Naomi Raquel
2 min readSep 12, 2024

Assume Nothing

As the biological, brown-skinned mother of a son presumed to be white — and as an antiracist educator and writer — I found the Cover Illustration of the most recent The New Yorker full of assumptions.

Readers and viewers are (ostensibly) to know that the dark-skinned women portrayed in the illustration are (of course) the caretakers of the white children with them. This is further solidified by one of the women holding up a photo of her son, who (of course), like her, is also dark-skinned.

The fact is that although many caretakers in New York are dark-skinned and many of the children they care for are white, it is hurtful, shortsighted and insulting to assume every dark-skinned woman we see with a child presumed to be white is the caretaker.

This Cover Illustration lacks sensitivity and understanding about multiethnic families and only solidifies the lie that skin color equates definer, separator and affinity.

My son is now an adolescent but in the illustration, I saw my own mother with her grandson on her lap. I have many photos of the two of them in that very pose — my presumed to be white son on the lap of his adored (and presumed to be Black) grandmother.

The New Yorker ought to have taken more care with this Cover Illustration, rather than perpetuate the notion that all dark-skinned women with light-skinned children are caretakers.

Naomi Raquel

Bilingual. New Yorker. Multiethnic. Change Agent. Author of “Strength of Soul” (2Leaf Press; University of Chicago Press, April 2019)