Conversation in Black and White
The Washington Post
Sunday, July 23, 2000; Page F01
PEGGY SAKAGAWA, A NEW MOTHER at 32, found she had two hours of free time on her hands one Friday last September when 4-month-old Chloe took a rare afternoon nap. She used it to catch up with her Thursday Seattle Times. What caught her eye immediately was a provocative interrogatory headline: “White Girl?”
“What’s this?” she thought as she began reading.
What it was: the reprint of an Aug. 8 Style story by Washington Post staff writer Lonnae O’Neal Parker. Parker, a light-skinned African American, also then 32, wrote about the racial identity of her young mixed-race cousin who had come to take care of her children. The first paragraph:
“I have a 20-year-old white girl living in my basement. She happens to be my first cousin. I happen to be black.”