Like many women nearing the thirty-year mark, I am, to use the title of a much-discussed book on unconventional motherhood, considering parenthood. A question that has crossed my mind lately is what my future son or daughter will look like. Of course the answer to that question is unknowable at the moment, but one thing is clear: he or she probably won't resemble me very much. That's because I'm White (of Irish and Italian descent more precisely), my partner is Filipino, and our child will be mixed-race.

That fact might upset some people. The sight of a Caucasian woman with a biracial child undoubtedly enrages White supremacists, who automatically presume the mother guilty of the unpardonable act of sleeping with a man of colour. Though many of these individuals are not unduly disturbed by the thought of Caucasian men consorting with non-White women, others oppose any so-called "mongrelization" of the White race.

I wish I could say that my choice to have children with a man of colour would bother few people other than Wolfgang Droege - the head of the White supremacist Heritage Front organization in Canada - and his ilk. But I can't. Some of the most vocal criticisms of miscegenation (race mixing) I've run into over the past couple of years have come not from the Right but the Left, from individuals generally seen as progressive, including political activists, writers, gays and lesbians, and members of all races: Whites, Blacks, Asians and so on.

A glance at some books on lesbian motherhood illustrates this new "left-wing" trend. While Cheri Pies' Considering Parenthood takes a refreshingly positive attitude towards interracial parenting, with one woman remarking that a significant number of lesbians have biracial children and another suggesting that others consider having such a child, Lisa Saffron's book Challenging Conceptions portrays the same choice very negatively. One respondent, for example, expresses indignation that a White lesbian would think of using an East Indian sperm donor. I'm sorry, but I can't help wondering how different the first woman's reaction is from that of a White boy in Bensonhurst (a New York neighbourhood in which a young Black man was killed in 1989 because he was suspected of dating a local White girl) who declared he'd "slap around" the girl in question for her relationship with a Black man.

Some critics of miscegenation go even further. In the book Miscegenation Blues, editor Carol Camper likens White lesbian mothers of biracial children to the plantation owners of old who sired mulattos by raping their Black female slaves, a rather odd comparison given that the White women described may not even have had intercourse with the fathers of their children. Like the slaveholders, Camper says, these White women want to "own" their kids. This assertion not only has no support from scientific research (according to a study published in the book Racially Mixed People in America, Caucasian mothers of interracial children may actually be less restrictive than others) but seems highly inappropriate at a time in which gays' and lesbians' right to parent any child is under attack. Though Camper herself identifies as a lesbian, with friends like her the gay community certainly doesn't need enemies.

What really galls me about the anti-miscegenists is their perpetuation of the belief that mixed-race kids are mixed-up kids. For a long time, it was thought that children of interracial couples would be psychologically maladjusted because they were supposedly caught between two worlds yet part of neither. Racists have used the "tragic mulatto" argument ad nauseam to oppose race mixing, just as sexists and homophobes bemoan the "suffering" of children of working and lesbian mothers, respectively. However, like the disadvantaged child of the employed and/or homosexual mother, the tragic mulatto is a creature of the popular imagination rather than of science. The vast majority of studies comparing biracial and monoracial individuals have shown that the former are as well-off emotionally as the latter, and most of the remainder have actually found greater self-esteem and well-being on the part of the supposedly "tragic" mulattos or mestizos or Eurasians or whatever. While no one should expect the Heritage Front to look at these studies and see the light, I'm saddened that more intelligent left-wingers sometimes appear to ignore them as well. For instance, in an essay published in Rebecca Walker's anthology To Be Real, Anna Bondoc, a Filipina involved with a Jewish man, was warned by her leftist friends that her kids would have a "screwed-up identity".

Now that I've unwound myself about what I see as the growing social phenomenon of left-wing anti-miscegenism, I'll get back to my personal situation and explain why I'm not following Lisa Saffron's advice to procreate with someone who "resembles me", which in my case must mean White. First, just as a Korean friend gently reminded me when I ignorantly but innocently referred to her as "Chinese" that not all Asians are alike, Saffron should know that neither are all Europeans. For example, as an Italian-Canadian I have almost nothing in common culturally with an Estonian. Our differences in language, religion, and history preclude any sort of ethnic bonding. That hasn't stopped me from developing close friendships with individual Estonians, but our relationships are based on personal qualities rather than on any sense of shared Whiteness. On the other hand I might feel some cultural affinity with a Latin American, who may have a different colour of skin than mine but who shares important things like the Roman Catholic religion and a Spanish colonial history. Though people like Saffron might see a Russian Jew or an Estonian as more similar to me than a Filipino or a Catholic from Goa, India, when considering cultural factors like religion and history, among others, I can't see how a member of the former two groups would "resemble me" more than someone from the latter would.

As a mother, I intend to teach my child about his or her father's ethnic background as well as about my own two heritages. While my biracial child may experience challenges that I as a White Canadian have not, this in no way makes me an unfit parent or means that he or she will have an inferior quality of life. Scientific research does not support the "tragic mulatto [or person of other mixed racial background]" concept. So I've decided to have a part-Filipino baby and not let anyone make me feel guilty or inadequate about that choice, whether the White supremacists (about whose judgements I frankly care little) or some sanctimonious left-wingers with their own visions of racial purity.

Left-Wing Anti-Miscegenism

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