because she proved she has some Aboriginal American genes. He even has a pet bigot’s name for her.
We’re all members of the same human race, though our last common parents were born more than 10 millennia ago.
And neither skin color, hair texture, old or recent changes of address, language, community or belief system determines “race”..
Even to those we don’t want to admit are members of the family.
Sorry.
We all are.
Even ‘crazy Uncle Fred’ who insists dad came in on a flying saucer and Elvis is his real mom.
Get used to it.
Be nice to your family.
All of it.
It’s not surprising that she keeps it straight. After all, black women — and black men, too — can get fired for having natural hair. The 11th Circuit Court in the United States just ruled against Chastity Jones, who lost her job when Human Resources decided her dreadlocks were a “grooming” issue. maybe we can get Trump fired because of that thing on his head.
2
I think it rather narcissistic to appropriate a little baby’s appearance for your own perception of “honor”. He’s three says old. Find someone else to fuel your needs.
4
I am a white female with straight hair and would be happy with kinky/ curly hair! Dreadlocks are beautiful on men and women.
3
I was shocked by this piece; that anyone would think like this. We have so many multi racial families in the UK that how “black” a child looks is not the first thing we think about when a new baby is born.
6
Identity politics will not end and we will never be united unless & until we stop categorizing each other/ourselves.
2
This essay comes at a time when, in many other contexts, we ask of ourselves a type of blindness to appearance. We decide to describe a person by name, by activity, by goals and aspirations. Some have said Meghan is not really a feminist and not really an activist. Walking such a no-win tightrope can be a dizzying step to failure, unless, as I hope is the case, Harry and Meghan have at the core of their relationship the strength to shut out most comment. The essay by Lizzie Skurnick is an example of one permitted because the writer is bi-racial and rightly proud, as she states, of her black heritage.
2
"Thackery was depicting an upper-class society whose wealth was founded entirely on colonizing those unfortunate tawny folks". The author is apparently unaware of the Industrial Revolution which had its beginnings in Great Britain and which brought great wealth to many British - all through the oppressive labor of the British working class. Yes, there was a multitude of "unfortunate tawny folks" but they were often men and children emerging from twelve-hour shifts in British coal mines. This is an opinion piece, of course, but as a wise person once said "you are entitled to your own opinion but you are not entitled to your own facts".
2
@John J. How can you dismiss and discount the fact of colonization of other non-white nations by the British that brought them money and power?
2
Race is a social construct that guides our brains to categorize people into groups based upon appearance. People, being tribal, think membership in their group makes them better than other people. Thus, accepting racial identity begets racial bigotry, just as viewing nationality as identity begets xenophobic nationalism.
There is another choice - reject the social construct that defines people as fundamentally different. That doesn't mean we don't see skin color, but it does mean that we see it like we see our other physical features. It reflects our genetic inheritances, but it doesn't place us in or out of a group. Be proud of your appearance; it reflects your parents, but doesn't make you any better or worse than anyone else.
Ms. Skurnick can't, in one breath, claim to be a member of a black race, and be proud of that, without validating the claims of others to be white, and be proud of that. That's the road to racial strife and bigotry.
Congratulations to Meghan and Harry on the birth of their healthy baby boy, a human being just like the rest of us, and likely to look a bit like both his parents.
3
I’m not upset at the discussion of race and it’s importance in discourse, but the idea that we use a monarchy to demonstrate progress is baffling to me. Regardless of presentation a monarchy is still a monarchy and we shouldn’t congratulate it.
Ms Skurnick can claim anyone she wants, and I understand she is mixed race. But she looks about as African American as Laura Dern.
Baby Sussex isn't anyone's to claim. He's entitled to live his life in his own identity.
6
It seems weird to me that persons who are approximately one-fourth black (however that itself is defined) are still considered, or consider themselves, black. Isn't this a carryover of racism? The implication is that you can only be white if you're somewhere in the vicinity of 100%, but you are black if you have a small portion of that genetic background.
6
Meghan is a descendant of Evan Ragland, the father of all US Raglands. In the 1600s, he was kidnapped from Wales as a young boy, became an indentured servant in Virginia, worked his way out of servitude, married the farmer's daughter, and had many children. There was a Ragland castle, now in ruins, in Wales. Maybe Meghan will claim & restore her own British birthright?
3
I don't understand the author's reference to an 'antipathy toward black hair' that apparently abounds in the UK.
I have never, ever heard it discussed, although I have always
wondered why people with 'kinky' hair want to have straight hair.
1
No amount of wishful thinking, nor even of good deeds, will undo Europe and America's history of racial oppression. The world we live in, and even our bodies, are the products of that history. All we can do is try to keep our eyes and hearts open as best we can and respond to the lingering reality of racism with all the compassion we can muster.
4
This discussion is a good example of how the question of race is needlessly prolonged, and how difficult it actually will be to get this divisive issue behind us.
1
You have to live in a place where you enjoy the variety of people's looks and beings. Where friends couple up with their personal choices happily and easily.
1
Interesting column, but I wish it was not so. If we fast forward 400 years or so it’s likely we will all be few shades of “tawny”. Maybe by then we can reduce the preoccupation with race.
2
My problem with this piece has nothing to do with race, rather the massive waste of resources reporting and commenting on Britain’s royal family. Could there be anyone LESS important in the grand scheme of things? I thought that the whole idea of American democracy was based on the rejection of the divine right of kings...
The fact that this child makes the news is the issue here. Millions of babies are born everyday and because this one is born to a B actress and a made up monarch we all of a sudden care? Does it matter what his skin color is ? The world has serious issues and maybe if America didn't care about idle celebrity trash we wouldn't be where we are
One of the best hopes for more world peace would be for us all to be brown. I would be happy to do my small part in making this happen, but sadly I had a vasectomy in 1985.
1
Let's stop this obsession with Meghan Markle and her baby. She is married to someone who is seventh in line for the throne. Her marriage to Harry was a mistake on many levels, the most important of which is that she is divorced. Princess Ann, the Queen's daughter had to go to Scotland to be remarried because she was divorced and the Anglican church really frowns on such marriages. Harry's marriage should not have been allowed either. Meghan is an entertainer who doesn't like to follow the rules. In short order, this will be like having another Sarah Ferguson in the family. I doubt they will be married long.
2
Be authentic and proud of your heritage is my motto.
People who matter will appreciate that, and those who don't don't matter.
1
For the record, I'm black -- born in Brooklyn, have travelled the world, have any relatives born and raised in England and elsewhere -- and I'm tired of these endless articles in the New York Times focusing on race. I'm not interested in "claiming" babies or people based on twisted concepts of racial identity. I do not feel demoralized, victimized, or invisible. I wish the new parents joy with their new baby -- I don't are what he looks like.
5
In 2019, people are still interested in monarchy. How strange!
1
The "one drop rule" is unscientific, racist, and completely antiquated. Why do people still trot it out? It's ok to not be black or white but rather just to be somewhere in the gradient of both or neither. Maybe the kid will just be comfortable as is and not have to claim "blackness" or "whiteness".
4
We reside in a prominently black neighborhood. We like our neighbors and get a long well in the community. My family is white.
The other day, the little boy next door who's parents are black / white was playing with a group of friends. Teenagers from down the street started to harass the neighbor boy, because his skin is light in coloring. One of the teenagers said, "what's up with all these white faces in our neighborhood", as he shoved the little boy. All the children froze in place. Up until that moment, everyone was having a good time and getting along fine.
The point of my comment is this; racism has nothing to do with a particular color of skin. It's rampant in our society and is inclusive of all races.
Everyone should be proud of their heritage and as a society and we need to do more on all sides to teach tolerance and acceptance.
1
How will we ever advance if we don’t stop our obsession with color and differences of all kinds?
2
It seems to me that this article could only have been written in the United States. I cannot imagine in most countries anyone would even consider the American belief that any "black" DNA means you are "black". And in no other country that I know of, is "Latino" considered a race of people.
2
We - the Queen's subjects - don't care about it's 'mixed race'. Only Americans do.
I've been fascinated by the reaction of the so called establishment class: he's #7 but will have no titles, he's a minor royal and oh BTW Africa is ideal for his upbringing. As someone who went to school with establishment types, like pornography, I know prejudice when I see it.
The problem with these "discussions of race" is that only "people of color" are allowed to critique -- and it's almost always a critique of "White people" and "White culture." Why, exactly, is that OK?
4
Windsor Palace doesn't exist. Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle do. If the author is going to comment on our Royal Family, it would be as well if she got her facts correct.
3
Funny how distracted we just became with race, totally forgetting how silly it is for adults to fawn over people because - They Are Royalty! Everyone bow down now and grovel before those born or married into such an Entitled Family (who's on the dole). The Sex Pistols actually made sense on this issue.
1
"...Blackness as a badge of honor..." That's exactly what's going on here. There's just a bunch of silliness around Meghan Markle her marriage and baby. People are people. Just that. People.
It's become laughable in America where there seems to be this fashion now to elevate African Americans to some special status like all the people who claim Native American lineage and it's always Cherokee for some reason.
We are really to be honored that we have finally arrived? Are we really suppose to jump up and cheer because another barrier has come down? The House of Windsor has allowed a person of color to be added. Wow. As a person of color I find it as non event. Its like they finally let you into the main house. Is this too be celebrated? I suspect if the Queen ever holds the baby that will front page news also.Do we really envy these people that much?
1
I deem as incorrect the description of blacks, including those of mixed race, described in this article with the following characteristics: "kinky hair, full lips, thick thighs, broad noses, those pesky shades of tawny". In Israel, where there is an opportunity to see black Africans from many different countries, that description is misleading. There are blacks from countries with very delicate features and slight builds; in addition, the kinky hair from some groups is less dominant.
3
What an odd article. A stranger identifies and claims a newborn biracial child just because she is black? That to me is the very definition of stereotyping.
3
What will you think if the kid is a redhead?
He might end up a redhead with very curly hair and pale skin.
The British Royal family—& thusly most European Monarchy’s—have had black ancestry intermingled witching for centuries. In fact-while Americans with slaves were overthrowing King GeorgeIII his wife & mother of his 15Royal children had black ancestry traced through Portugal/Spain/Sicily/etc via Mecklenburg. That included their decent through Victoria who through her 9 children became the Grandmother of Europe by the late 19th Century. I’m not gonna bother w/all the others-but the Royal Families of Europe can none claim ‘pure blood’ of any 1 ethnic group.
Never even crossed my mind.
Since there are so many opinions expressed about the concept of "race", at least as employed in America thanks to the US Census Bureau, I think it appropriate on the 100th Anniversary of the opening of an exhibition with name "The Swedish People - The types of races we study" to call your attention to that event.
This was the work of an extraordinary doctor and racist, Herman Lundborg. There were 700 photographs illustrating how he divided the people who lived in Sweden in 1919 into Race Types: Swedish, Finnish, Same (Lapps), Walloons, Jews, Gypsies, and Tattare.
His goal: To prepare the Swedish people for the founding of the Swedish Institute of Race Biology in 1922 that would classify all, end goal to purify until the one superior race, Aryan, was left.
Why mention this here? Many comment writers appear not to realize that the US Census Bureau "races" are all the creations of racists like Lundborg, groups invented in order to place only one at the top.
As Blackmamba notes as do I (not yet in print) there is only one race, the human, as established by advanced research on the human genome.
The comments and Skurnick's article show that we desperately need to begin a discussion of the USCB system, with the goal in the minds of many, myself included, to do as Sweden did in 1958, end any national system for assigning people to races, and create a better 21st century system.
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
Citizen US SE
3
Tired of talks of race and racism? I argue that America's biggest problem that, is Trumpism and The Republican party, is mainly the result of many white American's allegiance to forms of white supremacy. What's tiring is being reminded of this truth, but talking about it helps to show how ridiculous the social construct is while it still remains a powerful reason why we govern so poorly.
2
Ms Skurnick wrote..."People, generally white ones, always think the answer to things like racism is to do away with race — to, as the saying goes, never see color."
Yeah, well Ms Skurnick, it seems the white population just can't win with you. If we strive towards "Doing away with race" then... we are wrong? Hasn't that been the goal of the NAACP and non discrimination laws for decades?
1
I just hope the royal baby is not a red head.....it is not easy being ginger!
Why all the fuss over the child's skin colour...
1
So let's box the kid in before his first week of life ....
Yes ... the answer is to do away with it.
1
This isn’t some serious search for genetic signifiers, of course. People who identify as black come in every shade and with every hair texture. But if his identity is anything like mine, he’ll consider anything that signals this heritage to the world a badge of honor. And there’s no question that his physical appearance will also shape how he’s seen.
http://www.translation.pk/english-translation.html
1
Racism is an addiction for people with deep seated evolutionary phobias and insecurities. It should be treated like a mental health issue. In addition, we need to scrub away the habits and practices that support racism. The national crisis of drug addiction, mass shooting, suicides, and racism are connected! Don’t hate the people, . . . hate the sickness!
2
Until reading this article it had not occured to me that there was even an issue here....sigh.
BTW, what's going on with Prince Harry's hair. Hasn't anyone noticed how very kinky it is?
1
Imagine the outrage in the US if a South African of mixed ancestry, who identified as "white", wrote an article like this hoping to see evidence of "whiteness" in a baby of mixed ancestry.
Ms Skurnick is yet another victim of the US's absurd racialist and racist past and present. Two wrongs do not make a right. Pride in being "black" is just as absurd as pride in being "white". The correct attitude is not to care. Skin shade and other markers of ethnic (or "racial") difference have very little deeper significance. Humanity is one.
It is likely that Meghan's mother does not have solely African ancestry - so Meghan likely has less than half, and her child with Harry will have less than a quarter. The only thing worthy of celebration about this - besides the birth of the child itself - is that Harry did not care.
If Ms Skurnick went to sub-Saharan Africa she would find it is not a bastion of racial solidarity 'cause everyone is "black". Finer distinctions of appearance are considered noteworthy there because racism is a human universal. "Black" is a social construct.
Most African-Americans are descended from a few west African ethnic groups. Such represents just a small fraction of the total genetic diversity within sub-Saharan Africans which is more than between the people of all other ethnic groups (or "races") combined.
Human beings are all about 99.9% genetically alike. That means Ms Skurnick - rather than being 22.5% African - would actually be about 0.0225% African.
2
The important thing is who is going to play him on Season 19 of "The Crown"?
2
Too ate, the IRS has already claimed him. They don't hyphen taxes, so he'll just be American to them.
If Harry had married a black woman, like Meghan's mother, it would be something to celebrate, but Meghan is bi-racial, and her son is mixed race. Who cares about his hair or skin tone? He's privileged.
1
As a citizen of both the USA and SE who has lived in Sweden for 22 years, working as a volunteer at the Linköping Red Cross where I have met at least 1000 newly arrived or newly made citizens people who came here from Sub-Saharan Africa I have a particular interest in Times articles dealing with "race". My interest is multi-faceted but one facet concerns how a topic is treated in the Times and in my Swedish newspaper, DN.
Consider this assertion: "The variety of black people is not, of course, some intrinsic creativity in our D.N.A. It was largely foisted on American blacks by slavery, only more recently occurring as a result of choice."
Ms. Skolnick left out an essential adjective, "American" needed before "black people".
DN science journalist Karin Bojs (KB), could point out as I now will that the extraordinary range in skin color of people in Sub-Saharan Africa was not "foisted on them by anybody" unless you want to blame your personal God.
Instead, KB very likely would cite articles like this one: "Loci associated with skin pigmentation
identified in African populations" by the Sarah A. Tishkoff research team.
A key sentence in this article: "We show that both dark
and light pigmentation alleles arose before the
origin of modern humans and that both light
and dark pigmented skin has continued to evolve
throughout hominid history."
The new kid's skin color perhaps deserves more serious discussion than it gets here.
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
The self as subject for public writing. It's always the people who don't seem to have black ancestry who insist most forcefully that they are black, and who write self-focused think-pieces like this for a living. That would be Ms. Skurnick. The internet is an amazing space for self-fashioning. They are usually from privileged bourgeois backgrounds and would not be recognized as black by most black people. The claim only works in the white liberal circles they move in. Hence their investment in the privilege industry where they can self-identify as "black" and escape the existential guilt of "being white." There one can capitalize on mixed heritage by claiming an authenticity that generates publication income and CV padding.
To fetishistically focus on outward "racial traits" - considering the momentous challenges we humans face and the very real marginalization of blacks in racist settler societies like the US - and to scrutinize others for such physical attributes that signify common stereotypes of racial identity, is really pretty trite. It also reproduces and authorizes such essentialism that have long been the standard fare of racism. To think that Markle or her child - as royals - share anything in common with other people of mixed parentage, or black people generally, is a real fantasy. Royals with some African heritage do as much for uplifting black people as a people as electing a black president of a racist country did.
3
The London tabloids have close-up photos of the baby to give everybody a good look at his whiteness. The Sun said he had her nose.
On point but I would say that given Meghan's heritage and Harry's fairly kinky/curly hair, that the kid will probably be kickin' afrolistic! Excellent!
1
"People, generally white ones, always think the answer to things like racism is to do away with race"
Stereotyping much...?
And the authors says, over and over, kinky hair and thick lips don't matter. But she obviously doesn't believe it.
2
I believe you made a terribly racist statement while saying not only you, but all black people, want it to stop! Races are not The Borg.
"People, generally white ones, always think the answer to things like racism is to do away with race — to, as the saying goes, never see color. But no one tells women to start becoming men to defeat sexism. I’m proud of my black heritage. I would never give it up. What black people, and all tawny peoples, would like is for people to stop being racist."
I'm a black woman of mixed descent. If the writer is looking for black babies to claim America has plenty that are obviously black, and don't have two loving parents and an entire family to care for them, and a royal title to boot. When you look like the writer, black identity is a choice. People with obviously black Heritage, and dark complexions don't have that luxury. A dark skin black person with 22 or 25% white heritage, like some of the people in my family don't have the luxury to identify as white.
It's time for us all to claim a little bit more self-love and a little less self-loathing. there is already too much division within the black community regarding skin color and hair texture. And far too much division in our society with regards to what is acceptable and what isn't in terms of skin color, hair texture, and physical features. These are exhausting and unnecessary distractions from the reality of our common human Bond that should supersede all other differences.
49
@wcdessertgirl Indeed, most Mexicans and Mexican Americans are of mixed heritage - some percentage of Native American and European (mostly Spanish). The range of complexions within our family is broad , from white to
copper. But, the tone of our complexion does not define us. Baby Sussex has two parents, he doesnt need anyone else to claim him.
4
My family immigrated to the US when I was thirteen. I wanted so much to learn English quickly and to blend into the US that I asked my mother to let us speak English in the home (and that’s what my teachers said we should do). My mother, to her credit, insisted on speaking only Japanese in the home, and she was very adamant that we honor our heritage. Since my goal was to blend in, I hid the fact that I was not a relative new comer to the US, until a friend of mine in college said, “You’re so cool; you’re Japanese.” That one statement changed everything. It’s been a long journey to figure out where I stand in the world as a human being, to figure out my identity.
I totally agree with Lizzie Skurnick’s assertion: “People, generally white ones, always think the answer to things like racism is to do away with race — to, as the saying goes, never see color. But no one tells women to start becoming men to defeat sexism.” I just wish she wouldn’t stop with “tawny” people. I’ve noticed that much of our racial discussions don’t include Asians. We might not suffer the same kind of scrutiny by law enforcement and assumptions by people in general, but Asians are not colorless.
37
@Momo One of my oldest friends (Italian American descent) has lived in Japan for 45 years and when I visited him for an extended period back in the 90's his Japanese American children were subjected to bullying because of their mixed race. I think this divisive outlook about race is pretty universal and there is lots written about racism in Japan. Maybe it is changing. But it is a slow process.
Tribalism is deeply rooted; possibly the deepest root.
8
This blackness business is ridiculous. Remember what Martin Luther King said, that we should judge people by their character not the colour of their skin.
3
I am "black Irish." It seems that a portion of the Irish people have light skin and jet black hair. My mother told me that it was because of the Spanish Armada sinking off the coast of Ireland and the sailors swimming to the Irish shore. I later learned that most sailors could not swim.
Later DNA solved the controversy. It seems that there was a relevant interaction with the Basque people of Spain. They have a very distinct DNA signature and black hair.
I gave up on my hair in my forty's. I stopped dying it. I let it go gray and now white. I also have Irish curls. I let them curl.
I get constant compliments.
Why can't people just be themselves?
4
I think it is interesting here that so many commentators slip in in the information that they are "white". So what? If you are really not measuring color in your regard of other humans why mention your own category? But also, you might need your eyes checked. From an aesthetic viewpoint "white" is the least attractive skin color--given to blotches, mottling, grey tones or flushed red. But it is rarely aesthetics that we consider: try miniscule power politics.
2
In the 70's the afro was all the rage, worn by blacks as well as kinky-haired whites. Why/how hair-straightening came into being I have no idea. I worked in a restaurant where, when I returned from Europe wearing (some pretty bad dreadlocks) I was told to brush my hair (I'm white).
So what am I saying here? There are standards, and a business owner has the right to set them. I don't recall the manager complaining about the afros. Just unkempt-looking hair.
When you're hoping that the child has kinky hair to represent your blackness, you're conveniently forgetting that white people have kinky hair too. And no matter what -- this baby is only part black. He's going to be his own person, and his identity will not be a racial one. It's going to be a status and family orientation.
Lately I've been wondering whether all this sturm and drang over race has more to do with an unfortunate side effect of "diversity" i.e. clinging desperately to racial identities as we are indoctrinated into merging and erasing race rather than retaining the racial divides.
All of this has forced me into wondering what my "identity" is. It's not white. It's nothing. I live in a neighborhood where I don't belong...where I wander...invisible.
20
Dear @House of Shards,
Your comment struck a chord with me. In particular the last paragraph. I have also had a crisis of identity (I am not white). Being mixed race left me feeling I didn't belong anywhere-- I didn't fit in anywhere. I also lived in a neighborhood where I didn't belong, but with one difference, I wasn't invisible. Standing out is not always a good thing -- though agreed neither is being invisible. I wanted you to know that I hear you and you are not invisible.
I think we "cling to racial identities" because someone or something is always there to remind us that we don't belong. If we all looked the same, someone would still find something to divide. I wanted to share my crisis of identity which occurred when I was at an alumni function as a freshman in college. I was asked by the alumni at my table "where are you from?" to which I answered "America". They all started laughing, and finally one lady said "How cute, she thinks she's American." That's when it hit me -- if I know who I am, but no one acknowledges it or believes it then am I still . . .me? It took years after that to finally come to terms with this -- I learned that if you are ashamed of who you are or show that you feel like you don't belong then people will often treat you that way.
I think we see ourselves in this baby and he belongs, and so do you and so do I.
8
My 1974 high school yearbook has many pictures of both boys and girls with “Afros”, some of them so big they didn’t fit in the photo. Great times.
4
To all you 'post racial' commenters who 'don't see color', this opinion piece probably isn't for you. However, there are many people in this world who will ONLY notice this kids color. Even with all the privileges of growing up a royal, there are going to be many slights and indignities this kid will have to face on a daily basis. Ignoring the issue of race, the 400 years of race based slavery, the 100 years of Jim Crow legal and political apartheid that followed it, even recently British citizens of Jamaican decent were wrongly deported, and it wasn't because of their accent. The 'post racial' folks who 'don't see color' get to ignore these atrocities because they aren't being targeted the way people of color are.
2
@Mike
Baby Sussex will be able to pass. Phenotypically, he will look entirely European, just like Skurnick herself.
He will enjoy all the sumptuous privileges of being a member of the Royal Family.
You observation is a tad out of place here.
2
@MS
If you think he will escape the "1 drop rule", you are sadly mistaken. He will have privilege being a royal, but there are people who will make it their mission in life to remind him daily that he doesn't belong.
You should probably ask your black friend if my observation is out of place.
1
I live in a multicultural suburb outside of NYC and have noticed how many black women are reclaiming their hair. It's a beautiful thing to see.
3
I think that by making so much of someone’s “blackness’” is what keeps racism, subtle or not, alive and well. Let the poor duchess be a woman who married a royal and just had a baby, by him, who is 7th in line to the British throne and leave it at THAT.
I believe that disparaging blackness or praising it is ridiculous. Treat it as NORMAL, just like any other human trait, hair color, eyes color, size, height, gender.
We’ll never stop being racists until we stop characterizing somebody by the color of their skin whether in a positive or negative way.
6
Blackness is no more a badge of honor than whiteness, brownness, etc. are. What you are as a person honors or dishonors you, the individual. Unfortunately, too many equate these labels with whatever their biases or prejudices are. E.g. A public official is disgraced. “What can you expect from (label).” Does this sound familiar?
6
And the welsh/irish/ scottish/saxon/hindi/southafrican/caribbean/viking/ancestors of the modern british population is a wonderful melting-pot of humana. Race is secondary
1
His blood will always be the same color red as his parents, as it will be the same for everyone in his family’s realm, and as the rest of us 9 billion other members of the human race outside it. So anyone can “claim” at least that much connection to him or his family, and anyone else, “For Mercy has a human heart/Pity, a human face/ And Love, the human form divine/ And Peace, the human dress.” - William Blake
30
We all have common ancestors a few dozen generations back. The Times fascination with skin tone and hair follicles seems bizarre.
2
It’s 2019 and there are still people who believe in race.
3
Actually, women are expected to act like men in order to avoid sexism. “Why can’t a woman be more like a man?”
2
From her on-line photos the author could easily be mistaken for white, as far as skin tone is concerned.
As for her self-described “bushy” hair, that could have come from the Jewish side of her heritage, since she says her DNA is about 75% non-black. (Her hair is amazingly similar to that of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, former head of the DNC; see photos of both on-line.)
I think this article is more about the author’s own self-identity concerns, using Baby Sussex as a straw man (straw baby) to parade her own multi-racial issues.
By the way, the first photos of Baby Sussex show his skin tone to be on the spectrum between his mother and his father; his hair, if any, was covered by a little white cap so we’ll have to wait to see about that.
3
I find it interesting that the author has to go so far back to find proof of UK antipathy towards back hair. If she thinks that social attitudes here have not changed since Thackeray wrote 'Vanity Fair', perhaps she should come visit.
2
Commenters: Do you want applause for broadcasting the uncontroversial opinion that race shouldn't matter? Well, it *shouldn't,* but it does. It matters because people are fundamentally insecure and desperate to find reasons/ways to devalue others. Physical identifiers are a classic go-to.
Author: Do you want applause for "claiming" blackness, even though most people wouldn't notice any African genetic makeup in your physical appearance? You're not getting a shred of credit from me, because, in spite of your best efforts, being black isn't a lifestyle choice. If you're so concerned about blackness, focus on any one of the hundreds of issues adversely affecting the global black population. The royal baby doesn’t need your help.
50
@Holly V. Wish I could do more than "recommend" this. Lots of truths here. Physical, ability, and even heard (accents)–humans always look for *something* to put others down in the pursuit of elevating the self. We are a horribly tribal species, but with the intelligence to override lizard thinking if we choose to do so.
5
Why is this an issue? Shall we test the babies melatonin levels before proceeding? Or can we develop a test so we can project how brown his skin will be? Just stop
2
Yeah, sorry Lizzie. Just google imaged "Lizzie Skurnick" and I guess "shattered to find myself at a paltry 22.5 percent" just ain't quite cutting it.
Liked the article though, always been a fan of diversity.
2
I’m not sure what exactly the point is of this article, meaning I don’t quite “get it”. Of course, we should embrace our heritage and fortunately or unfotyunately have no choice but to embrace color. I happen to hate my pasty, freckled skin. I’d love to have abeutiful tan. But I use a tanning cream.
My Irish-Italian friend is a gorgeous woman and has the kinkiest hair. Not straight but wavy and dry. She burns the heck out of it with heat treatments to straighten it.
Black is totally different, I know. I’m not pretending to know anything about it. I think it’s beautiful as a human for you to embrace all of the special and lovely qualities. As far as Meghan’s “natural” hair, i’d Be hard pressed to remember my own. I have been coloring it for twenty years. I’ve have pictures with a perm, straight, crimped.
1
Charity, folks! What have the Brits got left other than royals and the jackal tabloid press? What have we got that the Gray Lady, (and the WP, and the rest of the papers) feel obligated to send torrential cascades of bits over the wires to show us what oddities appeared at the Met Gala? So lay off the author; she’s just returning to her knitting in a world, and country, gone as sick as anything we’ve seen since the last World War. Minds need straightening more than does hair.
Nobody said that this would diminish the gene pool of the Monarchy. Though the Royals were much concerned with Dianas last fateful plunge romancing the Arab gentleman and caused quite a stir. Yes ,though times have changed ,would be a pity to have the youngster grow to be resentful of what will eventually become perceived differences of bi racialism which today are seemingly much admired by some and used by others to justify patronage ,which is ever more common.
I'd LIKE to agree with the other posters here who say racial obsession is/should be over.
Sadly, I think for a lot of folks, including the fabled Trump "base" it is not, in fact it is more major in their lives than ever.
I occasionally read the Brit tabloid style online newspaper "Daily Mail".....it is funny/ tragic to read the comments there after posts about Meghan or, even worse, Doria Ragland, her mother. "Count the silverware when she's gone" and things of that nature are posted with no humor apparent, by people in the U.S.
Yes, "racial awareness" is still there, still real and still affects most of us.
150
@RLiss This writer evidently doesn't agree with you. She would "never give [her black heritage] up". Notwithstanding the fact that it's pretty difficult to "give up" one's heritage, we all know what she means: she will never give up identifying with an arbitrarily chosen group. The obsession with race will endure.
Why? The only argument she gives for her position is a flawed analogy: "no one tells women to start becoming men to defeat sexism". Indeed, no one does. But does she seriously think that those of us who want to see us live in a colour-blind society, in which people are judged by the content of their character and not the colour of their skin, want "black people to start becoming white to defeat racism", or vice-versa?
No, the argument is that we should all view each other as human beings. Better still, we might start viewing ourselves, and members of certain other animal species, as sapient beings. We can go still further, by viewing ourselves as sentient beings - like much of the animal kingdom, we have the capacity to experience pleasure and pain. Our treatment of any given being should depend not on an arbitrarily chosen group identity, but on its capacities, because those capacities directly inform the interests that the being has. A pig has no interest in voting, but does have an interest in avoiding the experience of unnecessary suffering.
17
@RLiss The Daily Mail is the most widely read paper in the UK. It's notoriously sexist and racist. It occupies the space between the kinds of publications that report on alien landings and respectable papers--so it does publish reality, but often a highly distorted version of it or information that was obtained God knows how. There was a phone hacking scandal a few years ago and I have a suspicion the Daily Mail should have featured much more prominently in all that.
Anyway, it has made a big move into the US and that has been interesting to watch. In the UK, the kind of people who would be the equivalent of Trump supporters love it, but on its US articles, actual Trump supporters often accuse the reporters of being lefties!
The comments on Meghan Markle have been very revealing about attitudes in the UK. There are thousands on any article (many more than on other articles) and many are blatantly racist and snobbish. If called out, people generally go into denial mode (e.g., "I'm not racist; just concerned that there's a plan to make this baby King some day because of political correctness." That type of thing.
I get heartily sick of constantly hearing about race, but until racism doesn't exist anymore, it has to be discussed.
16
@Ant. Meghan was initially the recipient of uncritical approbation by the British press, and the public welcomed her warmly. I myself only started following the royals because of I found Meghan’s behavior strange and offputting. And so did many others, apparently. That is why there is more hate than hagiography.
I thoroughly enjoyed this article. It was well written and informative. It gave me a chance to hear another persons views and feelings. I learned quite a few things as well. Is it relevant? Yes, I think it is. You know very well everyone will be scrutinizing the baby, so why not have an honest discussion about it. Or is it only ok for white people to express their opinions? We, white people need to get over it.
198
@Tara Who, exactly, will be "scrutinizing" the baby? This is yet another evidence-free assertion that apparently passes for cogent argument. Commenters on here are simply saying that neither white people nor black people should be "scrutinizing" the baby, let alone "claiming the baby" as a member of their arbitrarily chosen group (in this case, one's "race").
87
@tara I’m white and I’m happy the baby was born healthy. That’s the end of my scrutiny. It’s ignorant to speak for an entire group of people. Thanks.
13
@Ed--yup yup. Not our baby, your baby, their baby. Harry and Meghan's baby.
2
“But no one tells women to start becoming men to defeat sexism.”
Yes, they did. I started my professional career in 1986 and wore dark skirt-suits, starched blouses with the top button closed, and these ridiculous little silk ties. The idea was to be as close to “one of the boys” as possible.
6
So much outrage at the writer's racial pride!
So much "get over it"!
You guys doth protest too much. The writer clearly hit a nerve.
3
@Renee
So unless we agree, or accept being called racist in these pages on an almost daily basis, we "doth protest too much"? Doesn't sound like a very productive conversation.
3
If he has kinky hair he will be the image of his father.
8
There are millions of babies born in this country and around the world for whom having kinky hair or not and dark skin or not etc.etc. will possibly and unfortunately play some role in their ability to get ahead in this often unforgiving world. However, this baby will clearly not be one of them.
45
One of my volunteer gigs is teaching financial literacy classes at local high schools. A little over a year ago it took me to an inner city school on the Kansas side of town. The building is a beautiful example of depression era architecture and a colleague who knew about it suggested I tour it after the class. Wandering into the library I struck up a conversation with the librarian, who recounted her recent trip to the DMV to renew her drivers license. Confronted with a form asking her race, she checked the Caucasian box. The DMV clerk told her she couldn’t check that box because she was, quite obviously, black. She replied that no, she was white. A heated conversation with the clerk ensued, the librarian insisting she was white if she said she was and, besides, who was the clerk to say otherwise? With the inevitable appearance of a supervisor, the matter was settled in her favor, her point being made. I walked away from our conversation grateful for this little nugget of knowledge gained.
27
@Dale Irwin, Sure to have trouble with the police at some point.
2
The information is useful to detect improper use of an identity, driver's license is a common means of identification; why fight it? A good example of making a point get in the way of common sense. @Ryan
3
@Ryan
I'm not trying to troll you, but why do you assume this person will have "trouble with the police at some point?" Do you assume that all people of color automatically have negative interactions with law enforcement? I grew up in the south Bronx, my father and one of my uncles were criminals, but the vast majority of my family are law-abiding citizens and have never had any significant interaction with law enforcement.
Also, neither my NYS ID, my PA state ID, or my U.S passport identify my race or ethnicity. Considering all the multiracial or mixed heritage people in this country, including myself, it would extremely difficult to accurately classify the millions of people who do not fit into one singular racial/ethnic classification.
1
I agree with and appreciate everything Miss Skurnick says, but I like to wonder about things -- like why has skin color become such an issue and hair color or eye color not so much? I would think it has to do with the attitudes of colonialists and, of course, the history of slavery. It is our history and our xenophobia that has made race such an issue. I think that when white people say the answer to things like racism is to do away with race, to never see color, what they're thinking is that color shouldn't matter and, absent our history, maybe it wouldn't matter as much.
But of course history and xenophobia do exist, and the perfect world in which differences don't matter is not the world we live in.
Ms. Skurnick is right. We cannot ignore our history, and we should not ignore race. The way to rid ourselves of xenophobia is not to ignore differences, but to highlight them and to embrace them in a way that encourages us to see each other not as strangers, but as fellow human beings with many of the same concerns. Attempting to ignore our differences cuts us off from a bigger picture and encourages us to think of the other as , well, simply the other.
16
I guess we're still a long way from the day when "people are people."
14
I’m disheartened by our inability to see past what are essentially minor differences in visible physical characteristics. There is only one “race” - the human race.
“Race” is a social construct and an historical error in thinking. Recent genetic evidence demonstrates that until roughly 6,000 years ago, all Europeans had dark skin. All of us are descended from the same African ancestors.
Which is not to say racism doesn’t exist or isn’t an enormous problem, But racism is merely erroneous thinking - certainly codified and institutionalized in most of the world and in many of its religions, but erroneous and factually unsupported nonetheless.
Let us, please, celebrate and value our ethnic, linguistic, and cultural differences with joy and kindness and consign “race” to the garbage pile of meaningless words and mistaken concepts.
6
Wow, this whole discussion appears to have become an American preoccupation; it might be fine to have the discussion but to use a particular newborn child as the catalyst is misguided and unfairly opportunistic.
10
racial bias evident here.
"Thackeray was depicting an upper-class society whose wealth was founded entirely on colonizing those unfortunate tawny folks"
is that statement true?
"People, generally white ones, always think the answer..."
Do white folks all think the same? Seriously? Am I the same bucket as hundreds of millions of others? And, all this time I thought I was a unique individual. The author sees us all as a category of thinkers. Fascinating.
"What black people, and all tawny peoples, would like is for people to stop being racist."' Yes. May we all be aware of our biases. Please.
11
The author reveals a conversation that people of African descent sometimes have among ourselves. It is a different “racial obsession” than white people have, it comes from a different frame — less confining than some who protest too much seem to grasp — given the historic nature of this child’s birth. It’s a frame of inclusion/claiming, race positive in a world that too quickly wants to render blackness invisible. Proactively affirming an aspect of this baby’s identity that is more likely to “need sticking up for” if some of the comments sections are any indication. It is hopeful this baby joins a world in which race might indeed be “transcended” and that doesn’t require the baby to look as white as possible to experience a measure of that “racial transcendence.” That’s a different frame than the “not caring about race” folks (some of whom, parenthetically, thought nothing of voting for a race-baiting President but want you never to notice it). And it’s worlds apart from the minority (but still uncomfortably too many) of white people who ARE race-obsessed, who do not celebrate this baby in clinging to misguided racial superiority. At heart, of course Baby Sussex is first and foremost the delight of his parents, but I suspect he’s also gained a bunch of self-deputized black and biracial “play” aunties, who pray that he’ll be covered against the slights and biases yet present in the world as it relates to race (and, yes, including Great Britain) as we do for our own children.
21
@Alicia
Baby Sussex can be expected to do as well as one of his ancestors on the Hanoverian side, Queen Charlotte, George IIIs consort.
Why on earth is this important? Does it seriously matter what the baby “looks” like? He or she will have two loving and capable parents, does anything else matter?
10
Locs have already become a part of the Royal Family. Dora Ragland is wearing locs in a ponytail in the accompanying photo.
Dora and Meghan are comely women. And yes, they are black, although phenotypically, there is very little about Meghan that is black except her café au lait complexion. Skurnick’s narrative is incoherent in that she simultaneously suggests that blackness comes in all complexions and shapes but also that there are identifiably black traits. Perhaps the Brits should place bets on the degree of kink that the newborn exhibits.
Meghan’s story is poignant because it is a reversal of Fanny Hurst’s “Imitation of Life.” Meghan embraces her mother and, hence, her blackness—even if she straightens her hair.
Meghan is now a duchess and enjoys tremendous power and privilege through the agency of a husband who has a love affair with Africa. So, too, will her newborn, who will be granted all the advantages of being born into the Royal Family.
A more interesting essay might have focused on Meghan’s potential for modernizing an anachronistic institution and bringing it into the twenty-first century.
First, fifteen-year-old Samuel Getachew exhorts us to join him in a “conversation” about “intersectionality” and racism.
Now, Skurnick belabors us with the complexities of her black identity, a subject suitable for cossetted college freshmen.
5
Conundrum...
Say you were walking down the street and you happen to come across this beautiful woman.
Breathtaking is a mere hint of how one would describe this lady. This woman, without question, is the definition of elegance and grace. She is wearing fashionable clothing that highlights her every move, yet her clothing is conservative enough to only allow positive suggestive thoughts. Wanting to drink in more; You cannot do anything but stop and wish.
When you think nothing more can be said and done, this very woman passes by you close enough that she encircles you that beautiful feeling sensation from a late spring flower storm. She pauses, ever so slightly, and gives you a wide smile. She knows what you're thinking.
Now, this woman, that I just described, happens to be a Black woman. Does this information surprise you? Does it change how you feel about this woman? Did you think I was describing a White woman? Why?
My point?
Until we remove the idea of "color" from our minds, words, and thoughts- We will be forever lost.
People just want to feel as though they belong.
2
Is blackness or whiteness a "badge of honor" in and of itself?
And here I thought a badge had to be earned. No point in being proud of an innate trait or physical attribute. I suppose a person can be proud of his high arches, but to me that sounds more like vanity.
On the other hand, lots people, both white and black, should be ashamed of their behavior -- the one thing we all have the power to change.
22
This should be the start of the end of the Royal family. Good job Prince Harry you nailed it.
2
@Piff, I think this marriage between the socially ambitious Megan with her complex past is going make the Charles Diana fiasco look like Ozzy and Harriet.
1
I bet he will be a beautiful baby, like all babies.
10
So you want white people to stop being racist, do you? Most of us aren’t, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to separate the perception of racism from the actuality of whiteness. First, we were taught to see past the color of people’s skin, now we find out that that’s not what black people really want us to do. It’s apparently not enough to just accept all people as people. Add to that the constant carping about “white privilege” and reparations and I’m beginning to feel like I am being branded a racist just because I’m white!
29
“racism” exists also outside of the “white” race behaviour.
This is a light-hearted personal reflection on race in modern culture by someone who, like me, has "skin in the game". The strident criticisms by (predominantly white?) readers come across as over the top and a little hysterical. It seems like you're just desperate not to have this, or any, conversation about race.
Passing over in silence does not diminish prejudice or eliminate discrimination. I prefer to have full and frank conversations so that I know where everyone stands and I know when, where, how and from whom to protect myself. Being a human of color is a deal of work, even in these enlightened times.
307
@Edward 'Being a human of color is a deal of work, even in these enlightened times.'
I had the curiosity the check how the esteemed author looks like and I am happy to report that her appearance is entirely undistinguishable from that of a white European, at least to my European eyes.
https://thenewmercury.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/lizzie.jpeg
So, from what I gather, this is a white, middle-class American writer, who identifies herself as Black, which allows her to assert her sense of victimhood, and in the process proclaim her solidarity with poor baby Sussex, whose hypothetical curly hair makes him a victim of hypothetical evil racists. /facepalm/
I think I'll reserve my compassion for people who are truly at the bottom of the food chain, thank you very much.
46
@Edward
From her on-line photos the author could easily be mistaken for white, as far as skin tone is concerned.
As for her self-described “bushy” hair, that could have come from the Jewish side of her heritage, since she says her DNA is about 75% non-black. (Her hair is amazingly similar to that of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, former head of the DNC; see photos of both on-line.)
I think this article is more about the author’s own self-identity concerns, using Baby Sussex as a straw man (straw baby) to parade her own multi-racial issues.
By the way, the first photos of Baby Sussex show his skin tone to be on the spectrum between his mother and his father; his hair, if any, was covered by a little white cap so we’ll have to wait to see about that
23
@Edward - Interesting that you seem to engage in the same level of generalization that the author does. Perhaps it would have helped if you had named 5 comments by the writers you see as (predominantly white?)that you see as over the top, hysterical, and desperate.
You can give me names of 5 her or, for the record, send them to me at my Gmail at
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
Citizen US SE
My USA birth certificate, very old says color - white
3
We need to learn to 'see' the heart of every child of color and embrace him, wherever we find them. They are the ones who have the greatest lessons to teach us, the white race.
3
No, the new royal baby isn't "black," but multiracial. I'm a multiracial American myself, and it's absurd to expect people with part-African descent to consider themselves primarily black. That ancestry's great and honorable, by the way, but is just one minor part of this new Brit's background.
36
@Brian A, you should study up on the ‘one-drop’ rule, once recognized in this country, under which anyone with a drop of blood from a black ancestor was considered black.
3
@mark Please provide a reference for how prevalent this designation was, please, when and where it was the law. Thanks.
@mark Well of course I'm aware of that (rule only applied in some states, by the way), but really, so what? That was "then," doesn't matter now. Unless one LIKES being stuck in the past.
1
I've already moved on.
I wonder if other, similarly unaffected people in the world (we currently number about 7.5 billion) will be equally capable of simply moving on.
9
Our family is native American (Passamaquoddy of Maine) , black, white Scottish, white French whose roots go back to the early American colonies.
Am reminded of shows Oprah did on the subject of how many blacks with lighter skin noted they were loved by some within the black community and disliked by some within the black community.
Will be interesting to see how this young male is treated if he excels in school as he grows up. Will be admired or made fun of for 'trying to be white'? Another topic Ms. Winfrey has covered.
As for the question of baby Sussex' hair being kinky or wool like. Bear in mind Prince Harry the Duke of Sussex has VERY curly red hair.
12
Great article. For additional inspiration, check out India Hicks' family. She was a bridesmaid in Princess Diana's wedding. Her mother is Lady Pamela Hicks (daughter of the Mountbattens), and her father was decorator David Hicks.
India Hicks has five children - four from her longtime relationship with David Flint Woods, and a son who is Bahamian and was adopted when his mother died of cancer. It would be hard to find a more beautiful, creative, and close-knit family.
India Hicks wasn't trying to prove a point, and no one is color blind; they're just a modern family. Yes, they're well off, but if appearances are reality, they have the love part figured out better than many "traditional" families I know.
7
To the idea that this writer's embrace of African roots is chauvinistic: Consider an analogy which takes people out of the equation. A writer feels intrinsically connected to the particular land and ecology he/she grew up in. Other landscapes don't carry the same soulfulness or inspire the same reverence for him/her. This place is home. It makes his/her soul leap up with deep joy.
I think we would understand that experience without feeling that it represents a chauvinistic denigration of other landscapes.
Of course, I understand that we struggle to erase genuine race-hate, which often employs rhetoric which sounds similar to an inspiring connection to one's own race. Still, that similarity alone shouldn't inspire us to erase real inspiration.
2
I hope the child is healthy and has loving parents. Since Great Britain's aristocracy has no real political power, the perceived "race" of the child is only a cultural issue. If some people have a problem with the child not having the physically characteristics of the average "white" Briton, are those people prejudiced or are they simply reflecting the tribalism inherent in a society which recognizes a monarch?Is there supposed to be an equal opportunity for all people to become a part of the royal family?
The most important thing would be the Royal baby is healthy and strong.
The worry about the hair or skin color should not be an issue these days.
But if you must, I should say hopefully the baby would resemble more like Duchess Meghan`s gorgeous Mother than her ample Father.
7
One cannot advocate for equality while perpetuating the vulgar tradition of an institution that rests on the premise of a hierarchy based on nepotism (marriage, birth order) as opposed to merit.
8
What I find problematic with the POC concept is the conflagration of race. Who is allowed POC status and who is not. Who is white and who is not. Who was historically denied white status and are now white. Who could be allowed POC status, but are now identify as white.
The categorization of POC, I believe, can be labeled messy, with difficult questions in postmodern language. Is POC skin tone, hair, nose, eyes? Is there a certain ethnicity or lineage used to decide? Does presentation of dress, language, hairstyle affect the decision?
The bigotry and racism experienced on a daily basis cannot always be simplitically defined. Our nation is growing and changing, Who is POC is not exclustionary.
3
@Ali Why don't we just divide the world into "Aryans" and "non-Aryans" instead? It makes as much sense.
Actually, women are expected to become men to defeat sexism! We've made all these inroads into work life, but just for those women who are single and childless and can work like men. Mothers and older women are not doing so well.
8
This article feels unnecessary and a bit silly. Somehow we're supposed to believe that a newborn child, someone you've never met and will likely never meet, is going to have some profound impact on your life, your self-worth and your identity if he has physical traits that are commonly found within the African American population? And why would you assume that the child will identify with one racial group or another? He may very well simply consider himself a mix of many things (as we all are) and leave it at that. Not only is it profoundly unfair to hoist an "identity" burden on a child, it almost certainly will end in disappointment for you if that child doesn't embrace that "identity" in the way you hope/expect it should.
14
And I very much doubt he will see himself as primarily American, being raised as a member of the British royal family.
The "look" of the newborn never occurred to me to think about until I saw this piece this morning. Thanks NYT!
2
There is no such thing as ‘race’. We are all humans of differing cultures and ethnicities.
3
Some historical reference --
Tue, 05.19.1744
England’s 18th century Black Queen, Sophie Charlotte born
*Princess Sophie Charlotte was born on this date in 1744. She was the second Black Queen of England.
Charlotte was the eighth child of the Prince of Mirow, Germany, Charles Louis Frederick, and his wife, Elisabeth Albertina of Saxe-Hildburghausen...
As princess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Sophie Charlotte was descended directly from an African branch of the Portuguese Royal House, Margarita de Castro y Sousa. Six different lines can be traced from Princess Sophie Charlotte back to Margarita de Castro y Sousa.
She married George III of England on September 8, 1761, at the Chapel Royal in St James’s Palace, London, at the age of 17 years of age becoming the Queen of England and Ireland...
In Queen Charlotte’s era slavery was prevalent and the anti-slavery campaign was growing.
Portrait painters of the royal family were expected to play down or soften Queen Charlotte's African features. Painters such as Sir Thomas Lawrence, who painted, Queen Charlotte in the autumn of 1789 had their paintings rejected by the royal couple who were not happy with the representations of the likeness of the Queen. These portraits are amongst those that are available to view now, which could be seen as continuing the political interests of those that disapprove of a multi-racial royal family for Britain.
https://aaregistry.org/story/englands-first-black-queen-sophie-charlotte-born/
2
Not once had I wondered if he would have "kinky hair" or how much pigment his skin will have.
I really had to look and see if I had been re-directed to NYPost, when I started reading.
63
@M Neither did I. It used to be that only racists would raise and dwell on such superficial things.
@Jenise
It still is that way.
I voted twice for President Obama in the hope we could all just start ignoring skin color and focus on character. I see the opposite has happened in society the past decade after his election, and I’m not sure what to make of it, frankly.
54
@Conservative Democrat,
Democrats need topics to energize their supporters. They pit people against each other every day in almost every article. Blacks against whites, women against men, poor and middle class against wealthy. MO.
@Conservative Democrat. I voted twice for President Obama because each time I felt he was the better candidate.
@Conservative Democrat, the black author Shelby Steele predicted that Obama would revive and not quell racial tensions.
I wish the new baby well as I do for all people. Before weaving a fairytale remember Princess Diana and how that fairytale ended. Royalty is inherently exclusive, so while it looks pretty do not overstate it’s relevance to anyone of any color or ethnicity.
15
We have no control over the ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, and a few other things we are born with. Things we are born into are an inheritance. I find the concept of taking pride in an inheritance to be a logical oddity, and slightly disturbing.
I've done some things in my life that I poured myself into, and with good fortune was able to make a few things better in small ways. When I think of those things I take some pride. But to take pride in something I had absolutely nothing to do with, put no labor into achieving? That doesn't work for me.
I write all this knowing there will be some, maybe many, who will assert that I "don't get it.". To that criticism I would say, "You don't know me." You don't know what I was born into, the price I've paid or what I've done with that. The perspective I've expressed here has made my life better and I think it's worth sharing.
27
@Charles Becker - I have filed my 2 rather critical comments. Now I am taking a census of comments in print.
I agree with you since in my theory of pride, one can only take pride in what one sees as accomplishments. I leave a loophole for taking pride in one's children since conceiving them and bringing them up may be seen as accomplishments.
And even more strongly do I agree with your "you don't even know me paragraph."
Following American practice where daily here in the Times the most important characterization of a person is to put that person in a "race" box is seen by me as absurd. My American birth certificate, very old, says color - white.
In my view that tells Lizzie Skurnick zero about me. But she apparently thinks she might as indicated by this generalization: "People, GENERALLY WHITE ones, ALWAYS think the answer to things like racism is to do away with race — to, as the saying goes, never see color."
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
Citizen US SE
Race - Human
4
@Larry Lundgren
According to this photo, Lizzie is white as well. She calls herself "black" in order to get published in The New York Times.
https://thenewmercury.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/lizzie.jpeg
It is more interesting that an American commoner with undistinguished familial lineage married into the monarchy, than the fact that she happens to have dark skin. The obsession with skin color is a misdirection from the fact that the monarchy, which for centuries was dependent on bloodlines and ancestry, has turned into another celebrity-making machine that serves little purpose other than to entertain the masses entranced with the notion of royalty.
40
@Jack Sonville
Meghan does NOT have "dark skin." She has played many white roles on American TV.
1
A great article. We've come a long way. And we have a longer way yet to go.
3
I get the authors perspective, but publicly discussing the newborn baby of strangers feels wrong for some reason. I guess because it feels presumptuously invasive.
As a side note, it’s not true no one asks women to become men. When women entered the workforce in majority numbers and entered fields that were traditionally male, women were required to behave like men because male was the standard by which females were judged.
20
Interesting article . We are living yet again in another time of extreme racial and religious hatred. The world is imploding our political leaders around the world with an exception of a limited number of leaders refuse to truly work together.
We can not live in this constant surge of hate, everyone has the right to a good life no matter there religion or race
I hope this new precious addition to the Royal Family helps lead the way for proactive racial change in the world.
Princess Diana made great strides for HIV patients and moved the needle for social change. May the royal family show the racial haters that decades of hate are holding the human race back from doing great accomplishments for the world at large. Change is in the air.
9
Strange article, but does the author realise that it wasn't just those with a shade or two of tawny that the English belittled.
It was pretty much everyone. And as someone with curly hair, but of mainly Celtic heritage, I was also told to pull my hair back so it was nice and neat when I was younger. Now I just use a lot of hair product.
25
Meghan’s husband has curly hair and her maternal family has curly hair and the curly gene is dominant not recessive. I’m willing to gamble money on one of the possible outcomes.
17
My 6-foot-tall son with curly red hair, blue eyes and milky, freckled skin is the biological product of a tanned, 5-foot-9 father with black hair and hazel eyes, and a fair-skinned, 5-foot-4 mother with brown hair and brown eyes. The gene pool is deep and wide. Nobody knows just what they’ll get when they jump in. Nobody.
26
So, this is the first member of the family Sachsen-Coburg-Gotha-Battenberg or Wndsor-Mountbatten that is 1/4 Afro-american and 3/4 Caucasian. Not too forget the African blood of the Russian poet Alexandr Pushkin from his ancestor, a former African slave of Peter I the Great.
6
I have got to say I really do not think Europeans pay as much attention to skin color as Americans do. Mixed marriages have happened for a long time - doesn't Thackeray suggest an interracial marriage is a possibility in the early nineteenth century?- and there was no historical equivalent to segregation.
I find it a bit strange that so many people choose to define themselves based on definitions that date back to slavery: one quarter this, one quarter that. It has been a very painful experience for my kids who are always asked where they are really from - they don't have the French skin color it seems. And it is very painful to me when people suppose that I, their mother, do not share personality or physical traits with them, or worse, think I am not their mother, because my skin color is much lighter. My children and I belong to the same race.
It is very sad that the NYT embraces such steorotypical views of race. And painful too.
32
@Marie Support your comment completely. Thomas Chatterton Williams, whom I mention in submitted comments and replies is "seen as black" in his country of birth, the USA, as is philosopher and artist, Adrian Piper, interviewed in the Times by TCW.
Both have noted that in Europe they are seen as individuals, not as members of a "race", and Piper in her interview emphasizes that she had to flee to Europe, Germany I think, "to save her life". She could no longer handle being seen first and foremost as either a member of a black "race" or not a member of same. In that interview she states clearly that there are no races except in the eyes of racists.
One exception on your comment. I have been observing here in the Times that my fellow Americans seem to be unable to write about human difference without using "race", so too with you.
In Sweden, where every day I see a more varied mix of human beings than I see in my cities in America, we are characterized in the census by SES variables and by country of birth. The main group(s) to see people in terms of "race" are the SD party (nazi roots) and the NMR, fierce white nationalists.
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
Citizen US SE
2
@Marie. The British press took the high road. Stayed away from race. But the royals knew that Meghan had a lot of baggage, and so they marketed her as a positive force because of her skin color. I belong to a minority, and I wouldn’t allow myself to be used in that way.
I don’t care about the whiteness or the blackness of a baby that represents monarchy, an anti-democratic, anti-American value. For black to care is to give into the value system of repression that brought about their slavery and the repression of other dictatorships. Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy and the U.K., in the other end of the spectrum, is a monarchy-light, one on name and show only with bit of power left. But I am American and against the whole spectrum of monarchy. That’s what our country was founded on, and although we had the evil of slavery plague on shores, we had the set of principles revolution to fight for equality embedded from the outset.
15
@Not Pierre
The UK monarchy has no political power at all. It's job is to take care of the ritual, the ceremonial, of the country. Even the yearly queen's speech to the throne is entirely written by the elected premier and she is not allowed to deviate by a single word from it.
In contrast in the US our president does both the political and the ceremonial functions.
And do read a bit about US history. We didn't have equality for a long time. Dont you remember that only property owners had the right to vote?
As for slavery and then Jim Crow brutal segregation till the end of the sixties, arent you dismissing it a bit too lightly? Oh and what about was the native American genocide....
The values of freedom and equality have to be guarded anew by each generation. We are failing at this task right now with the sort of government we "elected". Constitutional monarchy has nothing to do with it. It's just a show that many folks enjoy watching.
9
Tell that to the British taxpayers who have to subsidize their excessive lifestyle via the Sovereign Grant
Precisely!
This baby has two parents and extended family who will love him.
Perhaps the rest of us can try getting lives of our own rather than foist our own prejudices on this newborn.
86
"Getting lives of our own" would be easier if this newborn's mother hadn't already been pilloried by the comments' sections of British dailies for her race.
If this newborn had been born to a white working-class father and a biracial working-class mother, he would in hall likelihood find himself on the receiving end of a fair share of prejudice.
8
THie newborn child needs to have the opportunity to exist and breathe without being forced into a cage of skin color. He only has to be a human being, a person, and especially to have the opportunity to be himself first and foremost. Obsession with categories and skin color is society's problem, not his.
156
@GY
I did notice that the author seems to be writing to us, not the baby.
@GY OK. Let's pretend that we live in a world where black people were never enslaved, never treated like they are less than human, never discriminated against. Once we accomplish that then we can live in your world.
1
@GY
Baby Sussex will never inhabit a "cage." He will live in sumptuous splendor and not want for anything. especially love.
Society's problem has a habit of becoming the individual's problem. Victims suffer. Racists suffer only if they have a conscience, in which case they would grow out of their racism.
another way to seperate us instead of uniting us
31
“People who identify as black . . . “
What does that mean?
I know we are allowed to identify with a sexual orientation different from the one we are born with, can we also identify with a different race?
I wonder if Rachel Dolezal has an opinion on that.
51
I guess when you fill out the 2020 census or other similar documentation YOU will have to identify as some race as well.
5
@Steve Roth
“I know we are allowed to identify with a sexual identity different from the one we are born with.”
What does that mean?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_identity
Vonsider President ThomasJefferson who sired seven children by his biracial 7/8 white slave Sally Hemming ...Sally Hemings’ children were light-skinned, ...three of their children when freed (daughter Harriet and sons Beverly and Eston) lived as members of white society as adults, concealing their origins...just as others light skinned "slaves" when freed after the civil war were assimilated into the white race .. If some of these bigots were DNA'd YES, they too have mixed blood line... PLEASE REMEMBER THIS TRUTH that of all the women in the world, the whole wide world, the handsome prince, the world's most eligible bachelor chose Meghan to be his lawful wedded wife and mother of his children... Let's celebrate the happiness of the couple and their blessed beautiful innocent baby with 75% white genes and 25% black genes. What a lucky little fellow to be wanted and loved by such wonderful parents.
15
At a guess, he’s around 85 percent white. His grandmother is probably mixed race as well. He might actually end up a fair skinned redhead since those genes are on both sides of his family or he could look like his mom. No matter what, I’m sure he will feel connected to both Africa and America as well as the UK, given his parents’ ties.
1
@SR. AMERICA - What exactly is a white gene or a black gene? And what is mixed blood. Time to read about modern genome research I guess.
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
Citizen US SE
"Badge of honor".
Sorry. Honor is something that is earned by your character and behavior.
The kid wants to eat, sleep, poop, pee and be held and loved. Nothing else matters right now. You have my guarantee on that.
Dan Kravitz
40
Obviously a baby's appearance and "blackness" matters greatly. Any feature that's considered too "black" is of course heavily stigmatized. If Obama had been extremely dark skinned, or perhaps resembled Shaq, it probably would not had mattered how intelligent he was, or how many degrees from Harvard he had. Somehow the "whiter" one looks, regardless of one's ethnic background (Jewish, black, Indian, Mexican, etc..), the more attractive that person is generally considered in society.
23
I've lived and worked in 26 countries around the world. My own personal observation (and nothing more than that) is the situation you describe is nearly universal. Absolutely, some individuals and communities have overcome this, but in my experience they are a small minority.
12
@Tim-You perhaps have not noticed that many extremely successful fashion models and pop music performers do not fit your "somehow" rule.
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
2
@Tim Well doesn't that depend on the person doing the considering? I don't consider the whiter someone looks the more attractive they are. Ick! I guess albinos are the most attractive if I go by your standards.
1
As a foreign observer, it confounded me how the current trend of American attempt to mend race issues to to emphasize race instead of dampening it. To use the definition from dictionary.com, the definition of racism is "a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various humanracial groups determine cultural orindividual achievement, usually involvingthe idea that one's own race is superiorand has the right to dominate others orthat a particular racial group is inferior tothe others."
therefore, shouldn't the natural goal of eliminating racism should be the elimination of such feelings and concepts of supremacy? Then if we are emphasizing difference instead of similarity between people, how are we supposed to tell people to feel that other people are just like us and deserve every bit of respect and compassion as we do?
I still don't get it.
25
@Mercury - Mercury, one of the notable things I discovered by moving to Sweden and knowing people I meet at the Red Cross programs where we help new arrivals, is that non Americans find it hard to understand the American fixation on "race", a concept invented by racists.
Only by moving to Sweden did I finally realize that in America, few people can think about human difference without using the terminology the Census Bureau gives them.
A striking example in the Times is that most columns mentioning Kamala Harris refer to her as African-American instead of simply noting that she has lines of descent that only marginally, if at all, qualify her as African-American, whatever that may mean to anyone.
Thanks for putting that definition of racism in print.
Seems as if in America in 2019, preserving a racial pyramid and racial order is a central goal.
Example: "Creating A New Racial Order" by 3 American professors who apparently seriously want to preserve a racial order.
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
Citizen US SE
1
Yes, many people identified as African American are, in fact, children of immigrants from the Caribbean or African nations. Such as Collin Powell and Ursula Burns (of Xerox), and, yes, Kamala Harris and Barack Obama.
If one parent is black and one parent is white, why it is the media labels that person black, and not bi-racial?
We never had a black president, we had a bi-racial president.
Something to think about.
49
It’s not the Press-it was once American civil law!! Get your facts straight. Now, it’s a social convention in America that’s backed up by the census, among other things.
2
@D. Arnold, well said!
@D. Arnold: You read the NYTimes. "Asked to Declare His Race, Obama Checks ‘Black’
By SAM ROBERTS and PETER BAKERAPRIL 2, 2010
It is official: Barack Obama is the nation’s first black president.
A White House spokesman confirmed that Mr. Obama, the son of a black father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas, checked African-American on the 2010 census questionnaire. " https://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/03/us/politics/03census.html
I've never understood being "proud" (or "ashamed") of one's race or ancestry..... You've simply made it through gestation and birth with the genes you were given, like all the billions of the rest of us.
39
So dumb. First of all, Ms. Markle clearly wants to be "claimed" as Royal above all. And just letting it be rather than having a million articles remarking on the significance of this baby be 1/4 black would actually normalize it. Calling attention to how incredible this is just makes it more of a thing. Isn't the goal to make it less of a thing? It's so tiresome.
28
Nothing, absolutely nothing is more disrespectful for anyone with any sense of clairvoyance in the matter of race and self pride in one identity ; than article along this way of thinking
You tell me , I , should be elated because someone in England (regardless of royalties) choose to marry a woman with some black DNA in her ,therefore it’s some kind recognition of who We black peoples are?
COME ON !
21
The baby is not yours to claim.
Life in the royal fishbowl will be tough enough without the added burden of being some sort of poster child for the projective insecurities of other multiracial people.
Just leave the kid alone...
74
Whether he “looks” black or not, I am over this story. Please stop.
39
Whatever floats your boat - but you realise there are actual African royal families, right? Morocco, Lesotho and Swaziland.
22
I am prouder of the ones who hold peaceful elections, and honor the desires of the population, than those headed by decaying dictators or monarchs. Swaziland is an embarrassment.
Horrible that the only comments about this child is his ‘blackness” disgusting world we live in as though some of us don't deserve life and respect.
4
I would have been happy to read about biracial kids and their issues, etc.
But what is this obsession with royalty and a kid with some black race inheritance!
This kid is hands- down taken care of, folks!
Where is your worry for so many here in america who are forever marked socially, economically by what a tri-racial ( Japanese, Swede, Sudanese) friend of mine says...
is degradation by degrees of tawny!
9
@Ash.- You must be American since you could not write about a person with 3 distinct lines of descent without calling that person tri-racial.
Sweden, Japan, and Sudan are countries, not races even if you believe as you, if American, are taught to believe by the Census Bureau that there are "races".
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
Citizen US SE
1
Still I Rise by Maya Angelou
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?
Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.
23
This wonderful gift of a baby is going to grow up surrounded with the love of two people who are secure with who they are. I don’t see color when I look at them. Why do you? I am a 71 year old white grandmother born in Alabama.
109
@Crane Anderson I'm guessing you don't see color because you're white and 71. You have had the privilege of not having to care about it.
I'm white too. But I can't get through a single day without having to hear about color. Or issues that transgender people face. I'm utterly sick of it, to be frank. I notice that some issues are ignored (like the low wages that are hurting so many people right now) in favor of these trendier ones. That said, I understand why people affected feel the need to put their issues front and center.
I understand that you're trying to express something good with your comment, but I would stop saying that you don't see color. If you were the kind of person who had to fear for being profiled by the police and pulled over (like my ex boyfriend was nearly every weekend that he drove his nice car to see his parents) or followed around stores by store workers, or not given a job because of not "fitting in," you'd certainly see color.
41
@Ant
The woman who says she does not "see color" is making a statement: she is not prejudiced against people of color. She does not have a particular point of view when dealing with someone of color, as compared to her point of view towards a Caucasian. Give her a break; you assume she is a bigot regardless. This is nonsense. Not every white person is a bigot; many of us have gone to school with black kids, Mexican kids, mixed race kids, white kids et al. Our friendships are formed by the things we share: a sense of humor, popcorn, books, movies, clothing, and many other things. One of my oldest friends is a Mexican woman who comes from a family of 12. We walked to school together in farm country, in the Central Valley. Her family was neither poor nor well off; her father managed a train depot. My grandfather owned a market, gas station and motel. He built homes for his three daughters. My father worked in Stockton; we lived on the ranch because he had two horses. We were not rich, but we had more than my friend. She grew up and married an engineer in San Jose; he and a friend developed Intel. Now she is rich; our friendship has not changed. The difference is how we were raised; our families were not prejudiced people; we didn't use pejorative words to describe other ethnic groups. So, don't assume that all people who are not part of your ethnic background harbor certain feelings towards your people. That is also bigotry.
33
@Linda Miilu I made it very clear in my initial comment that I understand Crane Anderson is trying to express something good. I did not call her any ugly names--certainly not "bigot."
You are wading in from a position of defensiveness. And then--what a huge surprise--there's the inevitable "I have Mexican and black friends."
I have told Crane that she needs to take care because not "seeing" color is a benefit of privilege. I don't intend at all to lecture her or to make her feel criticized. This is simply something to think about.
And in this particular case, I think we should "see" color. It is a HUGE deal that the Royals have welcomed Meghan with open arms. Not only because of race but because she is divorced and has relatives who are so willing to air their dirty laundry in public. The Royals have all stood firmly behind her. In fact (I spend a lot of time working in the UK) the Royals are behaving much more graciously towards her than many members of the British public. As I said earlier, I do get sick and tired of the never-ending discussions about race, but this is a very positive and very significant development that should be acknowledged in my opinion.
18
“But no one tells women to start becoming men to defeat sexism.” Women may not be told to become men, but are very much expected to act like, compete like, and adhere to the man’s standard by which they are judged. All the while still being expected to be feminine and judged by that standard as well. Lean too far in and you fall.
33
Progressives would be shocked & crestfallen to find out how very little most of the country ever thinks about race.
20
I happen to be an American in London and it seems that here race is not an issue at all. When it does come up it is so light hearted, like the local news interviews where many feel the baby should be named after an American rap artist. 50 Cent was named more than once.
7
I was thinking they should name him “Prince”. So whether he gets an official title or not he could still be a prince. Or possibly Prince Prince if the title comes through.
9
@Edward Crimmins
Hahaha. No. You do know 50 Cent is a stage name and not Mr Jackson's given name. If you didn't know, now you know.
3
I'm continually stunned by so many Americans' fascination with English royalty.
Considering most Americans' ancestry has been exploited by the English government's colonialization policy since the 1600s, its paternalistic exploitation of other peoples, and use of militarization for another pound of profit.
Except for an occasional exception, the mindlessness and uselessness of the Windsors 'is only outdone by the Kardashians.
15
Whatever the baby looks like, given the attractiveness of his parents, you know he’s going to be adorable, then cute, then handsome, then so hot that the tabloids will go crazy.
15
Clearly the term “claim” is lost on some White people in this comment section and I’m cracking up. As a biracial person whose half Black, I completely understand what the author means. Trust me. It was nothing negative. This is why non-Black Americans need to watch the T.V. show “Blackish”. You have to understand a culture to understand the context in which they speak. I’m still cracking up!
14
The author is amused that white people can't tell that people who are "obviously black" are black. Maybe it shows that white people arent as obsessed with race as the author is. But it wasn't so amusing in the case of Roseann Barr, whose career was ended when she compared Obama administration official Valerie Jarrett to a character from Planet of the Apes. Roseann's defense was barely heard amid the din of denunciation that followed the remark, but it should have changed the entire context: she didn't know Jarrett was black.
9
I was taken aback by the vehemence of the objections to “so many” articles about race, the suggestions that we all should “get over it,” that it “no longer matters.” Yes, race is a social construct, but what does that mean? What does it MEAN to be white? Or black. Or Asian. Or whatever. I am a 77-year-old white woman, still working, have a consulting business that focuses on issues of diversity, inclusion, equity, unconscious bias. I know for a fact that there are scores of differences between my daily lived experiences as a white woman and those of my friends who are people of color. There are a multitude of ways in which I am treated differently (often better) than my black friends. I could write a book about this, but understand that as a white person, I do not suffer repeated microaggressions, slights, or disadvantages on a daily basis as I move through the world - as my black friends do. I have been disadvantaged as a woman and as a lesbian and now because of my age, but never because of my skin color. My black friends experience all of these based on their skin color, and now, in the era we are living in, it’s worse than it has been for a long time. I would suggest that those of you who think people should “get over it” or become “color blind” should educate yourselves. Feel free to not like this article, but don’t justify it with a paragraph full of suggestions that racism is merely a social construct instead of a daily lived reality for millions of people.
286
@CDF
Thank you for your insightful comments on the meaningfulness of how race effects our everyday lived experiences. As a white person I often struggle to find ways to explain to my white friends that even the ability to be 'color blind', though, perhaps, well-meaning, is part of our privilege.
27
@CDF I agree with everything you said, I believe many of the replies to this piece are overly defensive, and would like to remind people that the father of this child himself went to the media to address issues of racism when his wife was his fiancee and the subject of racist commentary.
America is obsessed with race because we still have a long way to go before we have a healthy acceptance that a social construct is all it is. Until that day arrives, denying that we as a national community--a government of, by and supposedly for, all the people--have a serious problem, is not helpful.
17
@CDF - You first referred to "race" (as used in America) as a "social construct" but later refer to racism as "merely a social construct".
I have never ever seen racism referred to as a social construct. I have not yet read a comment in which the writer states that racism is a social construct.
Racism as defined by Erik Bleich in Freedom to Be Racist is to discriminate, look down upon, individuals and groups on the basis of country of birth, ethnicity, skin color, language, religion and more and to generalize about that group.
Racism is present in every country and takes many forms, not simply the one in focus in America, white on black.
Genome researcher David Reich wrote here on March 30th in reply to readers that it is indeed best to understand that there is no scientific basis for assigning an individual to a "race" since "race" as used in America is a social - I prefer political - construct.
Easy to give examples of multiple racisms since I have helped 100s of high-school students at the Red Cross, mostly female and born in Somalia. They become the targets of racists on the basis of religion (Islam), skin color (beige maybe), clothing (hijab), ethnicity (you defne) but not specifically on the basis of "race"
In Sweden the main groups that see people as belonging to races other than human are those who support the SD party or, much worse, the NMR (white nationalist).
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
Citizen US SE
3
overall it seems rather chauvinistic to focus so much on one's African American ancestry, as the author does. she mentions that about 80% of her ancestry is not African. Yet that portion seems to be all that matters. I totally get embracing one's heritage in all its facets but she seems to reject her (predominantly) European ancestry. all of us had ancestors that struggled, suffered, triumphed, lived ordinary or extraordinary lives, regardless of origin. no single group can, or should, claim superiority over other groups, for any reason.
111
My hair at 80 looks like cotton candy. It is silver. Everybody I meet gives me a hug. Amen. So happy for any baby coming to this planet.
23
While I'm certain this article is intended to be a celebration of racial diversity, ultimately it reads as a blinkered view on racial representation.
Ultimately race should not be a "badge of honor", and racial pride is a backwards-thinking notion. Any baby, royal or not, should be allowed to grow up without their race being the determinant for their self-worth.
Whether well-intentioned or not, Ms Skurnick has taken a reductive view of race by focusing on physical characteristics and DNA tests to determine "blackness". Her pseudo-anthropology and desire to lay claim to a foreign child feels exactly like the myopic views on racial-determinism we should be trying to move away from
101
@Cian I agree with you, the article is horribly reductionist regarding race and ethnicity. The whole thing about thighs, hips and lips is creepy and off-putting. Those are physical attributes of some "tawny" people. Differences in those attributes between Tutsi and Hutu are profound and have led to slaughter of one by the other.
Would the author suggest that Ethiopians, Eritreans and Somalis are not black because they have "more Caucasian" features? Like all humans, "tawny people" come in the full range of morphotypes and they all count as tawny. She likes her body and that's fine, but it isn't ok to claim it's an attribute of blackness.
5
@Cian The only NON-RACIST position to take is that the baby is WHITE. Unless there is recent black ancestry on BOTH sides, the child cannot be any darker than Meghan. What usually happens in these cases is that the child is white with no sign of "black blood" at all.
The author says, "The variety of black people is not, of course, some intrinsic creativity in our D.N.A.". In fact: there is something intrinsically more diverse in African DNA: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2953791/
It's a legacy of the the fact that humans evolved in Africa. There is much less one (genetic) type of blackness than there is one type of many other visually similar grouping of people; indeed, skin color is not only literally superficial, it actually evolves quite quickly (8-10 generations) in response to differences in typical amounts of sunlight.
6
@Shaun Cutts Nobody said that this relationship has diminished the bloodlines or that beauty is more than skin deep. The differences are genetically very profound because European anglos are diverse in such because of many colored eyes and hair ,defined anglo features and high intelligence to develope modern civilization which does not exist in other parts of the world.
@Shaun Cutts-Same point I made in a comment not yet in print. I cite the work of a leading resercher, Sarah Tishkoff, and her team.
In my comment I note that she left out a key adjective, American since she was only referring to variation in skin color in Americans seen by the USCB as "black".
Clearly, your respondent below, Alan Eintross is not familiar at all with the simple fact that the most genetically diverse population in the world is the Sub-Saharan Africa population, excluding people who have emigrated from outside Africa. Eintross actually sounds just like Sweden's most famous racist, Herman Lundborg, founder of the now extinct Swedish Institute of Race Biology. Amazing that a Times reader believes what Einstoss says he knows to be true. Not going to bother replying to him.
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
Citizien US SE
@Larry Lundgren when 100 % of a population of several million are dark skin dark eyes and dark hair identically the same ,that is not a diverse genetic imprint. When persons of European extraction have every different color of eyes and hair and generally light skin with aquiline anglo features that is a diverse genetic imprint developed through evolution. When a civilization ,like in Africa has never become modern in the common sense of the word and remains ,for the most part primal ,that is a difference in civilization.there is nothing racial involved ,only facts.
Serious qualms about this "light heated" article which disturbs me in general. But I have to call out specifically the inexcusably bad analogy of comparing race ( a predominantly cultural construct) with gender ( an almost completely genetically determined condition).
22
Race is not genetic? You might be thinking of ethnicity as cultural. DNA determines phenotype characteristics. Everything has classifications. Nothing wrong with that. The problem stems when people believe one classification is better than another.
27
Sex is biological, gender social. The analogy is valid.
9
@birkolopoulos, but race IS determined by one's DNA! Your skin color, the color and characteristics of your hair, your physiognomy, your body shape. These immediately identifiable attributes of particular "races"is what people initially associate with one's "race." It beats me how you can say that race is a predominantly cultural construct. Yes, the cultural aspects do matter; they change over time. But, unless there is intermarriage, your DNA typecasts you permanently. So gender and race are two distinct DNA-types and its perfectly valid to compare them. One could aslo argue that gender carries its own cultural constructs. What society considers cultural norms for women has dramatically changed over the last 150 years, beginning with industrialization. And biological/ psychological perceptions of gender itself are undergoing change - we accept that Male/Female, while the major "genders"are not all there is. There are transgenders as well.
5
People are commenting on this like it is something "new." Having proved that Thomas Jefferson had children with his wife's step-sister (the offspring of her father and a slave), and generations later some are dark, some are light, would this reporter have a problem with claiming only those who look like her? Even as a white person, I take offense at her stereotyping what is acceptable to her, i.e., kinky hair, big lips, like some sort of Jim Crow caricature.
55
The content of your character seems beyond reproach - though who am I to judge...
PS
My vote is to name him Prince...
Later in life – he could symbolize that in a character that unzips as:
“The Royal Formerly Known as Prince Prince”
Will stop now – won’t even mention how “Purple Reign” could play in to things...
27
Why are you so obsessed with skin color - black or white or brown?!! Everyone keeps calling Obama Black. Is he? Why is he not white? But beyond all that, race is not real in a biological sense. Get over it!! As stated before, racism was invented first and that sustains "race" - not the other way around.
64
@Srini Ask white people why he is not called white
20
@Srini of course race is not real in the biological sense. But it is very much real in the sociological sense. It’s a made up construct. But so is money — and if I owe you lots of it and hide behind the idea of “well money is a construct”, you’re going to have a problem with my non-acknowledgement of the pain or inconvenience of not getting your money back. But, yes, race is a construct — a construct that disproportionately hampers the life options on many, including black and biracial Brits. While this child will not be hampered in that way, representation may or may not help to change things. Maybe folks are seeing a little of that hope or pride. It’s fine — the fact that any of us are commenting on a baby we don’t know is an odd quirk of human psychology. But the idea that the people who “don’t see race” are somehow the virtuous ones is as without merit as the hypothetical money borrower who won’t acknowledge that there’s a debt to be owed and waxes on about how money is a concept anyway.
Sorry but the authors assumption that Meghan has kinky hair of some sort is wrong. Many bi-racial kids with white daddies have ringlet curly hair like white folks or even straight, with no generous application of any agents.
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@Deborah Brouhard On-line photos clearly show that as a girl Meghan had kinky/frizzy hair and at one point wore it in what today would be called an Afro. Check out Google Images.
Whether she still has kinky/frizzy hair today only she and her hairdresser know.
8
@Mon Ray
I read somewhere that she gets a blowout regularly although I don't know that anyone in London can do a proper blowout. Maybe someone flies in to do it or she does it herself. Since she still has hair, healthy looking at that, I gather it is not a Dominican blowout. No offense to Dominicans just to the overly harsh process.
1
The obsession with skin color in this country, for right or wrong, is bizarre.
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@Jack Lee. Thank you!! It is absurd beyond words.
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@Jack Lee-only if your skin color is the color of privilege.
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Identity politics leaps across the pond. Is his hair kinky? What shade of brown will he be? Egad. It’s a baby for gosh sake! Why must he be subjected to being pegged into a particular hole?
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You'll "be glad to claim him"? What right does an American citizen have to "claim" a British child (prince or not) who already has loving parents? This is American entitlement run mad.
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@John
John, what the NYTimes doesn't understand is that the British Royal family will frankly have more class than to make the race of a child matter. When did the Royals become more chill than the NYTimes?
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@EC Ahhh, yes, the "class" of the royals. I would contend that one reason there was NOT known push-back, , and only visible acceptance, to the fact that Harry chose to marry a divorced American actress of mixed race, may be that "the Royals" learned a heartbreaking lesson (or two) about "class" as they were forced to deal with the heartbreaking ramifications of their treatment of Diana. The world still remembers that day, as Harry followed the coffin bearing his young mother through the streets of London. And, I believe, the world is still watching now, and wishing only continued blessings and unbridled joy to Harry, his American wife, and their newborn baby.
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@EC This is an opinion piece by a writer who contributes to the NYT. It's her opinion, not that of the paper. I agree with you though that the British Royal family will not make an issue of this baby's skin color or hair.
15
Quite frankly, black or white makes no difference.
You realise these Royal Children might have actual responsibilities other than being in magazines?
All we in Commonwealth countries care about is that the child i brought up to understand that if he does ascend to the throne (in, say.the case of a plane crash that kills the first six in line) he will know not to sack a democratically elected PM - like the Queen did in Australia in 1972.
Perspective.
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@EC Unless you have a different Westminster System, the electorate only can, or ever has sacked a PM by defeating his party at the polls. Having said that a cabinet or party revolt can do the same thing. HM takes advice to accept a resignation not instigate it.
5
You are technically correct. Of course.
Though the advice of which you speak comes from the Governor General which is the representative of the Monarch.
So potatoes, potartoes.
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This is a dumb article, period. This is a little guy...it’s a happy occasion. If one were to look just a few centimeters beneath his skin surface, and, gasp, he’d look like most of us did.
Oh, I’m white, pink, actually. Maybe the little guy will be bronze...that would be a cool look.
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Does this also mean that Barack Obama can be "claimed" by white people because his mother was white?
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@mpound, sure he can but remember you whites always said a drop of black blood makes you black. But now not so much? But when Barack himself, knowing his skin color identified him as black because everyone saw him as black, he embarced it.
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Obama became president precisely because white people claimed him.
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@Deborah Brouhard: Your comment suggests that if we want to know what any white person says or thinks, all we have to do is look at what some other white person says or thinks, because they all say and think the same things. More generally, it suggests that it is productive or accurate to ascribe some way of thinking to people on the basis of skin color, or "you whites" as a class. Did I read it accurately?
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There are Black babies born every hour that need our attention much more than one born into a Royal lineage. This interest and attention towards the Royal Family in general- it's misguided, it's flabbergasting to me. These people are bland and, while I'm sure they're very nice, they are decidedly not interesting, notable, or set apart in any other way. We need to get our priorities straight and stop worrying about drama in Royal Families or weddings of affluent and banal Britons and concentrate on the people in the United States who are oppressed. I'm sure this Royal Baby will be okay; he is born into wealth and privilege. There's a million more babies who are not; do any of them warrant such attention?
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@William Byron "This interest and attention towards the Royal Family in general- it's misguided, it's flabbergasting to me."
I used to think that way until I actually met some of them. I was "presented" to Charles and Diana in 1992, and I have to say that although, like you, my initial feelings were "let's get this over with", I was very surprised. There is something about the royals which is difficult to describe. These are some of the only people on the planet to know their lineage back for hundreds of years. They are born into history and, because of that and other reasons, they have a perspective on the world that absolutely nobody else has.
There is a continuity in who they are, their family, their traditions, and that perspective thing that is quite invaluable. None of them has to be nice. Not of them has to be good. It's true that none is any more intelligent than any of us, most likely. But it's that perspective thing, again, which is what makes them special.
I met Chuck and Di very briefly: a handshake, a hello, and a very brief chat about what I was doing. But believe me when I tell you, there was something very, very special about Diana. It shocked me when I encountered it.
Don't knock them until you meet them. That's all I can say. My guess is you'd be pleasantly surprised, and I say that as an old cynic and former anti monarchist.
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@Jack Lee
There are many Japanese family businesses that go back hundreds of years. I am sure there are thousands, if not tens of thousands of families worldwide and I can trace their lineage back hundreds of years.
And the British royal family can trace their lineage back 1000 years, that in and of itself is amazing .
Just saying.
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So right! While folks don’t want us to talk about race of the baby, they want us to obsess over this otherwise insignificant bunch of descendants of tyrants—as says Thomas Jefferson—and colonizers. Lol—they don’t look good —except the outsiders who marry into the family—they aren’t good at anything except as walking statues, symbolizing privilege. Period!
"People who identify as black". Really? Rachel Dolezal grew up with a black brother, gave birth to a black child, and identified as black. She was lambasted for it. Did Lizzie Skurnick come to her defense? Nope. We need to drop these arguments over identity. They are based on politics, not science.
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@epistemology Terrific point!!
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@epistemology spot on!
Claim him?
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@M That struck me, too. Not your countryman, not your baby, not your business. Icky celebrity worship combined with a royalty this country chose not to have.
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@M
Honestly, that made my skin crawl.
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@M. It’s a Black expression. It means we accept him as Black, as one of us, as part of the Black community.
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Wha? Easily and by far the silliest article I've ever read in the NYT.
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Time to stop thinking this way. A healthy baby is all that matters. This article, to my mind, supports racist thinking and I expect way more from this liberal news outlet. Shame on NYT for publishing it.
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@CIM, whites from time before this country was founded supported racist thinking. Did you see any whites tracking and capturing other whites for slavery? Didn't your use of Jim Crow rely on racist thinking to impose conditions to make sure whites stayed on top? Don't you still judge people by race? So please stop talking like this country is the model of the rainbow. Whites want to "stop using race", only when whites don't benefit from using it.
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@CIM
You need to research how the more powerful African tribes in Africa sold African slaves to the "white man".
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We all know this but slavery in Africa was very different from they created in America. Very! Do more research and don’t conflate the two.
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I cannot believe that I am reading this in The New York Times. There are far more important things to write about - how about real news?! - we do not need to focus on race, victimization, and unnecessary opinions all the time.
A baby has been born.
Hallelujah.
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So great, so funny, so (as the Brits would say) spot on! Thanks for making me smile wide and laugh loud. Bless you!
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The majority of us don't care what the skin color of the "Royal Baby" is, or anyone's skin color for that matter. The majority of us voted for Barrack Obama.
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Earlier David Brooks of The New York Times opined on the difference between happiness and joy, and it was wonderful to see 'Joy' in animation when Prince Harry was on tape, for it shows that joy is a wonder where words fall short in describing this state of bliss.
There was one person who stood out remarkably at this royal couple's wedding for this viewer of a celebratory event, and it was expressed in the smile of Meghan's mother.
Ms. Skurnick has perhaps also wondered if President Obama had been born with his mother's complexion, whether the nation would have carried on and continues about racism, which in the end is often a 'two-way street'; one that can take you by surprise when a friend born in London, of Jamaican parents, asked if an older friend of yours has a lighter complexion.
When a colleague from Ghana in the humanitarian community would visit Denmark, children sometimes wanted to touch her hair, and when on assignment in Ethiopia, the same may hold true with native born children who have yet to see yellow straight tresses.
We will have to wait for modern-day Rudyard Kiplings to put a spin on the mop of the new royal baby, but whether he will wish to claim all of us as his, time alone, threaded with patience, will determine his verdict.
6
Any woman who has ventured into parts of the world where whites are scarce to nonexistent has experienced hair patting, stares, shocked faces and people
staring into or even trying to touch her eyes because they are so flabbergasted by non-brown irises. I put no spin on this - it’s just a fact.
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@Julie Zuckman’s
So true on your part, and one could even bring it closer to home, where each year my French mother would send the same words on my birthday expressing her astonishment when her maternal arms had cradled my arrival and she thought I did not have the same coloring. Before putting me up for adoption, she reconsidered, and as a single parent, I was either her little gold mosquito, or gold lamb depending on her frame of mind.
Be as it may, this enthusiast of the Royal Couple wonders if Their royal son has inherited their distinctive nose, quite similar.
The 'Whether he "looks" black or not, I'll be glad to claim him' is a stitch, and a farcical rendition of Noblesse Oblige on the part of the author. This is reassuring for many us onlookers into the royal nursery.
An African acquaintance enjoys calling me dizzy miss 'Lizzie' on occasion, and gave this reader a copy of 'The White Masia'.
Do note that Harry has a wiry head of hair.
I expect the baby will have reddish, somewhat kinky hair.
I also expect him to be adorable.
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@Stephen- As a redhead, I can tell you that the red hair gene is recessive and can skip several generations.
Red hair occurs naturally in one to two percent of the human population. I would not expect this child to have red hair considering the dominant genes (dark hair, dark eyes) of the mother. That said, he will indeed be absolutely adorable.
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@Stephen
There was a lot of media attention and gossip at Harry's birth due to his red hair that neither Diana nor Charles had. He looks like Diana though not as much as William does.
@Lynn in DC I said "reddish", which could mean dark hair with red highlights, especially in the sunlight.
1
OMG, people, get over this race thing! You Americans are more obsessed with skin color than any other people on earth. And that is what ‘racist’ people do.
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@Maria M This article is a good demonstration of the fact that the obsession with race is often a manifestation of the obsession with self. Look at how many times the writer uses the word "I" in this article. The reader is, apparently, meant to care about her being shattered that she wasn't "black enough", whatever that means. We are meant to care about her hair, and the fact that she is contented by her hips. She wants to "claim" the new baby as her own.
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Yes, well, folks from Spain (Cortez, Pizarro) and Britain (The French and Indian War) really should not be lecturing Americans about life in the Americas. Your countries both have pretty dismal track records over here.
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@tadjani
well said! I thinking the same thing only not as eloquently
3
This article confirms for me that America's toxic obsession with colour and identity politics is akin to an addiction that has grabbed the country's population by the throat and will not let go. What I do not understand is why the NYT's editors believed that there was value to including it in the pages of this newspaper.
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The Queen had to approve of Harry's eventual bride, and she apparently didn't care about Ms Markle's racial heritage. (Having been a TV actress was probably more of a hurdle.) Following her lead, Brits don't care either.
It is revealing that it is Americans who obsess about the issue. The media can't get enough of it and it is at the center of every conversation about her. This, of course, says a lot more about us and our fixations than it does about Meghan.
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@ERP:
As for Ms Markle being a TV actress, I read that the Queen was shown a very "cleaned up" version of highlights from the show "Suits" that she starred in.
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@ERP: I should hope not, as the royal family has some mixed ancestry: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/secret/famous/royalfamily.html.
Charlotte (George III's wife, he who lost the colonies fame), had African ancestry, and Harry is a descendant of George and Charlotte.
The fuss over Ms Markle's racial heritage should be a non-starter.
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@ERP
You haven't spent any time in the tabloid culture of London these past couple of years if you think the 'Brits don't care'.
5
When this sort of question is asked in social media, we call it "trolling" - asking a question you hope will incite anger and back-forth yelling.
I will not call it racist, but this is icky and beneath the New York Times.
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@Jeff Bowles:"and beneath the New York Times."
No. It's just about right the for the NYT.
Now get back to hammering on those folks in flyover country.
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@Jeff Bowles Good for you. I really like this post of yours.
Your nail it.
14
It would be icky and beneath the New York Times if we lived in a world where black women weren't under great pressure to straighten their hair. Many are ready to get up in arms about how a hijab is a mark of oppression. They claim that, regardless of what the wearer claims, it must be the result of social pressure. Yet somehow the same people can hear that straightened hair frequently IS the product of social pressure and that it is an oppression because of the time involved in creating it and conclude that the issue is completely frivolous. It's an informative contrast.
3
Obsession with race. Tired of it.
286
I’m envious of that privilege.
21
Oh for pity's sake: under the best known theory of evolution, we're all black/African/primate descendants. What's the issue? I have blond hair, you have black, our neighbor has red. The whole "race" thing is ridiculous. These false divisions we make really all about culture and tribe, and shared beliefs as a pretense to hold onto resources and wealth.
Many people are just tired of the whole stupid identification by the most surface of identification characteristics. It's the HUMAN RACE people; not the muslim, arab, african, scandinavian, indian, first nations people, black, white, hispanic, etc race. Just stop it!
89
Reading Ms. Skurnick's essay on choosing the sperm donor for her child is instructive: https://www.elle.com/life-love/a36660/how-i-chose-a-sperm-donor/
5
Why do people still care about racial identity in 2019? There are so many more interesting things to be thinking about - and writing about. Goodness me.
42
So sad, guy, that folks like you are so ignorant of the world—it must be nice to live in your cocoon. Race has been horrible but it is still real-Jews who escaped the holocaust are still among us. Tell them race is I important. And what was that bloodshed in Ireland all about a few years back? Not even about race! Or truly abt any concrete religious issue. Indeed, the tribal conflict is still real there as it is also holding up Brexit! Sure, it’s crazy, but that doesn’t make it any less real.
1
Who cares......
Race is an issue because it’s the NYT narrative everyday to make it so.
Can’t you just leave the family alone and say beautiful baby, have a great life?
No, you revel in making us hate each other, churning the racial debate and pitting us one against the other.
I know
You won’t post this. I don’t care, you read it and you can’t deny it.
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Bravo
9
Well, actually, the New York Times did post your comment. Funny how that works . . .
Race is an issue because friends of mine have been called "n____" to their faces. Just today one of my friends from the Indian subcontinent was referred to as "it" by a Japanese woman. Another friend of mine - a woman who is an ethnic minority - has been repeatedly harassed by a supervisor and called a "terrorist" because some of her relatives wear the turban.
Ever been asked "What are you?" I have. All the time.
2
Why not allow Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan the joys of parenthood? I seriously doubt that the happy couple stay up st night wondering how the public will receive their son.
I’m a black man and I’m rather annoyed that people are already trying to draw life’s lines and boundaries around the boy, who at this moment, is nameless. I don’t care what he looks like. His parents love him to pieces. Shouldn’t that be enough?
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@Red Sox, ‘04, ‘07, ‘13, ‘18,
Some of us care that the Royal Couple's baby was born as healthy as can be, and that his father was in awe of the miracle of birth, remembering the courage of women and his wife.
It is rare when the male in it 'takes two-to-tango', gives homage to the laboring woman. True royalty of being on his part, and the name of their son may come to them, as they hold him in their loving parental hands.
75
@Red Sox, ‘04, ‘07, ‘13, ‘18 Thank you! It's the last thing I thought about for Aphrodite's sake. I'm from the old white racist south and I get racism. I descended from the Confederacy and its continuance in this county sickens me but I did not go where this writer went.
Lord, let them breathe.
61
@Red Sox, ‘04, ‘07, ‘13, ‘18
It is a splendidly beautiful sight to see how in love Harry is with his wife and their child. All else is extraneous.
77
"People, generally white ones, always think..." Recently I've had a number of experiences of being in the presence of people of color who are telling me what white people "always" think. But what they are telling me isn't what I think at all. How is it helpful for any of us to make these kinds of blanket assumptions about each other?
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@abcd123
Amen!!
53
@abcd123 Your friends aren't making the blanket assumptions you think... You point to a funny little glitch between black and white cultures in the U.S.: When whites say what people "do" or "always do", they mean literally every single person -- a linguistic expression of falsifiable data. Blacks use the same language to mean "you have to be prepared for people to do this" with the tacit expectation of many exceptions to the rule -- a linguistic expression of relationships. I first read about these cultural traits in "Black and White Styles in Conflict" many decades ago, and its observations remain illuminative. Fortunately, you and your friends actually agree, as they have probably told you.
(And, of course, I don't mean literally *every single* white or black person... lol)
3
@abcd123 - Yes short answer, not at all helpful. But beyond that, in my understanding of the concept and practice of racism, looking down on a particular group because of skin color or some other identifier, is to practice racism. There are several such generalizations in this article of the kind I often complain about if presented by comment writers. I would expect a serious columnist to avoid generalizing, in this case since she cannot possibly know all people seen as white in America.
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
2
I am now resigned to the fact that almost
every other article in the ny times will have
to do with race.can we at least leave this
poor infant alone and just thank goodness
that he is healthy?
333
This article is a fatuous nothing-burger.
1. I seriously doubt that the royal parents give a fig whether the writer will “claim” and “celebrate” the new royal baby because he is part black, like the writer.
2. The writer wonders what Meghan Markle’s hair looked like before it became long and straight and asks if it was originally kinky. It takes about 30 seconds on Google Images to learn that as a girl Meghan had kinky/frizzy hair, and sometimes even wore it in what would come to be called an Afro.
3. At the end of the article the writer speculates that “One day you [the royals] might even have locs [dreadlocks in Windsor Palace].” Another 30 seconds on Google Images shows that the royal baby’s grandmother, Doria Ragland, regularly wears locs and did so at the royal wedding.
Perhaps this article belongs in the style section.
225