A popular YouTube couple is being called out for “colorism” after a video showed them questioning if their newborn daughter would have “pretty eyes” and what color her skin would be, just moment after birth.
Last week, Biannca and Damien Prince, who run the “Prince Family” YouTube channel, posted a vlog documenting the birth of their new baby, Nova Grace. During the video, which received over one million views, Bianca and Damien can be heard discussing Nova’s physical features just moments after she was delivered.
“When do they get their eye color? Like, 6 to 12 months?” Biannca asks a nurse in the room. “She’s going to have brown eyes for sure. … I thought you were going to have pretty eyes.”
“She do have pretty eyes,” Damien responds.
Later, Biannca brings up her eye color yet again, saying, “She’s going to have brown eyes for sure.”
“How do you feel about that?” Damien asks a relative. “About her eyes being brown?”
“That’s OK,” the relative responds.
Biannca then begins asking about the baby’s skin and whether she’ll have a light or dark complexion.
“Do you think she’ll be DJ’s color or a little bit darker?” Biannca asks, comparing their newborn to their 2-year-old son.
“No, she’s going to be darker,” Damien responds.
Eventually the nurse in the room interjects by saying, “But she’s beautiful.”
Since the video was first posted, people on YouTube and Twitter have criticized the parents for focusing on their child’s eye and skin color.
“Whats up with the focus on how dark she will become and the color eyes,” one wrote. “Be thankful that the baby is healthy.”
“Why bianca says ‘She’s not going to be Damien’s colour’ like it’s a bad thing…shameful,” wrote another.
https://twitter.com/_karbashian/status/1134584879595888640
Alia Cureton, who posted the above tweet, told Buzzfeed that she was “disgusted” by the color comments.
“That’s basically saying her eyes aren’t pretty because they aren’t light,” Cureton told BuzzFeed. “They spoke about her color quite often — about how dark she was going to be. The eye color comment was disgusting. So was her reaction to the possibility of her baby being her dad’s color.
Other twitter users had similar reactions to the clip.
https://twitter.com/prettiestfear/status/1135997941095763972
In response to the criticism, the Prince family posted a new YouTube video called“Nova Has Colorist Parents.”
The couple begin the video by apologizing to their fans for having to “deal with this.”
“Apparently we were saying some colorist things. I guess we’re colorist now?” Damien says while putting his hands in air-quotes.
They then explained what they meant in the video when they used the term pretty eyes.
“When I said pretty eyes, I meant green eyes,” Biannca said.
She then asked if Damien has ever been complimented on his eyes and said no one in her family with brown eyes has been noticed for their eyes.
“Brown eyes don’t get complimented like green eyes or hazel eyes,” she added.
She went on to explain that she just has a “preference” for at least one of her children to have the same green eyes that she has.
Biannca also said she thinks her daughter is beautiful and she should not have made the comments immediately after her birth.
