a former coworker celebrated her youngest daughter’s 2nd birthday over the weekend. During the blitz of photos via Instagram I took a quick stroll through her photos to witness this little princess’ 2 years of life.

After a while, I couldn’t help but notice her oldest daughter’s absence from her IG photoblog. I mean, none of my business, right? But then, I saw a mutual friend of ours comment on the same thing, ‘where’s Daughter A?’ There was also no response. My nosiness got the best of me, I texted the mutual, and asked if they ever got an IM/text/etc about their question; “she told me to mind my business and I haven’t spoke to her since”

Well, the friend in question is a fair skinned Puerto Rican woman, he eldest daughter she had with a Black man, and her daughter is brown. Quite brown, think, Angela Bassett. Her youngest daughter she had with a fair skinned Dominican man, and she is light (see Jennifer Lopez).

While working with her, before she became pregnant with the 2nd child, she would go on about how much her daughter ‘looks like him’. And before meeting her, I figured the young lady was a spitting image of her father. Then I met her. Not the case. That beautiful little girl is a spitting image of her mother. Only, she was blessed with melanin (I’m biased!).

So, I just thought, y’know, maybe I’m overthinking it. Nope. Shit was confirmed in a text conversation Saturday morning, inviting me and my family to the birthday party. And she knowing and working with me for almost 3 years, I asked her, “why so few pix of ‘Daughter A’?” There was no response for almost 2 hours. Then, she responded:

“you’re at least the 5th person, and third Black friend I have that has asked me the same thing. I sat with this for a while, so sorry for the late/delayed response. But after 15-20 minutes of thinking, I started crying b/c I realised I was slighting my Brown daughter without even recognizing it! I’d been doing the same thing my Grandmother did to my daughter’s father when we dated. She would purposely ignore him, or act like she didn’t hear him when he spoke….”

She went on to say how she apologized to her oldest daughter, and hopes she can forgive her.

Fast forward 2 weeks, and there are still only pictures of the youngest child being put up, but this time at her eldest daughter’s request to not be on social media