What color is love?

A couple days ago I happened to watch a movie called “What color is love?” I happened to look it up and found out it was based on a true story. It reminded me of some of the topics we have been talking about so I thought it might be interesting to bring it up. This case happened in Canada, but the topics in it, relate to our class. It was a custody case that was taken all the way to the Canadian Supreme Court. In it a white women slept with a black married basketball star, and the women ended up having a baby. In a trial court, the women won custody of her child (court thought she was a capable mother). But the man decided to appeal it, and he won. One of the issues brought up was the race of the child. He was interracial, but he looked more like his black father, then his white mother. The appeal court thought that this should be taken into consideration. That the black father and his black wife would be able to help the child with stereotypes and racism that he would encounter. The mother, applied to the Supreme Court and they over ruled the appeal court, and she got full custody. The question that this movie asked is “What color is love?” it made me think, would the black family be able to relate to the child better? And should that mean they should raise him? How could the women deal with racism that her child would incur? And then does it matter? If the mother loves her child, should it matter that she might not be able to relate as good as the father? The answers I came up with are, yes race is an issue, and yes the father might be able to better relate to the child. But that does not mean that the child should be taken from his mother. That race should not be so important that it would take a child away from his mother. That by the court of appeals siding with the father, in part by race issues, that it was being prejudiced against the mom. To me also, if the Supreme Court would of agreed, would they be condemning interracial relationships. That they would be saying that only one of the parents could relate better to the child? That by the child resembling a minority, that the mother could not raise the child as well as the father he resembled? I guess I just feel that race should not be as important that it is in many cases.

(I’m not trying to judge if the child would be better off with the mother or the father. What I’m saying is that it should not be determined because of the child’s race or looks.)

#17