Black mum takes to TikTok to hit back against strangers who question if her pale-skinned daughter is actually hers
A black mum has gone viral in a video hitting out at strangers who question if she is related to her pale-skinned daughter. Alex McCurry, 36, posted the footage after suffering a series of bizarre encounters with people who refused to believe her daughter is hers. Project manager Alex, who wants to protect her four-month-old daughter's anonymity, admits she seems to have taken more after her husband Rob, who is white. Alex, from Frederick, Maryland, USA, said: "My daughter, we call her Pudge-Pudge because of how adorably chubby she is, is SO light. "And I experienced a situation where someone essentially questioned whether she was my child, they just didn't understand biology, so I put it on TikTok because I was frustrated." Alex said it has been a common interaction for the last five years since the birth of her first daughter. And she said the latest experience, with her four-month-old, was the final straw. Alex was out with Pudge-Pudge, hugging and kissing the child, when a woman approached her, saying that the little girl was adorable, but things quickly turned sour. The woman then said with confusion, "Is she your baby?", and when Alex replied that she was, the woman was baffled, "but she's so white!", she exclaimed. Alex said it was the "cumulative" impact that prompted her to go public. She added: "I'm letting people know, mums who are in interracial relationships and have biracial children, can have children of all colours." Alex said she wanted people to understand that walking up to a stranger and questioning the parentage was not acceptable. Since the posting of the video, it has gone viral, accumulating nearly 800,000 likes and 4.9 million views. Alex said she does not want to discourage interactions between people but thinks it's important to understand which questions to ask, which not to, and how to ask them. She said: "My frustration came in because this is a very delicate conversation to have because I don't want to discourage a sense of community." "At the same time, you need to understand that, just because you see a black mum with a child that you don't perceive to look black, it doesn't mean that child is not hers. "I just think people should be inclusive as possible of everyone. There are different ways for people to do different things every way, every day," she said. "You can honestly just let people be who they are, you can just go live your life, without potentially hurting anyone else." Since she posted the video, she has received several supportive comments about her actions. One viewer said: "As a biracial child and a mother to a biracial child, "yes' to this!" Another said: "I have mixed parents, people asked my mum if she was my babysitter/nanny."