"What color is the baby?" Green?
Posted by Jesse Reynolds May 13, 2009
Biopolitical Times
Race has a remarkably strong impact on media coverage. For example, the disparity in attention between missing black and white children - particularly girls - is strong enough to inspire "missing white woman syndrome." In yesterday's New York Times, columnist Bob Herbert recalled an editorial meeting years ago at a different newspaper, at which an editor who was considering whether to cover the murder of a child asked “What color is that baby?”
We've seen this disparity in media coverage of assisted reproductive technologies (ART). Last year, my colleague Osagie Obasogie pointed to the sensationalist headline, "I'm a white woman but I've become a surrogate mother for an Asian couple" as an all-too-typical "man bites dog" story. Such attention is especially evident when there are race-related mistakes during assisted reproduction. For example, a few years ago, a New York couple sued a fertility clinic for the "harm" of having a "black child" after a mix-up, leading to the "Black Baby is Born to White Pair" headline.
Now, just in time for the coming remake of the science fiction miniseries V, we are once again reminded that having a dark skinned child is apparently as bad as, and as shocking as, giving birth to a lizard alien. Last week, a report on the United Kingdom's regulatory agency, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, concluded that the agency is "not fit for the purpose" after multiple embryo switches. Why this harsh conclusion? Could it be related to the first sentence of the news article in The Times - one of the nation's leading national papers – which tells us that black children were born to white parents?
Given the demographics of fertility clinic clients, relative to the black baby / white parents scenario, there is a much greater probability that accidental gamete and embryo switches mistakes occur among whites, and an equal probability of black parents ending up with a white baby. Unfortunately, I suspect that such situations will receive as much attention as a missing black boy.
We've seen this disparity in media coverage of assisted reproductive technologies (ART). Last year, my colleague Osagie Obasogie pointed to the sensationalist headline, "I'm a white woman but I've become a surrogate mother for an Asian couple" as an all-too-typical "man bites dog" story. Such attention is especially evident when there are race-related mistakes during assisted reproduction. For example, a few years ago, a New York couple sued a fertility clinic for the "harm" of having a "black child" after a mix-up, leading to the "Black Baby is Born to White Pair" headline.
Now, just in time for the coming remake of the science fiction miniseries V, we are once again reminded that having a dark skinned child is apparently as bad as, and as shocking as, giving birth to a lizard alien. Last week, a report on the United Kingdom's regulatory agency, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, concluded that the agency is "not fit for the purpose" after multiple embryo switches. Why this harsh conclusion? Could it be related to the first sentence of the news article in The Times - one of the nation's leading national papers – which tells us that black children were born to white parents?
Given the demographics of fertility clinic clients, relative to the black baby / white parents scenario, there is a much greater probability that accidental gamete and embryo switches mistakes occur among whites, and an equal probability of black parents ending up with a white baby. Unfortunately, I suspect that such situations will receive as much attention as a missing black boy.
Previously on Biopolitical Times: