My child’s heath overrides whatever race rule I’m suppose to follow.
I’ll never forget the Christmas, where I canceled my plans to spend the holiday with my family.
“Mom’s having a rough time right now, she’s been really stressed and I’m having trouble being around her” my elder sister told me. “She has cancer again.”
I was used to my Mom getting cancer, this was honestly, the 15th time she had been diagnosed with skin cancer. Yes you read right, 15th.
Basal cell carcinoma is the most common form of cancer. Although it’s way less deadly and fairly easy to treat, it still has to be taken care of or it can eventually kill you. And 15 times, is an excessive number to have had the disease, for anyone. At one point she had a cancerous mole on her check, and the doctor thought she was going to need to remove my mother’s eye. Luckily the cancer hadn’t quite spread that far, and this was avoided, narrowly. However, I’m pretty sure she will have more surgeries going forward.
My Mother, like me, is a redhead. We both have the same red-blonde hair, light skin, and a million freckles. However, we also are, as I like to put it, Melanin Deficient, making us prone to skin cancer, which runs ramped in my family, like ants in a bag of sugar.
So maybe the basal cell carcinoma is a nuisance, but generally easily treatable with maybe losing an eye or limb here and there, but it gets worse. My sister, also a ginger, was diagnosed and treated for melanoma, a very deadly skin cancer, at least twice before the age of 30. My brother, who isn’t a even a redhead, has had skin cancer at least once before the age of 40. My uncle, my mother’s brother, has had melanoma twice, the second time it had spread to his blood stream, and he wasn’t suppose to survive. He had some sort alternative, last resort, cancer therapy that worked in his case by some miracle. Melanoma is deadly.
All of these people live up north, in Washington state, I live in California, increasing my sun exposure, and risk even more. Most likely, when I die, it will be from skin cancer.
It’s thought that light skin evolved in Europe tens of thousands of years ago, as a mechanism to absorb more vitamin D from the sun. Up in the north there was less sunlight, making getting the needed vitamin D more challenging. In the winter, there was just a few hours of daylight where you had your daily dose, making light skin useful. But it also decreased one’s natural sunscreen, making us more sensitive to UV rays. These days this problem can be solved taking a supplement.
Yes, I know that light skin is favored in society and people with more melanin are discriminated against. The reasons for this are not in anyway connected to science or common sense. Light skin is medically in no way better than dark skin, if anything, for me it’s certainly a disadvantage health wise. Dark skin has more melanin, a natural sunscreen. The fact that society values light skin is a horrifying attempt at genocide which has been going on in the US the minute europeans set foot on the east coast. Once they arrived, it was a battle to implant their own settlers, and starve, infect, oppresses, and murder anyone different in a “us vs them” land steal. Africans were brought over, but only so they could be exploited into slavery, furthering America’s need to believe white is better to attempt to justify the horrific acts being committed against other human beings.
White supremacy, simply put, is bullshit. Having white skin, and the idea it makes someone better, is a lie built on the need to exploit, steal, murder for the sake of personal insecurity. As someone with very white skin, I live a very privilege life due to systemic racism. But this white skin isn’t healthy, it’s a pigment deficiency and I don’t wish to pass it on. Don’t get me wrong, I love my red hair and freckles, and I would love to have lovely ginger babies with hair like mine. But it’s not worth it to die of skin cancer, or to have go through what my mothers has, and I want it to end with me.
My ex-husband and I tried for a good decade to have children together. He is Mexican, and has very dark skin. I felt comfort knowing that my children would be much less likely to develop skin cancer, though still their risk would still be greater than his. I liked knowing they could tan in the sun, and probably wouldn’t need to don spf 100 every hour like I do, or if so, not as much. However, it never happened for us.
Now that I am divorced, single, and aging, I want to have kids, and I don’t want to rely on a romantic partner to make it happen. I need to take responsibility for it on my own.
Not that many people actually donate sperm, and the pickins are quite slim. What I’ve been looking for, is mostly a person who isn’t prone to the same diseases as me. I know we are all prone to health issues, no one is perfect, and I’m sure my future children will have their medical problems and sensitivities to certain diseases. But I’m doing my best to find someone with different diseases than the ones I am prone to. And the biggest, is skin cancer.
If I chose a white sperm donor, at best, my child would be slightly less vulnerable to skin cancer than me, but still at way above average risk. My father tans well in the sun, and has dark hair, but is white, he didn’t really help reduce me or my siblings risks inherited from my mother. I have the same coloring and cancer vulnerabilities as my mother, and so do both of my siblings.
Consider also, the fact that white sperm is actually more expensive than sperm from people of color. It’s also harder to come by, and is sold out much quicker. Due to the white supremacy in our culture, white sperm is in more demand, and more likely to be bought up quickly after each donation. Africian-American sperm, actually is also in short supply, and I don’t feel entitled to it. I know it’s a free market, but every African American donor I found states in their profile they don’t want their sperm to go to a white woman, and for good reason. I know my ignorance as a white woman will make it harder for me to prepare my mix-raced child for the racism in this society. White people have a history of taking what they want from black people, without any thought. I don’t want to take something I’m not welcome too, and I don’t feel entitled to it. Especially if there is an African American woman looking for sperm appropriate for her children, and I’m just going to assume there is.
I’ve heard so much criticism about having a mix-raced child, and I’m not ignoring it. I know the challenges, and will do my best, though I know it won’t be enough. I’m not entering this as some white, celebrity who thinks children with different skin tones are ‘cute’ and can just dismiss the systemic racism and real problems of raising a mix-raced child. I know it will be hard, and I can’t fully prepare for it. But honestly, I want my family’s skin cancer to end with me. Not doing what is best for my child’s health due to the awful constraints of society’s white supremacy, isn’t okay with me.
The donor I like the most is east Indian. He skin is described as ‘medium olive.’ Most likely my children from his donation will have brown or black hair, hazel, brown or possibly even green eyes, and skin that could be anywhere from very white, to light olive. He has his own family diseases, but they are totally different than the ones in my family. No one in his family has skin cancer. His profile says he has no qualms about the ethnicity of who buys his sperm, and he is okay with it going to a white woman. There is an ample supply, and it’s not likely he will be bought out anytime soon, leaving plenty for others.
I know I will have a lot of responsibilities in raising a child who is genetically half Indian. I will make sure to have Indian role models around them, and find good communities for them. There’s a chance my children will identify as white, and will be able to pass for white. There’s a chance they will identify as Indian. But, most likely they will not get diagnosed with skin cancer 15 times and worry about losing an eye to it. They’ll be able to go to the beach and not cover from head to toe like I do, wearing a hat or sunscreening the part in their hair. They will have to deal with people asking “what are you?” “Where are you from?” “are you Mexican?” and all sorts of other assumptions. People will probably assume I’m not their mother, and hand me a redheaded boy that goes to the same after-school program as them when I come to pick them up. I will need guidance and help supporting them as they make their way into the world as mix-raced people, and there will be challenges I’m not every aware of yet, but I will do my best.
But the truth is, adding more whiteness to my genes, is only going to make them sick, and I wish we had a society that didn’t place whiteness above all else, including my future offspring’s health. I refuse to do this as well, and I understand if you object. But I gotta do what I think is best for my future kids.
