The Value of Whiteness [View all]

[Scuba]

http://m.thenation.com/article/190489-value-whiteness

In a recent encounter between Fox's Bill O'Reilly and Comedy Central's Jon Stewart, the two men discussed "white privilege." O'Reilly maintained that his accomplishments had nothing to do with race and everything to do with hard work. Stewart pointed out that O'Reilly had grown up in Levittown, New York, a planned community to which the federal and local governments transferred tremendous mortgage subsidies and other public benefits—while barring black people from living there—in the post–World War II period. O'Reilly thereby reaped the benefits of a massive, racially exclusive government wealth transfer. As legal scholar Cheryl Harris observed in a 1993 Harvard Law Review article, "the law has established and protected an actual property interest in whiteness"—its value dependent on the full faith and credit placed in it, ephemeral but with material consequences.

A recent lawsuit brought by Jennifer Cramblett pursues the stolen property of whiteness in unusually literal terms. Cramblett is suing an Ohio sperm bank for mistakenly inseminating her with the sperm of an African-American donor, "a fact that she said has made it difficult for her and her same-sex partner to raise their now 2-year-old daughter [Payton] in an all-white community," according to the Chicago Tribune. Cramblett is suing for breach of warranty and negligence in mishandling the vials of sperm with which she was inseminated, as well as emotional and economic loss as a result of "wrongful birth," which deprived her of the whiteness she thought she was purchasing. The story was hot news for about twenty-four hours and included an interview with Cramblett on NBC. "We love her," she said of Payton. "She's made us the people that we are." Cramblett then burst into tears. "But," she continued through clenched teeth, "I'm not going to sit back and let this ever happen to anyone ever again."

That disjunctive, the "but" clause of her despair, was reiterated throughout Cramblett's court papers. Despite being "beautiful," Payton was "obviously mixed-race." While Cramblett purportedly bonded "easily" with the little girl, she "lives each day with fears, anxieties and uncertainty." Her community is "racially intolerant," plus Cramblett suffers from "limited cultural competency relative to African Americans," having never even met one till she got to college. Then there's Cramblett's "all white" family, who can barely stand that she is gay…and dear lord, now this? While Cramblett felt "compelled to repress" her sexual identity among family members, "Payton's differences are irrepressible," the lawsuit states. "Jennifer's stress and anxiety intensify when she envisions Payton entering an all-white school."

But the infant Payton did not make Cramblett and her partner "who we are." They lived a confined and reprehensibly oppressive life before she was born, and it was only because of her birth that they were forced to confront it. The real question is why or how they could have been happy with their lives before.