I think most babies are cute.

People, check yourselves before you wreck yourselves. Don't be presumptuous and racist, all at the same time.

And, if you happen to be a "mixed race" baby and you are enjoying this post, thanks for reading! You're super cute. ;)


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To emphasize my previous laments,

including I'm a normal person., I should share this with everyone!, Agree to Disagree? and Jigaboos & Wannabees, I offer you the following:

Racist Parents Kidnap Daughter and Try to Force Abortion, by Rachel S. at Alas, a blog, via Racialicious and Rachel's Tavern. Emphases mine.

A few days ago I read a story from Rueters (sic) about a couple from Maine, who kidnapped their 19 year old daughter. They forced her into a car, and tried taking her to New York so they could force her to have an abortion. The daughter escaped and called police while she hid in a store in New Hampshire. The parents have been arrested and held on $100,000 bail. After reading the first couple paragraphs of the story, my immediate reaction was, “I wonder if the potential father is black.” However, the initial article reveals very little about the motive. After my initial read, the only motive I could glean was that the parents were mad that the boyfriend was in jail. But, this story didn’t add up to me. So yesterday, one of my students mentioned the story and said that–the kidnapped woman’s boyfriend is a black man, and the daughter told police that racism was a motive in the kidnapping.

Based on my research on interracial relationships, this story actually fits fairly well into the narratives I have seen in many white families where relatives strongly object to interracial relationships. The only thing that surprises me about the story is that the parents attempted to kidnap this woman; the cases I know of personally generally involve less direct coercion. I know of 2 cases (one in my research and one in another sociological study) where parents of a white person in an interracial relationship suggested, encouraged, and promoted abortion to prevent the birth of a biracial child (I am hesitantly using the term biracial because most of the white relatives would say the child is black.). I also know of other cases where people encouraged white mother’s to place a child for adoption because the child’s father was black, and I know of many situations where white families offered bribes and/or withdrew emotional and/or financial support as a way to discourage an interracial relationship or a pregnancy that resulted from such a relationship. In these cases, white relatives feel they are protecting the family’s reputation, and/or they feel that the relative in the interracial relationship is too naive (especially women) to know what she/he is getting into. White relatives who feel this way believe that birth of a biracial child is a permanent marker of an interracial relationship that will hurt their relative’s social standing (white privilege), and to some extent, I’m sure they are right about this. The irony of this is that many white relatives of interracial couples would be the first to say that race doesn’t matter or that whites do not have unearned privileges, but suddenly when it hits close to home, they change their tune . . .

Readers, I'm not saying that you are like the people mentioned in the article. I'm saying that people like that exist and they are plentiful. Therefore, I'm still alone. :(

[Insert tiny violin here.]

For a conflicting twist, the picture above comes from this article:

Not tonight, dear . . . in fact, not ever, by Dr. Pam Spurr at Times Online, via Feministing. Emphases mine.

Having researched my new book, as well as talked to thousands of men and women over the years, I now firmly believe that too many women see the sexual side of their lives as something to be claimed completely and utterly as their own. That’s fine for single women flexing their sexual muscles.

But once they settle into a relationship, many will continue to do so. This doesn’t make sense to me at all – and unfortunately I’m privy to the heartbreak and distress that goes along with this view . . .

At the risk of being called old-fashioned (though I don’t think that old-fashioned should always have negative connotations) and antifeminist, I’d go so far as to say that for both partners sex could be considered a duty, if it is something that one partner knows would make the other happy. Does he really want to go up on the roof to repair a leak on a Sunday afternoon? Does she really want to take out the rubbish in the pouring rain? No, but partners in relationships do such things because they know that it makes the other happy. Sex should be seen in the same light . . .

I can't even enjoy the rarely featured interracial couple in peace; I have worry about my vaginal duties to my nonexistent husband, too.
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Crazy, crazy, crazy

Now that I've alienated most of my friends and readers with rantings about not wanting to be white, I direct you all to some stories that have given me pause today.

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via Racialicious: 'I love my mixed race baby - but why does she feel so alien?' by Lowri Turner at the Daily Mail.

I am white and I have two sons from my first marriage who are both milky complexioned and golden haired. My twin sister, who I spend a lot of time with, has a Danish partner. As a consequence, she has two boys who are also pale skinned and flaxen haired.

Into this positively Scandinavian next generation, I have now injected a tiny, dark-skinned, dark-haired girl. To say she stands out is an understatement.

My colouring and that of my children has never really been an issue before. However, three years ago I met the man who became my second husband and who is the father of my daughter.

Although born in the UK, his parents came from India in the Sixties. This makes him British-Asian and our daughter mixed race...

...when I turn to the mirror in my bedroom to admire us together, I am shocked. She seems so alien. With her long, dark eyelashes and shiny, dark brown hair, she doesn't look anything like me.

I know that concentrating on how my daughter looks is shallow. She is a person in her own right, not an accessory to me. But still, I can't shake off the feeling of unease.

I didn't realise how much her looking different would matter and, on a rational level, I know it shouldn't. But it does.

Evolution demands that we have children to pass on our genes, hence the sense of pride and validation we get when we see our features reappearing in the next generation.

With my daughter, I don't have that...

...As for myself, there is an inescapable status issue to address. White women who have non-white children are stigmatised as 'Tracy Towerblocks' living on benefits, most of which they spend on lager and fags.

Even if I don't fit this profile, my daughter's difference definitely points out the fact that my children come from two different fathers.

If I wanted to pass us off as a nice, neat nuclear family, she would blow my cover at once...

...I didn't think about any of this before I got pregnant. I wanted to have a baby. Her colour and culture were immaterial then.

But self-flagellation is not useful. I have more pressing concerns. I am now the mother of a 'black' child, even if she is more the hue of weak tea than espresso...

...No more Brady Bunch kids for me. The midwife has been proved right and every day my baby's eyes get a little darker.

Even so, when she looks up at me as I feed her, my heart melts. My love may not be colour blind, but hers is, and that is truly humbling.

Lord Harry the Judge. I read this earlier today and got upset because this woman should have thought about what raising a "dual heritage" child would be like before she decided to get pregnant again. Now I'm upset for a different reason. After reading the article for the third time, I realized that her concern isn't about providing a sufficiently cultural upbringing for her kid, even though she is a different color. This woman's main concern was how not having an all-white family will reflect on her. God forbid some stranger recognize that her children "come from two different fathers." Someone needs to smack this woman (figuratively) upside her head. I don't know who "Tracy Towerblocks" is, but I wonder if Turner's "British-Asian" husband knows that her love for their "black"(what?!) child "may not be colour blind."

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Friday gross-out, by Ann at Feministing, which led to Members Only, by Angela Valdez, at the Washington City Paper.

Late Night Shots caters to Washington’s hard-partying preppy crowd. Think of a new generation of young Republicans getting trashed at St. Elmo’s, hooking up, then writing about it at 3 in the morning. The bar-scene-themed Web site launched in late spring 2006 and has since branched out to four other cities. But it’s nowhere near as popular anywhere else as it is here in D.C. Founder Reed Landry, a prep-school boy from McLean, Va., claims he has 14,500 members and that a third of them visit the site every day...

...LNS operates like MySpace and Facebook, but with a heavy emphasis on booze. To get an invite to the site, you need a connection among the clientele of a few select Georgetown night spots. Users have “drinking buddies” instead of “friends” and must list their favorite bars and restaurants. There are fill-in-the-blanks for your sorority or fraternity, your golf handicap, and your country club. The online profiles show a population dominated by good- looking blondes and smirking guys with athlete’s shoulders. They attended the University of Virginia, as did Landry, UNC, and a smattering of pretty-good-but-not-Ivy schools in the South and Mid-Atlantic. Under the space for employer, they list investment and lobby firms and jobs on the Hill...

...Forum posters have made light of date rape, bashed brunettes, and compared notes on handouts from Mummy and Daddy...

..."People who dress like they just got off a Cancun party boat," [says Davis Berg, a 27-year-old UNC grad], referring to the dreaded turbo [a term suggestive of a Long Island mall boy with gobs of gel in his hair and maybe a puka shell necklace], "are not the type of people I want to associate with, especially as I transition into full adulthood."...

...A poster named "rocketscientist" recently asked which careers were considered most suitable for marriage-minded young women. The recommendations were predictable—interior design, teaching, development—fields dominated by the most popular young women on the site.

Hee hee! I thought Born Rich was bad. LNS just seems stupid. The comments that follow are priceless. Here's Wonkette's analysis: The City Paper/LNS Fallout. One of the LNSers used the obnoxiously ironic handle "Sally Hemmings" to leave comments like this:

Let the record show that I was at the party where Angela Valdez was blackout drunk---overly intoxicated and spilling drinks on people at the LNS party she so casually mentions. I am shocked that she has chosen to libel all parties involved, especially in the age of google when these persons, who did not want to speak with her, literally will lose jobs because of this... much less over words they did not speak. Interesting that when you google her name, she has plagiarized another writer's work. The most offensive part of this article is that nearly everyone she came into contact with treated her extremely well. This is the most unprofessional piece of writing I have read in a long time. She is a pathetic, unethical, and unprofessional person who should locked up in a jail cell with other duplicitious, no-talented clowns who propagate falsehoods.

and this (bold emphasis mine):

I didn't know that it was ok to drink on the job. Reed Landry is an outstanding individual who runs a serious business, which you have libeled. I am amazed that you still have a job after this "article". I watched you interview one of the Ofori guys with racist, leading questions. And he NEVER told you that you were cute. This whole story is preposterous.

In response, TechLackey wrote

That Sally sure is mouthy for a slave.

So inappropriately funny! As is this: This Modern World: Young Republicans want to help!

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From hit-or-miss blog Jezebel (sister to Defamer), All Dolled Up With No Place To Go (NSFW):

About 10 years ago, HBO's Real Sex series introduced us to Real Dolls, incredibly detailed, finely crafted lifelike dolls made of fleshy silicone rubber. At the time, they just seemed like extravagant sex toys (really extravagant--they're about $6500 a pop), but a decade later, it turns out that these dolls have become so much more than cum-holes to the owners that use them. For many lonely, socially-challenged guys, Real Dolls are the companions that we (real women) could never possibly be--mainly because, well, we wouldn't fucking want to. The British documentary Guys and Dolls (which we heard about via this post) gives us a peak into the world of make-believe that these men have constructed to battle loneliness.

I barely made it through the 5 minute, 43 second clip on Jezebel. See if you can make it through almost 47 minutes of this on Feministing: Real Dolls, real creepy.