Kate Gosselin explains her slanted-eye photo: ‘This was a happy memory of mine’

“But I married an Asian guy and had his Asian babies” is the new “But I have a black friend!” As we discussed yesterday, a photo of Kate Gosselin was mysteriously released on Twitter. In the photo (I’ve included it again as the header image), Kate seems to be wearing some kind of Asian-y headpiece and making “slanted eyes” at the camera. So, obviously, people were like, “Ugh. Racist. And dumb.” Well, Kate Gosselin wanted to correct the record! She wrote a blog post about it on her website:

Clarification on my personal photo that was stored on our “home computer,” that recently surfaced and was released to the public, without my permission:

This was a happy memory of mine. It was a happy time for me and Jon, smiling and “goofing off” together. Jon and I were opening fan mail together one afternoon — which often filled the garage of our Elizabethtown home — and when we opened this plastic Asian dress up wig sent from a caring fan, we smiled, each taking turns posing in it and snapping photos (on my phone) of each other. Naturally, I “slanted” my eyes to show him my best Asian impression, which made him smile.

Evidently, a fan sent it for me to wear so that I too could “be Asian” like the rest of my family. At that time, a common topic of our show was “everybody’s Asian” — except for mommy, so a thoughtful fan figured she’d help me look Asian too! It’s normal to talk about and even “exaggerate” the feature differences between family members of a biracial family as they are noticed by curious growing children within the family. These types of discoveries and at home discussions are a normal part of being a loving accepting biracial family and it does not make any of us prejudice!

I married an Asian. I have eight biracial children therefore I’m quite certain that I’m the last person that could be called a racist. I learned to cook Korean foods from Jon’s mom and grandmother. I couldn’t be more proud of my eight beautiful children and wouldn’t change anything about them or their heritage. They are absolutely perfect just the way they are.

God loves each of us equally. We are each created perfectly in His eyes. In this family, we don’t see color or preference, we see qualities and hearts. Those photos taken on my phone were later uploaded to be saved on the home computer…..the same source of other private information that was taken and has since been made public, without my consent.

The blaring fact that remains is that a personal photo that left a warm and happy memory, was taken and misused without my permission and opportunistically turned into something that it never was intended to be.

[From Kate Gosselin’s website]

I could do without the parts where she’s going on and on about how making this gesture is such a “warm memory” for her, but otherwise… I don’t know. I’m mixed race, and I can kind of see how this would be an “inside joke” within a mixed race family. I think it’s always a stupid idea to take photos of yourself making this kind of stupid gesture – I mean, even if Paula Deen has a black friend, does that mean she should put on blackface and take photos of herself that way just because she and her friend have an “inside joke” about it? No. And I would actually like to hear what Jon thought of Kate’s “joke”.

Photos courtesy of WENN, Twitter.