Eartha Kitt’s daughter, Kitt Shapiro, has hit back at trolls who claimed that she’s “not black enough” to be her mother’s child.
The 60-year-old book author opened up about the online remarks she’s received about not looking the way that “people think” she “should look” during a recent appearance on The Tamron Hall Show. Her interview came after she launched her first TikTok video, in which she identified herself as Kitt’s daughter, prompting viewers in the comments to criticise her appearance.
During the conversation, Shapiro went on to recall how her mother, who passed away in 2008, “actually loved” the way that she looked.
“Now, my mother only had one child, and this is what she got,” she said. “And she actually loved the fact that I was this, this mutt. She would say to me, ‘You either break every rule or you fill every quota.’ She said, ’You are a walking United Nation.’ And I truly think that, you know, she was proud.”
Shapiro, who Kitt shared with ex-husband John William McDonalds, also emphasised how her mother was “proud” about the fact that her daughter wasn’t being “stereotyped” based on her “skin colour”.
“She was proud to be the parent of somebody that couldn’t be easily identified, because she herself had been so stereotyped and so pigeon holed because of her skin colour obviously,” Shapiro continued. “I am not to the other extreme sometimes, you know, criticised because I’m not Black enough and I can’t help the way that I was born.”
Hall then asked Shapiro when she first felt “hurt” by people who critcised her skin tone.
“So, it’s after my mother passed,” she explained. “I have a blog and it was in response to ‘You can’t possibly be her biological child. She obviously lied to you her entire life. And you were clearly adopted.’ To which my response was, ‘When do you think a Black woman could have adopted a white baby?’”
Hall chimed in and responded: “They weren’t exactly doing that back then.”
Shapiro agreed with this comment and shared details about her father’s background, adding: “Not in 1961, certainly not, and second of all, my father was this little white pasty, you know Irish, German-Irish as you can get.”
Since launching her TikTok, Shapiro has shared multiple videos about her mother and lesson’s she’s learned from her.
In one clip shared in July, Shapiro first responded to the online critics and noted how “hurtful” it had been to be questioned about her relationship to her mother.
“Let’s just address the obvious, there are many of you who question whether I am truly my mother’s biological child, which is hurtful and insulting,” she said. “Especially since there’s a lot of people out there who don’t look the way that we think they’re supposed to look.”
She said she’s “mixed-race” and does “look like her mother,” she also shared more about her family history.
“I do look like my mother, for people who are willing to see past the blonde hair and light skin,” Shapiro continued. “Genetics are a peculiar thing. My mother was mixed-race. I am mixed-raced. My father was pretty much as white as they come, he was German and Irish. And this is the way that I came out.”
