Revisiting Desiree’s Baby
by Anti-Racist Parent columnist Sue Lyons-Joell
In 1893, Vogue magazine published the Kate Chopin story, “Desiree’s Baby”. The melodramatic tragedy set in antebellum Louisiana involves a foundling mother, her planter husband, and their newborn son. Desiree drowns her child and herself when her planter husband rejects her for having the “taint” of black heritage. The baby looks more like his mixed-race nurse than either parent. The punchline is that after the death of Desiree and the baby, the husband discovers that HIS mother was of mixed heritage, not Desiree.
The story is based on female empowerment (or in Desiree’s case, the lack of power), and the dynamics of US slavery and the Black Codes. It’s also been used as a fictional case study for skin color genetics. Skin color is one of those complex traits: 5-7 genes in any given population, and over 60 potential genetic combinations (some with the same end “result”), It leads to the spectrum we see globally, and sometimes in our own families. I’ve personally used the story in the last few years to prepare my less science-minded family members that my kids could run the spectrum of hair, eye, or skin color.
Somewhere along the line I forgot to prepare myself.
Upon first meeting me, you may not know what I am, but you know that I’m not white. I’ve never been an undercover minority, I just make people undecided. That’s been a source of pride for me – I never intentionally or unintentionally “pass.” My husband, though, is often mistaken for non-Latino white. Unintentionally, he “passes”. So does our daughter. I don’t know how I feel about that.
Wait, yes I do… Uneasy. Anxious. Maybe a little isolated. I’m the only visible minority in my household, for all intents and purposes. Subconsciously, when I thought about starting my own multiethnic family, I must have had something different in mind.
I had this noble vision of Momma Bear (starring yours truly), defending my imaginary beige baby from the onslaught of color-struck family members (OK, mostly the in-laws). I’d encourage her to embrace the heritage her father’s family has largely rejected. I envisioned having a co-conspirator to share the ups and downs of being multiracial. Given, all of that may still happen. The bottom line is, I envisioned my daughter to be more Rosario Dawson than Jennifer Beals.
In the grand scheme of things, this means absolutely nothing. This isn’t even close to what I was thinking after delivery. After some complications and 5 days in the neonatal ICU, I was simply ecstatic to take my daughter home. It was the discharge paperwork that did it. My labor nurse had filled out a basic identification form right after delivery – weight, length, Apgar, footprints, and the like. This nurse had met my spouse and my mother, and had been there through most of the night with us.
On this form was a “fill in the blank” for “Color/race.” I swear, that’s how it read. Color? What year is it? Break out the Crayola box… The nurse had written, “Caucasian.” This marks my first encounter with a reversed One Drop Rule, wherein one (perceived) white parent = white child. I didn’t cause any fuss, but I did cross out that label and put “multiethnic” instead before I signed the form. It was what I had always agreed to do, to label my kids as accurately as possible until they’re old enough to make their own choice. It took me a minute to realize exactly what that could mean.
At almost 2 months old, there’s every indication that my daughter may stay this fair – paler than my husband, actually closer to my German/Irish mom. If so, how her personal ethnic identity evolves and what it means in her life will be radically different than my own. She’ll get to choose whether to reveal her ethnic backgrounds, and how and when to do it. She will be the undercover minority at the lunch table, maybe hearing things she doesn’t want to hear. She may blend in with the majority at will. She may have her own struggles if she chooses an identity that jars with people’s assumptions.
I worry that I won’t be as able to help her navigate the American racial landscape. I fear that her experiences will be so drastically different that when she voices the universal teenage lament, “Mom, you just don’t understand!” she’ll really mean it. I wonder if she’ll reach a point where she rejects an identity that she doesn’t HAVE to have – if she’ll “pass”. I hope that when she tells me at 14 to drop her off a block away from her school that it’s only because the family car isn’t cool enough.
Most of the time I throw off these scenarios as ridiculous and trifling, as jumping too far ahead, as playing head games with myself. But I have to wonder – there seem many forums, studies, and conversations for white parents with minority children. I have never considered the reverse, learning to be a minority parent of a “white” child. I guess I’d better start.
Sue Lyons-Joell is a wetlands scientist near Philadelphia, PA. Also known as Lyonside, she has been active in various multiethnic groups and online forums since college. She’s more of a blogging fan than an actual blogger. Sue and her husband have one daughter, born in February ‘07.
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of 
Lyonside wrote:
Teeny update: My daughter is now 3 months old. Everything else still applies…
Posted 25 May 2007 at 10:26 am ¶
Kim wrote:
Ms. Noell,
May I say that I am delighted (read: cracking up!) to read this this morning.
I have the (improbable) sounds of, respectively, Lionel Ritchie and The Hawkins Family Singers, screaming gospel in my ears, rattling the walls of the house, because there is a thin line of ‘the blues’ creeping in. Even started the morning off with ‘Retha doing “Accentuate the Positive,” about seventeen times or so.
That being said, guess you know how I identify. My youngest child, at breakfast two days ago, inquired of me in rapid-fire retort to something I’d said to him, “How can I be White if you’re Black? Tell me that!”
I’ll pull up some of your old comments and dig into the science of the combinations of dominant/recessives, just to help me form a language for him, but I as I had begun thinking about this a bit earlier, I found myself coming to this conclusion, which ties in to your musings of whether your child will choose to identify with a lineage she does not HAVE to give public claim to:
While I call my son Black, and have checked the ‘other’ box, and written in multi-racial, I find it is absolutely necessary for me to raise him with a full awareness and appreciation for all that being Black is, so that even if he does not ‘openly identify,’ he knows how to identify the nuanced responses, gestures, comments, political and emotional responses OTHERS (his group?) may exhibit.
For me, in a kind of ‘it takes one to know one,’ way, I want him to know that he is at all times responsible for knowing from whom he came, and to whom he can run when all hell breaks loose, or just when he wants strawberry milk.
Posted 25 May 2007 at 11:03 am ¶
Kim wrote:
Faux pas: Ms. Lyons-Joell.
Posted 25 May 2007 at 11:04 am ¶
cloudscome wrote:
Very thoughtful post; thank you for sharing it. I look forward to hearing more as your daughter grows and you work through all these questions. I actually think you will be able to do a great job helping her navigate, because you are thinking and preparing for it already. Build a healthy communication with her about 1,000 other things by listening to her point of view and when she wants to talk about race you’ll be there, too.
Posted 26 May 2007 at 1:31 pm ¶
Lyonside wrote:
Dear God…. I now have proof of how at least some of the racists of the world will see my daughter.
Sometimes I hate being right.
Today we were at my sister-in-law’s house for a BBQ. Now, we know my sister-in-law’s husband’s family is racist and we watch our backs accordingly. The husband’s sister walks in the front door, sees my daughter being held by her dad, and promptly says 2 sentences (neither of which is, you know, hello or anything. That’s just how this woman rolls.):
“OMG, she’s a fat baby!” [Um, NO she’s NOT, thanks.] Followed directly by, “And she’s so WHITE!” [Rinse. Repeat.]
*sigh* I corrected her on both fronts, of course, and had some help doing so. Can’t wait until my daughter can mouth off on her own, though.
Posted 28 May 2007 at 1:46 am ¶
Monica wrote:
I can very much relate to your post. I grew up with a single, white mother; and I am mixed raced. Growing up, I struggled with group identity. All the other students in my schools were white, and I was brown. In fact, all the other people in my family are white.
My path is to reject any of the boxes. I am both white and black. It seems more “true” to me to embrace both. Why are race and religion areas in life where we’re asked to pick one?
Now, I am marrying a white man, and he has a 6 year old white son. This is where our racial differences are becoming interesting. Luckily, the child has grown up in racially diverse schools and religious environment, and doesn’t seem troubled the situation. He sometimes says things like, “You are a woman with brown skin, brown eyes and curly hair. I am a boy with brown hair, brown eyes and pale skin.” And that’s that.
The most awkward situations for me are dealing with people outside our friend/family groups. Often, white people think I am his nanny. Manny brown people call me his mamma, or say nothing about our relationship.
It sometimes feels awkward to claim a step-mother relationship with a child who could not be racially connected with me. In an odd way, I think it would seem more natural to claim a mother relationship with an Asian child, Hispanic or mixed race child. As society seems to accept those children as adoptees. But a black woman adopting a white child? Society doesn’t seem to have a way to handle this yet.
Posted 28 May 2007 at 7:34 am ¶
Kaywil wrote:
I went through the same mixed feelings when my second son was born with red hair and fair skin. He looked more mixed race than his older brother. I thought about all the issues that both of them would face when being compared to each other. The comparison had begun before I knew it and I had to come up with an “answer” every time we went out. It made me very upset that everyone cooooed and aawwwwed over his hair and light skin and ignored my first son. I felt bad for both of them. Now that they’re both older, they’re starting to look a lot more like each other, facial wise, even though the color difference is still the same. They’re so close to each other and loving towards one another that it has seemed to distract people from contrasting them - they instantly know that they’re brothers, I guess.
Posted 28 May 2007 at 11:27 am ¶
Meera Bowman-Johnson wrote:
Hi Sue,
Welcome to the “Not the Nanny” Club (we’re thick in here!)
I’ve experienced black members of our family commenting on how light my son is (not in a disparaging way, though), and white family members looking at our brownest child and saying “we don’t really know her” - not that they know her fair-skinned twin any better. By and large, both sides of the family is crazy about our kids, I know that much…but it doesn’t mean there’s no subconscious racial bias going on.
From a woman who’s been there, is there: relax. Enjoy her. Smell her head, kiss her toes, these days will go so fast. Don’t worry about the rest of the world if you can help it because at the end of the day, she’ll take her cues on how to navigate this world from you (long before those who are closer to her on the color spectrum.)
Danzy Senna, Romare Bearden, Mat Johnson turned out okay. She will too.:)
Posted 28 May 2007 at 5:16 pm ¶