Who’s Biting Who?: Headlines on white surrogate for Asian couple
Posted by Osagie Obasogie March 10, 2008
Biopolitical Times
Probably the oldest cliché in journalism is that the everyday 'dog bites man story' is not nearly as newsworthy as when the proverbial man turns the tables and bites the dog. But when it comes to reproductive technologies, race is increasingly becoming the dividing line between journalists' view of the ordinary and the extraordinary.
Take a recent story from the UK Daily Mail on surrogacy with the headline: "I'm a white woman but I've become a surrogate mother for an Asian couple." The Brits surely have their fair share of sensationalist news coverage, but the only thing making this otherwise unremarkable story worthy of a 2,000 word expose is that the surrogate is White while the biological parents are Asian.
Cross-racial surrogacy is not uncommon; entire businesses are profiting handsomely by catering to Western (mainly white) couples outsourcing their pregnancies to India at a fraction of the cost. What's fascinating is that unlike the Daily Mail's account, the stories covering these transactions with Indian surrogates typically focus on economics: poor women making more money in one surrogacy than they would with years of manual labor while the biological parents catch a blue light special halfway across the world. But with the White woman in the Daily Mail story, financial compensation is only briefly discussed to dismiss it as a motivating factor, framing her as an altruist par excellence: "It was never about money. When [my doctor] told me surrogates receive around £10,000 in expenses I was surprised because, quite frankly, I would have done it for nothing."
Given that most surrogacies are between couples with means and cash strapped women, the Daily Mail ironically buries its man-bites-dog angle. It's not the difference between the parties - i.e. race - that makes this story unique, but rather what they have in common: class.
Take a recent story from the UK Daily Mail on surrogacy with the headline: "I'm a white woman but I've become a surrogate mother for an Asian couple." The Brits surely have their fair share of sensationalist news coverage, but the only thing making this otherwise unremarkable story worthy of a 2,000 word expose is that the surrogate is White while the biological parents are Asian.
Cross-racial surrogacy is not uncommon; entire businesses are profiting handsomely by catering to Western (mainly white) couples outsourcing their pregnancies to India at a fraction of the cost. What's fascinating is that unlike the Daily Mail's account, the stories covering these transactions with Indian surrogates typically focus on economics: poor women making more money in one surrogacy than they would with years of manual labor while the biological parents catch a blue light special halfway across the world. But with the White woman in the Daily Mail story, financial compensation is only briefly discussed to dismiss it as a motivating factor, framing her as an altruist par excellence: "It was never about money. When [my doctor] told me surrogates receive around £10,000 in expenses I was surprised because, quite frankly, I would have done it for nothing."
Given that most surrogacies are between couples with means and cash strapped women, the Daily Mail ironically buries its man-bites-dog angle. It's not the difference between the parties - i.e. race - that makes this story unique, but rather what they have in common: class.