A Facebook message that received hundreds of comments and shares shows an image of a woman and a child with the text ‘Californian Mother Names Son’ White Privilege ‘On Birth Certificate. ‘With a stock image changed to give the mother blue hair and a nose ring, the message seems to be satire. However, many people seem to take it seriously.
The original report making this claim can be found here on a page called “Anita’s Hall of Social Justice & Intersectional Feminism.” At the time of publication of this article, it had received more than 650 comments.
The description of the page, which has more than 34,000 followers, reads: ‘Anita is a PhD (Gender Studies) at Berkeley University. She has published 14 articles on gender and has trained large enterprises in gender equality. She divides her time between LA and Sydney, Australia, where her poli partners live. ”
Reuters has not found any such articles published by an author named Anita Hall, PhD in Berkeley (here).
Although the administrator did not explicitly describe the page as satire, the content strongly suggests that it is. Topics of other posts on the site include: “Poop shaming” (here), “making the Santa shopping center gender neutral” (here), “Homeless Privilege” (here) and “How can dogs propagate racism and why it leads to genocide ”(here). The page did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for confirmation that the page was intended as satire.
Comments about the baby mail in California suggesting that some users take the claim seriously include the following: ‘Someone please call child protection services. This woman is mentally unstable and the poor SON has to be removed from her due to abuse and neglect. ” ‘Omg these people need their own land because they make us up with this dumb shit’ and ‘The child is ruined for life. They will grow up with the contempt of the circus of a childhood you choose to drag them through. ‘
The image used in the post was cut and edited from a stock image of a mother with twin sons seen here in the Live Science article. In the original photo, the woman has blonde rather than blue hair, and she does not have a nose.
The photo was taken by photographer Stuart Monk (stuartmonk.zenfolio.com/), who photographed the same twins here and here.
Reuters contacted Monk by email and he confirmed that the photo was his. Monk said it was taken around 2009 and that it was removed from the availability of licenses several years ago. He also confirmed that none of the children in the photo are named ‘White Privilege’, and that ‘their real names are more typical’.
The headline of the report says that the woman who allegedly named her child ‘White Privilege’ has Janine Browne, and that she is president of a lobby group called ‘Californian Birthing Parents’ which seeks to use the word ‘mother’ remove from all references. in law. ”
Reuters found no record of Janine Browne or California birth parents in California’s lobby guide for 2019-2020 (here). OpenSecrets.org, the website run by the Center for Responsive Politics, a non-partisan and unprofitable think tank in Washington, DC, which tracks the impact of money and lobbying on elections and public policy, also has no results for no search term returned. (here).
The California Department of Public Health, which has been keeping a permanent record of every birth in the state since July 1905 (here), confirmed by email to Reuters that it has no record of the child living in California named ” White Privilege “was not born.
Such a strange story would probably have caught the attention of local media, but Reuters found no news articles referring to a mother calling her baby by name.
VERDICT
Satire. A report claiming that a California child was called ‘White Privilege’ used a modified stock image and was probably intended as satire.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check Team. Read more about our fact-checking work here.
Update March 3, 2021: Amendment of paragraph 11 to include confirmation from the California Department of Public Health.