Guess who’s coming to dinner

In the 1967 movie “Guess Who's Coming to Dinner”  (Spencer Tracy, Sidney Poitier , Katharine Hepburn, Katharine Houghton) the daughter of a liberal family brings home her fiancé from a whirlwind romance. Then the parents discover he is black. The parents had instilled in their daughter the idea that all the races were no better than the others. The daughter is perplexed by the reactions of her parents because they were unsettled by her engagement with the black man. The parents of the young man also arrive as guests at the dinner and their reaction adds to the flavour of the drama.

Now back to today. In the USA a lesbian couple are suing a sperm bank. After choosing a white sperm donor they discovered at five months pregnant that the donor was black. They decided to sue the sperm bank to prevent the same mistake happening again. Really. A huge penalty would reduce the ability to pay staff and upgrade procedures. It would be better to require the sperm bank to show improvement in their processes.

One can picture the couple scanning the catalogue of prospective sperm donors to get their special designer baby. But it was “Guess Who's Coming to Dinner”.

The lesbian couple are concerned also, as is in the USA, about mixed-race or black babies being raised by white parents in white neighbourhoods. Apparently they suffer racism at school or in the streets and then have to go home to a white family. Those white people who adopt black children apparently ensure that the children have black peers and elders to contribute to their upbringing.

I live in Africa, the heartland that spawned ‘Apartheid’. The country that was despised, persecuted and isolated by the world. Here ‘Apartheid’ was politically correct. Yet I find the situation in the previous paragraph racist to the pit. If white parents are finding black peers for their black adopted children to associate with then that means that skin colour is the paradigm (a distinct concept or thought pattern). In Africa we associate by social structure and social interests, by communities, by conversation aptitude, by customs and economic station. While the Professor would be respectful of the janitor they would not have much in common to talk about, unless for example, they belong to the same political cell. Their children may be school friends. White parents bring their adopted black children up 100% where they are, whether it be the street or suburb, school, club or social activity. Adopted yes, but their own. I cannot picture children adopted out of a slum crime ridden area having peers and elders drawn from those areas because that was their ‘culture’. No – a Zulu, Xhosa, Venda, etc adopted child is not ‘black’ or ‘African African’. He/she is African as African as I am.

The Tar-Baby is a fictional character in one of the Uncle Remus stories published in 1881. Br’er Fox made a doll of tar to entrap Br'er Rabbit. Br'er Rabbit was offended by what he perceived as the Tar-Baby's lack of manners, and punched it, and in doing so became stuck. The more Br'er Rabbit punched and kicked the worse he got stuck. His arch enemy, Br'er Fox could now dispose of him. The helpless Br'er Rabbit pleaded, "don't fling me in that brier-patch," prompting Fox to do exactly that. As rabbits are at home in thickets, the ingenious Br'er Rabbit escaped

.In modern usage, "tar baby" refers to any "sticky situation" that is only aggravated by additional contact.

As liberal minded as you think you are, the only solution to your brand of racism is to be tossed into the thicket together with your sticky situation.

Fokof