My family is like that. I'm blonde haired, light eyes, freckles but my partner is Spanish and our daughter has his colouring so she has curly black hair, dark brown eyes and olive skin. I have been asked several times if she's adopted and once got asked if she 'had a touch of the tarbrush'

People need to remember that Jade Goody was mixed race as is Natasha Hamilton from Atomic Kitten and so is Ryan Giggs. Not every mixed race person just resembles a lighter skinned black person, which is what a lot of the gbp think they *should* look like.

Jack I can't remember if you have me on facebook or not, but have you ever seen a photograph of my family?

It's definitely possible. I don't think it's that rare either.

And the more people have the attitude that such parent-child pairing shouldn't be portrayed on screen, the more that attitude will be perpetuated. It's a vicious circle.

I found it silly choosing a white baby and black mother. Advertising is specific and this product wouldn't have been launched with such a picture.

Do such families exist? Of course they do (i've blonde cousins and cousins who are very dark skinned but we are a mixed raced family in parts ) but people are miss thin point of advertising! It's not about individuals , it's about appealing to as many people as possible and no matter how enlightened DS people are , the average person on the street would have probably greeted the picture with raised eyebrows.

Are you saying the majority of consumers are closet racists?

I need to watch it again, but with all the idiotic laughing at the choice among some of the girls it was not made clear why part of the team made this choice.

I didn't think the skin colours were a problem, it illustrated the product, which was the point of the photo.
Was it specified anywhere that the woman HAD to be the mother of the child? Or could it just be someone picking up a baby, like a nursery worker or even a family friend?

I think the idea was that it was a family scene - mum, dad, child.
To be honest at the time I didn't take much notice, I cannot remember seeing the child but I heard the conversations surrounding the scene and the board room comments. I presumed it must have been obvious in some way that the child was not the natural child of the parents (well, presumably they were all actors but you know what I mean).

I've given it a bit of thought since this discussion started and come to the conclusion that the colour shouldn't have been relevant. I'm not saying anyone was being racist - I'm quite sure they were not - but Alan Sugar referring to adoption was silly. Isn't an adopted child the child of its parents once the papers have been signed?

Our society ought to have got beyond looking at the obvious and being nit picky about colour, race, creed or whatever.

An earlier poster made a comment about one of her children (or siblings) were asked if they had been "touched by the tarbrush" and that made me feel so angry. I heard that expression when I was young and it was usually applied to half Indians or Anglo-Indians, meant in a derogatory way. One of my husband's cousins married an Englishman from Anglo-Indian stock and had two lovely girls, one blonde and one dark haired. The dark haired one also had a dark complexion when she was younger. People would often just come out and say, "Is she adopted?", even though she looked her mum, just had her dad's colouring. So rude!
Most of us are mixed race in some way or another, there are hardly any pure Anglo Saxons in existence any more. We've had long term invasions fromthe Vikings and the Normans, we live close to the Irish and the Scots and the royal family and aristocrats married into houses in Spain, Portugal and Russia.
I myself, a SE Londoner, has a Northern Irish mother whose mother was Irish but whose father came from London and his grandparents on one side were French Jews who changed their name when they came to England. So what does that make me?
It's quite cool to be mixed race these days and I rejoice over that when I see poised, beautiful and talented young men and women on television and in the professions. I remember how everyone gossipped about "half castes" when I was small, I used to feel embarrassed and go off into a fantasy world of my own where people were all different colours, like purple and red.
Alan Sugar should read a book called The Human Stain by Philip Roth - or at least get it on dvd (it stars Anthony Hopkins and Nicole Kidman), if he can't get round to reading it. After which he should take a long look at himself in the mirror. It will give him food for thought.
Now I have said all this I feel I ought to watch that episode again and take more notice of it in light of the controversy it caused.

why is it rude to be adopted though?
if they were suggesting the dad wasn't the father I would understand, but adoption isn't an insult.

Zara said she chose that child because it was the only one who was in the right agr range and because it was the best-behaved - both very valid reasons.

Anyone know who the black female model was ? - she came across as really pretty, especially in the photos.

I think some of you may have misunderstood why this was seen as such an issue. By using a white baby and a black mother, it may appear as if they are purposefully avoiding using a black baby - which many people would be quick to point out, is racism.

or purposefully avoiding using a white mother... which is just as ridiculous

May appear to who? Who are these hypothetical idiots out there in the public who are so confused by all these non-issues?

This didn't even occur to me. Where did it say anything like that in the programme? I heard the girls lauhing that the mother and baby didn't have the same colouring I heard Lord Sugar jokingly-disbelievingly asking was the child adopted, his meaning being that it was ludicrous they had chosen mother and baby with different colouring, I didn't hear anywhere that it was racist to not include a black baby. How can it be racist? Surely they'd be more likely to be accused of racism is they'd used an all-white family?

If that was Sugar's issue with it, he didn't make that clear at all.

Interesting to see peoples thoughts and comments on this issue.

As a father of 2 adopted children (one of whom is mixed race), I was disappointed and disgusted with Alan Sugars comments, he really showed himself to be nothing more than an ignorant little man who seemed to have a problem.

I'm pretty sure that it wasn;'t the reason, but having said that it is a bloody good one.

Controversy may sell, but if there is one thing that everyone will bend over backwards to avoid is any suggestion of "racism".

*****
I have to agree with others, with it being a mistake to choose the mother and baby, for reasons that was clear on the program and on this thread, many people persieved the image did not fit.

i didnt think it was a big deal, the tasks are just for mock, no point being so anal about an imaginary ad campaign.

It's come to something when the anti-'PC' brigade tell us it's racist to put a black woman in an advert. I've always suspected that people who shout about 'PC gone mad' are actually just upset at any non-White people appearing anywhere.

It was more his flippant remark about adoption that I was angry about TBH

Are you serious? I find your post quite patronising. A black mother, white but dark father and a white child with blond hair does not look natural.

This has nothing to do with whether a mixed race family is normal or not, its about simple genetics. A black and a white parent having a white child is something that could happen, but it happens in maybe 1 out of 10,000 cases and when it happens its regarded as some kind of sensation. The normal mixed race family will have children who's colour and features are somewhere between the father and the mother. This child was even more fair skinned than the father which makes the whole scenario unrealistic.

I think they only said that in your imagination.

That is exactly what I thought. And so did the other two in the sub-team with her, not just the three who were laughing in the car.


Maybe I missed something, but can anyone tell me why it would have been impossible to choose a white female to model as the mother?

Bejeesus. Can we get real for a second? The lighter the black parent of a mixed race child, the lighter that child is likely to be. I would imagine that on some level, given our history of integration other hundreds of years, the GB population is instinctively aware of this. All three of the above you mentioned have quite light skinned fathers (in fact, isn't Natasha Hamiltons father mixed race himself?) and white mothers - Q.E.D. The supposed mother of the baby in the photo was not light-skinned and the contrast was immediately apparent and distracting from the product.

I wonder what people arguing Zara's case would say if she choose a Chinese baby and a black mother. Hmmmmm