Quantum Beauty
The other day at work, a colleague’s wife visited with their newborn daughter. The little girl, just 14 weeks old, reminded me of the preciousness of life anew. The new mother held her daughter lovingly in her arms and all exclaimed how truly beautiful this baby is. The mother, from Gambia, was that deep dark perfection of black. “When she grows up,” the new mother said, “she will look like you. Her hair will be long like yours, and her skin just as light. She’s a mulat, just like you.” After I recovered from my immediate cringe at the term still in use here in Denmark for biracial children, I realized that there was yet one more aspect of this conversation that I needed to wrap my head around. I immediately corrected her on my racial background: I am not biracial. I felt I had to say something because I have experienced, one too many times, for example, being targeted by a group of African girls, who jeered at me, calling me mulat , or white Danes who assumed the same, but u...
