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It’s normal for families to speculate about babies’ appearances — confected outrage is scaring white people and stopping social progress

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Narrated by Trevor Phillips

My older brother, on a visit to a nephew none of us had seen for some years, drove slowly down a Nottinghamshire lane, squinting at door numbers, searching for the address he’d been given. A small sandy-haired boy, kicking a football against a fence, waved and beckoned. To my brother’s astonishment, the boy poked his head through the car window and said: “Hello, Uncle Mike.”

The mixed race son of our mixed race nephew does not, at first glance, look like the great-great-great-great grandson of an African slave. But that he surely is. So are many others, including the 60 or so — from nine months to nine decades — who periodically join our raucous family zooms. The glorious genetic mixture on show is testament