If you know someone who still doesn’t understand that race is a construct, go ahead and forward them the story about Carole Fraser — and her twins — from The Mirror.
Little Daniel and Martha are brother and sister — they’re not black or white; they’re both. Or neither. There’s all this stuff in the piece about the children being “unusual” and how the chances of having babies of different colors is “a million to one.” But as anyone from a racially mixed family will tell you, there are all kinds of skin tones and possibilities and green eyes and ranges of hair texture that can occur. But our society has a short memory, and it’s like decades of Mediterranean trade, the Moorish invasion, Imitation Of Life, Fredi Washington, the sons and daughters of Sally Hemings, everyone in Pudd’nhead Wilson, Alexadre Dumas never happened! After all this time, we’re still nervously attempting to slap labels on people whose dare to fall outside of strict ethnic boundaries.
Hence, this from Ms. Fraser:
We were stopped by a group of Japanese tourists the other day… They were fascinated and took a lot of photos of them.
Treated like oddities! So ridiculous. Let’s not forget that all humans share a common ancestor, and she’s African.