Jennifer Cramblett is suing a sperm bank for giving her sperm from a donor with a skin color other than the one she requested. Photograph by Mark Duncan / AP

A complaint recently filed with the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois, introduced us to the Cramblett family. Jennifer Cramblett, thirty-six, was reared in Scio, Ohio, “around stereoptypical attitudes about people other than those in her all-white community.” Cramblett recalls hearing members of her family speaking “openly and derisively about persons of color.” Cramblett herself, who now lives in Uniontown, Ohio, “did not know African Americans until her college days at the University of Akron.” Then, in 2012, the complaint says, she gave birth to one.

Last month, Cramblett filed a complaint for wrongful birth and breach of warranty against the Midwest Sperm Bank. The complaint reads, “On August 21, 2012, Jennifer gave birth to Payton, a beautiful, obviously mixed race, baby girl.” Cramblett is claiming fifty thousand dollars in damages because the company gave her sperm from a donor other than the one she’d requested. The complaint explains that, when Cramblett and her partner, Amanda Zinkon, decided to have a baby, “their desire was to find a donor with genetic traits similar to both of them.” Upon realizing that Cramblett might have been given the wrong sperm, a receptionist at the bank asked if she “had requested an African American donor.” Cramblett’s response: “No, why would I request that? My partner and I are Caucasian.”

Instead of taking aim at the clerical mistake, much of the complaint focusses on the injuries that Cramblett and Zinkon have incurred, and will continue to incur, because they have a “mixed race” child. They say they now have to travel to “a black neighborhood” to get the girl’s hair cut; they must now cope with the stress and worry from having a child who is stigmatized; they are concerned about enrolling their daughter in an “all-white school.” The complaint emphasizes that “all of Jennifer’s therapists and experts agree that for her psychological and parental well-being, she must relocate to a racially diverse community with good schools.” The central, and problematic, argument in Cramblett’s claim is based on the “fears, anxieties and uncertainty” that she and Zinkon must now navigate, as parents of a child with a skin color they did not ask for.

The case is entangled with a number of troubling ideas about science, identity, and class in this country. By equating race with “genetic traits,” Cramblett is claiming that race is a biological fact. By arguing that a child with darker skin and hair that is different from hers is an impediment to her chosen life style, Cramblett tacitly condones the hierarchy in this country that determines the relative worth of one life over another.

One paragraph of the complaint, in particular, illustrates Cramblett’s belief that her child will inevitably face harm.

One of Jennifer’s biggest fears is the life experiences Payton will undergo, not only in her all-white community, but in her all-white, and often unconsciously insensitive, family. Despite [Jennifer’s] family’s attempts to accept her homosexuality, they have not been capable of truly embracing Jennifer for who she is. . . . Though compelled to repress her individuality amongst family members, Payton’s differences are irrepressible, and Jennifer does not want Payton to feel stigmatized or unrecognized due simply to the circumstances of her birth.

The tragic irony here is that Cramblett is right to fear for her daughter’s future. It is likely that her daughter will not enjoy the privileges of first-class citizenship: she probably won’t be regarded and treated according to her worth, and she probably won’t be protected from the suspicions, fears, and judgments with which people will react to her skin color.

If the court awards Cramblett damages, it will essentially be paying her and her daughter reparations, something that our country has denied millions of others. Her claim hinges on the same rationale that led to a lineage of Americans who have been treated as second-class citizens—that it's who her daughter is, and not the actions of others, that is the source of the disparate treatment she is likely to receive. Whatever stigma Payton may feel reflects our country’s history and society, not nature—a distinction that has always been true but has been elided, in part, by the perversion of science on which racism is based.

As the Cramblett case illuminates, un-learning race is not an abstract exercise; it is a difficult task that requires, among other things, a firm grasp of the distinction between skin color and race, between what is biological and what is social. Any fair adjudication of the Cramblett complaint—in a court of law or public opinion—demands that science be distinguished from fiction.