CVK
Apparently, the public’s fascination with the tragic mulatto archetype is not just an American phenomenon (thanks Zak, for the tip!). The Guardian columnist Helen Kolawole asks why it is that mixed race women must always be tragic:

Confused, miserable, and in perpetual limbo, we are now apparently abundant in the world of celebrity. There is the soul singer Alicia Keys (raised in Hell’s Kitchen, absent black father); the actress Halle Berry (abusive, absent black father); the Olympic medallist Kelly Holmes (runaway daddy tracked down in Jamaica courtesy of the Daily Mirror); and the pop star Mariah Carey (absentee black father, racially ambiguous look).

Now another has joined our ranks. The actress Sophie Okonedo, who received a best supporting actress nomination for Hotel Rwanda, has every prerequisite for official tragic status. As London’s Evening Standard said, she fought “against the odds”: an absentee Nigerian father, a struggling Jewish mother, a council estate upbringing. Despite her insistence that she is at ease with her heritage, she’s being fast-tracked as Britain’s Halle Berry…

Once these women have been outed as sorrowful wretches, the tribulations of their abandoned white mothers add credence to the stereotype. In the rank hypocrisy of the tabloid, the often vilified single mum is elevated to martyr. Martyr, that is, to the irresponsible ways of black men. These sympathetic write-ups are thinly veiled cautionary tales about the perils of white women having children with black men. But the divergent experiences of these celebrities’ lives contrast greatly with the media’s agenda.