It seems like every couple of months, we discover yet another person who could use a history lesson. This week, it’s the mother of the baby cast to play Hannah Horvath’s child on the series finale of HBO’s “Girls.”
For those who didn’t watch, Lena Dunham’s character Hannah is pregnant by the last season. And despite the father of her child, a surfing instructor from Pakistan, saying that he has no intention of being involved with the child, aside from offering a name suggestion, she plans to have the baby anyway. And in the series finale, she does. So naturally, they needed to cast a baby for the role of Grover.
With his Pakistani roots, he needs to be a bit darker than Hannah. But audiences found the casting choice to be a little off. There were quite a few questions on social media, asking “Who’s little Black baby is this?”
Hannah’s according to the casting director.
And while most people noted this baby’s Blackness when he was supposed to be Pakistani and White, there was one person who felt the need to set the record straight.
The child’s mother.
In a since-deleted tweet, Jaclyn Nichole writes:
@MissJess_Switch 1st off my 👶🏽 who plays Grover isn’t black! He’s Puerto Rican & His Dad is Haitian,does is matter? He fit the role to a T & he’s gorgeous!
— Jaclyn Nichole (@jooeunl) April 20, 2017
Y’all know what it is. There are scads of phenotypical and genetically Black Puerto Ricans. And Haitians are simply, Black. The slave trade and Black diaspora are real.
When people tried to tell her these facts, Jaclyn responded: “Haitian is a nationality, black is a race. If your [sic] Haitian & have fair to white skin like his twin, then he’s Haitian but his race is white.”
Nah.
First of all, I’m not going to put any more pictures of her children out on the internet for us to dissect in an attempt to identify. But I will say these boys, the one who played Grover, his lighter skinned brother and their Haitian father are undeniably Black.
And it’s really a shame that their fair-skinned, freckled mother is hesitant to acknowledge this. I could talk about this for days but I’ll just say this, a word of caution to the Black men who have children with White or White-identifying women, make sure they’re willing to embrace your Black child’s full identity and prepare them to move through the world as Black men and women.
Veronica Wells is the culture editor at MadameNoire.com. She is also the author of “Bettah Days.” You can follow her on Facebook and Twitter @VDubShrug.
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