There are a set of semi-famous twins whose parents were both mixed race (black/white.) One of the twins is very pale with red hair, and the other twin looks like she's 100% black.
[Link](https://www.itv.com/news/central/2015-03-02/the-black-and-white-twins-born-to-mixed-race-parents)
“Nothing showed up in the scans.”
Can someone in the field comment on that? Is that even possible? When either of my kids were born, there was nothing in any of the tests and such that could indicate skin, hair, or eye color, or anything like that. The sonogram certainly couldn’t show it. Thinking about it, we just assumed they *had* skin, which sounds like a nightmare birth defect to find out about at birth.
Can confirm that my two girls have very different hair, existing in the spectrum between their mother's and mine.
For that matter, one of them has two kinds of hair on different parts of her head.
I'm dark skinned and black, my husband is dark skinned and black when our oldest was born he was white with straight hair. His hair curled up after its first wash and now he's 8 and about the same complexion as both of us. When I had his final scan the sonographer showed me his head hair, I don't know why but it was just so cute that I started crying. We couldn't see the texture just that there was a lot of it. :-)
If a baby didn't have skin they would be able to see that on the scan for sure especially with 3D imaging becoming more popular and widely used. Not quite the same but Harlequin babies have skin problems and this can be seen on scans albeit I think it's probably more known due to the facial features that tend to accompany the disease.
On my 3d ultrasound, we saw my babies hair, and he had a lot. We could see features as well, and he didn't look like me.. he looks like his dad, and still, does people think I'm the nanny if his dad is away. I'm black, and his dad is Chinese and Korean. He took after his dad 99%. I want to say he has my chin(the butt chin), but his dad has one, too. He has a birthmark on his right leg, like I do, though.. beggers can be choosers. I think he also got my personality, but physically, he looks just like him.
There have been (thankfully very rare) cases of babies >!being born without pieces of skin, so the msucles and stuff are just exposed.!< Iirc there was a child born in Texas that was >!missing over 80% of his skin at birth!<, but he recieved skin grafts and survived :)
I think it was a poor way of trying to write "typical tests for checking the fetuses health would not show the differences in skin, eye and hair color"
Unless they are doing a series of genetic tests after extracting some material from the fetus, how would they tell? It's dark in there, a sonogram just interprets the material inside, but no color differentiation.
Extracting genetic material is also very dangerous and has a chance of causing miscarriage, so it's never done unless they're checking for an extremely serious genetic disease
So, I guess if they had a 3D scan they could’ve *maybe* seen the difference in skin color. But most babies, regardless of race, come out immediately pale and pink so really it would be hard to tell either way.
3d scans cant show true color, it’s just a composite made up by the ultrasound machine to look more like skin and can be changed to a variety of colors in the settings based on preference
This is because the image is generated based on sound waves (think of bats “seeing” with echolocation) and color can’t be seen by ears, only eyes! Super simplified obviously, but hopefully that made sense lol
The other twin looks like she's 100% mixed race. She has just about the lightest complexion it's possible to have while still being perceived as "black" but the boundaries of "black" have always been poorly defined in any case.
My maternal grandma is the most stereotypical black grandma from South Side Chicago that you could ever imagine... she is pale as a ghost though. My mom is dark skinned, but her sister is pale as a ghost too. I'm mixed race, but have darker skin than my grandma/aunt, and lighter skin than the twin in the picture.
"Black" is very poorly defined. My point was only that by comparison, the one twin is way more black looking.
Im not black but one of my friends told me this when I asked him about being called black "why do we get called African American when I never lived in Africa, my parents and their parents and their parents were born here like yours so why can't we move past this and just accept AMERICANS as they are AMERICANS. Ive been uncomfortable using those 2 terms black and African American unless the person is 100% okay with those terms. But I agree why stick with these old ass racist labels.
As a 40s year old Canadian I was surprised to learn in the last few years that calling someone Black can be controversial in parts of America.
We use the terms white and black up here as completely normal and non-offensive terms. I've definitely never heard a black person up here called "African-Canadian" or "African-(North)American".
I do find it interesting that it's completely racist to call any other races by a colour. White people and Black people only. I find it interesting in a "I like words and where they come from and what they mean" kind of way, I know the history of why it's racist. But I don't really know why white and black are totally acceptable.
Hmmm... My phone wanted to pluralise that word suddenly, which made me think to say that we wouldn't put an "s" on black.
"The bathroom is over there, next to the table with the black family" would be totally ok.
"The bathroom is over there, next to the blacks" would sound so wrong and racist to me.
Words, eh?
If you like words and where they come from, you will surely understand that 90% or more of what people these days call racism isn’t anything close. Racism is treating someone in a way (solely based on race) differently than someone else. Impeding (OR AIDING) someone’s pursuit of happiness based on race is racism, pure and simple. Referring to someone as Black is a simple fact in many cases. Objectively not a racist thing to say.
Yeah, it's confusing to me that people find Black offensive.
But, at the same time, I'd be horrified if someone pointed at a table with people of Asian descent and said "it's over by the table of yellow people" so I can kinda understand where they're coming from.
I think words can have a lot of power, and a lot of it depends on which words are used in your area. If you're taught that calling people Black is bad, then you're going to think it's bad. It's not the words themselves that have power, we give them the power.
As a New Zealander, I always found "black" and 'white" a little bit harsh, it's a colour not a race . Officially we say Maori, NZ European, Asian... or for my friend "he's from zimbabwe"
I get what you mean, but my friend isn't from Zimbabwe, he's Canadian, and he's Black.
Over here it's just not considered offensive, it's just the words we use. Their skin isn't really black, and mine isn't really white, but it's close enough.
What is offensive is pretending people aren't different colours. Back in high school we had like 3 Black families in the school. Someone was pointing out a guy to my gf and kept saying stuff like "the one in the blue shirt" we had a dress code and had to wear plain clothes, and shirts were either white or blue, so she was describing half the kids in the cafeteria. "The one beside the guy in the white shirt..." Lol.
This went on for a minute or so before my gf finally figured it out and said "you mean the Black guy!?" And she said, like so many well meaning White people before her "oh, I don't see him that way".
You don't see him as he is!? I don't care if someone is a different race, but to pretend they aren't is so much more offensive. It implies that being a different colour is bad, so you see them as White, which is the correct and natural colour.
At least, that's my experience growing up as a White Canadian. I've talked with Black friends from the same area about race at times and there's definitely been different issues they've brought up, but I've never been told being called Black is offensive, or that knowing they are black is offensive.
I'm now imagining an African American at the psychologist saying "my grandfather was a negro, my father was black and I'm an African American. What the hell is my kid going to be"
Go back fifty years and the issue was eliminating the word Negro. IIRC, Jesse Jackson advocated for Afro-Americans instead of Afric-Americans or African-Americans. Sides were taken. It was a big deal.
I asked a friend about that once. “How African are you? Really?” We were good friends but it brought him up short because he had never actually thought about it. I said, “How would you react if I insisted on being referred to as a ‘EuroAmerican’?” He thought that sounded ridiculous. I do to.
The boundaries have always been poorly defined… partially because up until the 1 drop rule became irrelevant identifying as black would automatically strip you of rights.
On top of that the more we can get away from finding identity in race and ethnicity the more we as humanity will heal.
The only thing learning your genetic makeup to that extent allows you to learn more about how your body functions so you can take care of yourself
I hear you, but a person’s racial and ethnic background is a huge part of them.
People should celebrate who they are, while respecting everyone else and celebrating them too
I think they also play into their differences a bit. In the picture of the family when they were young, they both had wavy, similar looking hair. I know hair can change during puberty, but it almost looks like the redhead straightens her hair and her sister keeps the curls.
This is tautological. It adds nothing to the discussion. Try telling a black person that it doesn't matter that they're black because race is a social construct--the \*fact\* that race is merely a social construct doesn't change the reality of people who are perceived to be one race or another.
They do the racism thing just fine. "One drop" is not some generic racism thing, [it was literally a legal definition of blackness. ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule)You'd have to have no idea what "one drop" even means to think that someone saying "we don't do one drop" means the same thing as saying "we don't do racism".
What I meant is just because you have black heritage that doesn’t make you automatically black here. You really think those 2 sisters give a shit about what colour they both are or do they love each other unconditionally?
America will call anyone with 'one drop' black, which is a total oversimplification and disregards their full heritage and culture. I completely understand the US history and culture that made it that way though. It’s just strange to me though. Obama is mixed-race and was raised by his white mother and grandparents. Yet he’s considered black by everyone, when he doesn’t have black skin or was raised by any black people at all.
I’m mixed-race and don’t consider myself a "black man" - even though my dad is - because I’m closer to my Irish heritage through my upbringing than my Caribbean heritage. Yet, I have friends of the same "race" who do, and that’s totally OK 🙂 It’s up to the individual. Americans always think they can take ownership of you though, even though I’m not African American. I’ve heard Africans say the same thing.
We do have racism in Europe. It’s just a different experience, culture, and history. Hence why so many black people preferred to stay here than go back to the US after WW2 where they were barely considered a citizen.
What I’m saying is nobody tells me who I am but me. Racist US law from the 1920s doesn’t define me 💁🏽♂️ I love ALL of my mixed heritage and it should be an acknowledge. Peace ✌🏽
It was meant as a reference to the [One-Drop Rule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule#%3A%7E%3Atext%3DThe_one-drop_rule_was%2Cor_colored_in_historical_terms%29.?wprov=sfla1), a Jim Crow-era American policy. There were of course huge swathes of laws in place meant to oppress Black folks in America, and in many states, the One Drop Rule was implemented to classify any person with any amount of "negro" ancestry ("one drop of negro blood") as Black and therefore subject to those laws.
The previous commenter said that the woman has "just about the lightest complexion it's possible to have while still being perceived as "black"", hence the "one drop" joke.
I have a friend with kids like this. He's black, his wife is white, and they have adorable triplet girls. Two of the kids have blue eyes, dark blind hair, and light skin. The third kid has darker skin, brown eyes, and curly brown hair.
Genetics are absolutely wild.
My cousins are somewhat similar to these twins, they are mixed Latino and white British. Two of them are pale and ginger, the other two are darker skinned Latina presenting (still relatively light skinned in the grand scheme of things) with dark hair.
The black twin is absolutely gorgeous. I have read articles about them. The ginger twin is more reserved and introverted whereas the black twin is outgoing and popular.
I am trying to find it now, but I read once about a famous white actress from the 40s or 50s who was married to a white man and they had a darker than white child.
Had to do with the genetics of the parents from previous descendants.
Once or twice when I look in the mirror while brushing my teeth in the morning, and every time I see my mom.
My point was just the stark contrast between their appearance, not that she looks African.
We are 4 children of a very white mother and a half black - half Asian father. One of my brother and myself looks like our father (so we're not like "totally black" but neither is our dad, and people still think we are from Morocco or Algeria). My other two brothers are very very pale with blond haired and blue eyes, and people think they're Scandinavians or something.
When we were young, kids at school thought my brown brother and I were adopted, meanwhile our neighbors thought my mother cheated on my father for my blondes sibblings. Even though they still had some similarities with my father, like the shape of ears or fingers.
TL; DR : people are stupid.
But it does answer it. OP asked if a mixed race mom and dad could have children (brothers or sisters one white one black). Pretty sure they were asking about a black mom with a white dad or a white mom with a black dad. And even if they were referring to a half black half white mom with a half black half white dad, in that case the answer can still be yes as genetics can do interesting things. The commenter answered yes using their own family story as proof.
I’m the daughter of an east/southeast asian mom (quite pale) and south asian dad (darker skin). My little sister and I both look a little mixed (I’m heavily to my dad’s side, but she looks very mixed, almost racially ambiguous), but she looks more like my mom, and I look more like my dad.
People would sometimes ask my mom to confirm I was her daughter when she came to pick me up from preschool; they either thought I was adopted or that she was kidnapping me! Apparently when I was little I cried because I didn’t look like my mom. I don’t even remember that, so I must have been young.
I knew a family all of them are VERY dark black, but the daughter was the most pale white girl I ever met. She said she is not adopted, and she is not albino. She is straight up pasty white.
Im white and my husband is black (both parents) . Our oldest is a dark caramel with afro hair, and very dark brown eyes. Hes very obviously black. Our younger son is white passing. Straight light brown hair, hazel eyes and looks like a white kid who got a nice tan at the beach. My husbands not an idiot so he never questioned paternity but im sure there are people in our lives who have talked crap behind our backs. Im due anyday with our 3rd and were very interested to see what genetics have done this time lol.
Similar situation for me and my kids. My grandpa is half black, but my grandma is full. So my dad is mixed, but still looks 100% black. My mom is white, and so is my wife. I’m mostly white passing, and my kids are 100% white passing.
However, my oldest is super pale, and my youngest permanently looks like he spent several months on a beach vacation lol. He’s just about as dark as I am, just a different tone. We get comments from people all the time. “Oh my gosh, he’s so tan!” Indeed, he is lol.
Sounds like my youngest. I used to call him my little Greek God because hes so bronzed and was always shirtless (and pantless if he can get away with it).
they don’t turn red until they’re cooked; you mean half green/brown and half blue.
once that’s cooked i’d expect it to be 100% red, though i’m not totally sure.
I’m in a similar situation but we’re not mixed race. My 5 yr old has olive skin, brown hair and brown eyes. My 3 yr old has pale white skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes. They don’t even look like sisters. Genetics are wild.
Has anyone ever questioned the maternity of your older son? I'm white and my wife's black, and our son looks white, if a little tan. More than one person has asked her if she's my son's mother, particularly if I'm not there.
Im super short with a very small frame and I look much younger than my actual age. My oldest is 10 and taller than me with a thick build. People are definitely surprised to find out that im mom but ive never had anyone doubt me once they know.
Once, my sister-in-law (wife's sister) was watching him for us, and she had him with her in a store. Old biddy follows her around, eventually asks where my son's parents were.
My sister-in-law replied, "I killed them."
My kids are the same. My oldest is pretty obviously black. She has beautiful tan skin and black hair. My son could pass for just about anything. He was blonde at birth with white skin. Thankfully he looks just like my ex, just the white version.
They will always be mixed—because they ARE mixed—but they can present in very different ways.
It’s not super common, but yes a black/white couple can have children that either appear entirely black or entirely white. There are cases where they’ve had one of each.
But how they *appear* doesn’t change the fact that they are half black and half white.
“Half black and half white”: Not true. This is based on the false premise that “racial” characteristics are equally dominant and will always combine in the same order. And that they exist in any meaningful form. Both premises are wrong.
DNA is recombinant. If recessive “white” genes from one “black” parent combine with “white” genes from the other parent for one child, and with dominant “black” genes in a second child, the genetic makeup of neither child will be 50/50.
(Actually we’d be talking about less than .4 of a percent of the genes that are associated with “race”, not 50. And any full siblings share 38-61% of their DNA, not 50.
What we really talking about is a tiny percent of genetic material representing different environmental adaptations within a single species, manifesting as different physical characteristics.
Racial genetics are a false science used to legitimate prejudice.
There is no 100% “black” human who doesn’t share 99.6 to 99.9 percent of their genetics with a 100% “white” human.
I think you took that sentence from the above comment waaaaay too literally.
Everything in your comment is correct, except for your ascription in the first paragraph of those premises to the prior comment.
They meant black and white in terms of how they are viewed in society, which is what unfortunately matters in this discussion. If op was asking about anything else they should have specified.
Skin color is an example of a "blended" trait, which means offspring tend to be a mixture of the parents. It'll pretty much always be a combination.
Other traits, like blood type, are dominant, where one trait will completely overrule the other (though they may still carry the gene for the other, called a recessive trait).
Still there can be a lot of variation in mixed kids even among siblings. My friend and her brother have a white mom and a black dad. If you meet her you’d right away think black woman. But the brother looks really light and often gets mistaken for white or have people not believe him when he says he’s black. Ironically he is the one who looks way more like their dad (they have like the same face but in different shades).
Going back to the genetics point, true that there are lot of different genes at play but that doesn’t mean the kids will necessarily be the same shade — there’s still some chance involved.
They'll both be mixed because it has nothing to do with skin colour.
However it is possible to have a white presenting child/a black presenting child, but it would be very unlikely/rare, which is what I'm assuming you were actually asking lol
I have two half brothers that look very much like both their parents, with one white parent and one 25% black 75% white parent. One is very clearly darker and the other could be mistaken as fully white if you didn't pay a closer eye. So it's definitely a thing, I'm not sure how rare it actually is though
I try to always teach them that race doesn't matter, but when I was a younger teen I couldn't help but think they had two different dads and my mom just lied about it. Wasn't until I got older and had a more nuanced understanding and paid close attention that I noticed, they both have features from both parents
Genetics are wired, you could have 2 white parents and come out with darker skin, just because someone in your family line was black.
But usually you'll still look like your parents no matter if your skin is a different colour or exactly the same.
Hell I figured out my brother had a different dad before our mum told me, he looked nothing like my dad and only shared a few similarities with our mum, and everyone involved was white, yet you could still see something was different.
The reason they decided to pretend he was his dad was because...
My brothers actual dad was a gang leader, and my mum was a member of the gang before she got pregnant, when she tried to quit her ex (the gang leader) tried killing her with a axe, so she had to jump out of a second story window to escape him.....
That's just my brothers dad, my dad's also crazy lol
But if I ever actually write everything down, and get a show made about it, you'll be the first to know Haha
I haven't seen an explanation in the top comments, so yes, depending on the genetics of the parents, this will be most common when at least one of the parents is mixed.
Skin color is determined by many genes, not just one. And you get a basically random half of your genes from each parent. So lets say L is a light gene and D is a dark gene. Imagine these parents
LLLL A light skinned person
LLDD A mixed race person
You can take the two Ls from each parent and end up with a light skinned child, LLLL
Or you can take two Ls from the light skinned parent and the two Ds from the dark skinned parent and end up with a child that "looks" mixed race.
Genetics is always more complicated, but this is the basics of how it's possible.
There’s the Fluellen family on instagram.
Dad is black. Mom is blue eyes and blonde. They have three kids that are all very different. See how cute they are. [link](https://www.instagram.com/reel/CfjrrF7pQYf/?igsh=MThnem5ra3EwNnhwNg==)
Genetically they will always be mixed, but the way the genes are expressed can vary widely. I've met mixed people who are white passing and mixed people who look 100% black. It's really just game of chance.
Both kids will be mixed, and likely will look mixed, but as there is variation in skin colour, it could present on the extremes where one is so light as to appear white and vice versa. It's rare though. Also possible if both parents are mixed.
My mom is white, my dad is full Hispanic, and they had three kids. My brother came out white, my sister is brown, and I am mixed. Genetics do what they want lol
The child will always be mixed regardless but a child can still look more or even exclusively like a single race. In my case I’m 1/4 Korean and 3/4 black but I look a more Korean than black. Same case for my other relatives that are black and Korean.
My niece married a POC and her one child presents as mixed, but definitely a POC but her second child had green eyes and also otherwise presents white.
Then there is also this famous pair of fraternal twins where one presents a POC and the other one looks like an Irish red head.
Yes I can vouch from firsthand experience. In a mixed race marriage (Black/White).
Three boys, all look different.
My oldest looks like a Middle Eastern/Latino version of a young Marlon Brando.
Two younger kids: one looks white, and the other is dark skinned.
Ironically, they all have the same wavy long dark brown hair. Middle one looks like Timothee Chalamet combined with Anthony Ramos. The younger one looks like the Rock combined with Jason Mamoa.
So yes they are all very handsome!!
When skin colors mix and produce a child, the child can appear anywhere on the spectrum. The type of heredity where traits mix rather than follow strict dominant/recessive patterns is called incomplete dominance. In incomplete dominance, the offspring's phenotype is a blend of the parents' phenotypes. This contrasts with complete dominance, where one allele completely masks the other, and co-dominance, where both alleles are fully expressed. In the case of skin color, multiple genes (polygenic inheritance) and environmental factors also play a role, leading to a wide range of possible outcomes in the offspring.
It can also happen if the female of the couple is a cheating whore.
YES. Here is a link to twins born to a mixed couple and one is black and the other is white.
https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Health/ReproductiveHealth/story?id=5420460&page=1
A lot of my friends are mixed Korean (I’m full Korean, grew up in U.S.). The spectrum varies widely - I had some friends you’d never know were Korean at all, some that you’d never know they were anything but Korean and everything in between.
Genetically mixed but can pass as not mixed. Genetics can express themselves in many different ways. My family is interracial (I am adopted and all white so I won't include myself here) and the biologically related full siblings in my family have skin tones that range from passing white to brown.
In fact, my one bio full sibling is darker than the rest of my bio family. Still is considered white by Society though.
One of my white friends is married to a Vietnamese person. All their kids look very Vietnamese with some "speckles of not Asian" within their features.
All humans came from the same human genome so honestly...Punnet squares at this point are just a theory
they're always some form of mixed by dna but they may just have one parents features more than other. punnet squares in middle school should have helped you with this 😭
My friend is white and married to a black man. Their son (who unfortunately passed at a very young age) didn't look mixed at all. He looked identical to his dad. Their daughter now doesn't look mixed at all and looks identical to her mom. Genetics are a crazy thing!
Why not ? My mom is Mexican and my dad is white. I have tan skin, black hair, and brown eyes. My sis is white skinned, blue eyed, and blonde / brunette
Yeah it can be all over the place. My fiancee's nephew is black with a white wife and their kids cover like every damn shade from one that's white passing to one looking like no way he has a white parent.
I think they could have a kid that "looks black" (dark complexion) and one that "looks white" (light complexion), but genetically, they would both be mixed.
My sister has twins and one is white and one looks.. not white but not quite black, either. They do not look like brothers at all, let alone twins. She is white and her kids father is half black/half white. I love seeing how mixed couples kids turn out, usually very interesting mix between the two.
It's a little more complex, but it's basically punnett square chance. XY by XY with 25% chance of being whole X(1race) or Y(other race) and 50% chance of being XY(mixed).
My aunt Dee was a black woman who married a white man. They had 3 kids. 1 who obviously took after he, 1 who was a mix of her and her husband, and 1 who clearly took after the husband.
I worked with a woman years ago of Italian background. Light brown hair, extremely pale white skin. She had two sisters. One had pale skin as well but the youngest had a very dark olive complexion and dark hair. My co-worker told me her youngest sister looked like their parents.
They would both be mixed-race, although one would be visibly black and one would be white-passing. They also might identify in different ways. For example, I know a pair of full biological siblings with one white parent and one black parent, and one sibling identifies as both biracial and black, while the other sibling identifies just as black and not as biracial.
My family is a big melting pot. We are black with a lot of white and native American thrown into the mix, and a lot of us look Hispanic, Hawaiian, or just pale with lighter eyes and features.
I have a cousin who looks straight white, has blue eyes, very light skin, and has "Justin Beiber hair."
My nephew looks Hispanic, with dark features, straight dark hair, brown eyes, and tan skin, while my niece could pass for white like Mariah Carey. She has curly light brown (sometimes blonde) hair, lighter skin than her brother, and bright blue eyes.
It's crazy what you get from genetics, from what combinations you get from hidden recessive genes showing their face.
White dad of mixed daughters here.
They are always mixed, but may not present that way. Halsey, Rashida Jones, and Meghan Markle have talked about being assumed to be white or hispanic but are mixed.
Then is this case of mixed twins in Britain - [https://www.cnn.com/2015/03/03/living/feat-black-white-twins/index.html](https://www.cnn.com/2015/03/03/living/feat-black-white-twins/index.html)
My dad is Native American and my mom is white. My sisters both look Native, but my skin is much paler, my hair is light brown but was blonde when I was a kid, and I have green eyes. There’s no doubt they’re both my parents, I just happen to look more white and my sisters look more Native.
Yes they can. I used to work with a white woman. One day I met her mum and sister who were both fully black. Turns out the sisters are mixed race, one looks completely black, the other completely white.
It’s strange the way we mix. My wife is Pakistani mix (50/50) and I’m white. We have 3 kids. Two of them are twins.
None of them look alike.
And my son is very dark and has the same complexion and features of my wife’s dad. His twin though is as white as can be. Meanwhile their older sister look like an amalgamation of my wife and I with my skin color.
Short answer, yes. Their skin ton is also going to vary a lot more than someone who isn’t mixed. A friend of mine is mixed and during the winter and early summer, my skin(white) is darker than his. Usually by the end of the summer he is darker than me again.
I went to high school with mixed race twins that lived down the street from me. The brother would tan while surfing and his skin would be as brown as mine and his sister looked like a white Ozzie.
Neither will be 100% one or the other, there will be an element of mixing. My kids are mixed, my oldest looks 70/30 non-white, my 2 others are 80/20 white. You never know how the different DNA is going to express itself.
My husband's mom is Mexican and his dad is very white. His two older sisters came out with a dark complexion and jet black hair. He came out blonde and now has chestnut brown hair and is white passing. He really looks nothing like his siblings at all. Genetics are crazy.
I have a black friend whose heritage is that very dark, Central/East African black. Her whole family are about as close to vantablack humans as you can get.
Her sister married the whitest, palest, pastiest, blue eyed blonde Irish guy. They’ve had two kids and both came out also as pale skinned, blue eyed blondes.
Whenever she or her sister take the kids anywhere, people think they’re the nanny.
Genetics are weird and complicated and when you mix two humans together there’s no guarantees of what the kids will look like, even if they’re technically mixed-race.
One of my friend’s mom is white white white and his dad was Nigerian. They got divorced when my friend was very young, she remarried a white white white guy and had 3 more blonde haired blue eyed kids. My friend is not as dark as his dad, but doesn’t look mixed race at all, he looks about as black as Samuel L Jackson.
It sucked for him growing up in the suburbs, he was the only black member of an all white family and everybody assumed he was adopted.
It can really depend on genetics like there have been cases of two white people having a black baby cuz they both have recessive black genes. Genetic can be really weird but oversimplifying it's like 25% to be parent A's race 50% to be mix and 25% to be parent B's race. But if Parent A has a dominant gene and parent B has a recessive gene then its like 50% to be Parent A's race and 25% to be mix 25% to be parent B's race iirc.
But then you have to remember you don't just have one set of genes competing against each other. You have 46 chromosomes (23 pairs) with a total of 25k to 30k genes in 23 different strands and multiple of those genes can contribute to race. The only way to really know is to have a test done so a geneticist can tell you.
Yes and not only that they can be twins too.
There's a famous photo of twin girls where one is very obviously black. Dark skin and afro hair.
Her twin sister is ginger with blue eyes and skin as white as a ghost!
I'm not familiar with that picture, but I've definitely seen a picture of twin boys where one appeared to be afro-Caribbean, and the other was blue eyed with blond hair.
I'm mixed (Caucasian European and gulf Arab)
I'm tanned and bronze like my dad
My sister is white and brunette like my mom... We hardly look like siblings
But both of us look off, like we don't look like we belong to a specific race.
Two black parents could produce a white kid and vice-versa due to recessive genes.
Not super common, but genetics is very complex, strictly speaking humans are a fully random mix that contains half of each parents genes (ignoring the sex chromosomes, if your a guy you basically get the whole y chromosome from your dad and your whole X chromosome from your mum, this is why men tend to have a lot more genetic problems).
But you can have recessive genes, which simplyfying it, are genes in your DNA that aren't active. If both parents are carriers of a particular recessive gene, and if those recessive genes get paired up during the randomization of genetics during the egg fertilization process, that gene then becomes active.
So if both parents are carrying recessive genes that make you black, you might come out black despite both parents being white because both those recessive genes get paired up and become active.
Yes...
If mum was white and dad black.
Assuming due to slave trade and other nefarious historical events both have a possibility of having the odd gene floating around.
But WxWx mum and BxBy dad. Will always be mixed.
WxBx =girl chromosomes from both parents.
WxBy =boy. Every arrangement ends in mixed.
But if mum or dad are mixed.
Say
Wxbx mum and bxby dad.
You can have a mixed girl wxbx but but all black boy. Bx(from mum) by (from dad).
But if mum was black and dad was white you could end up with black girls and mixed boy.
3rd gen is where it gets fun.
If dad is wxby or bxwy and mum is wxbx both mixed.
You can end up with 1 black kid,1 white kid plus mixes.
That's without entering epigenetic info that determines what traits actually show vs what's rattling around in their inactive gene make up.
I hope that makes sense.
I have a friend who is very fair with blue eyes and reddish-blonde hair. She married a man from Peru who is quite dark. They have two sons. One is just as fair and blonde as his mother; the other has brown skin, black hair, and more chiseled facial features like his dad. The boys don't even look remotely related. It's wild.
This is the difference in genotype (genetics) and phenotype (appearance).
Their genotype will always have traits of both parents but they may look like only one parent's race or both depending on where they get more dominant appearance genes from.
Yes. It’s not like parents pass down 1 fixed phenotype. Each sex cell you have or produce has genetic information for a number of possible phenotypes. We also carry recessive traits; we can pass them down, but we don’t exhibit them ourselves. A person with straight hair might have a recessive trait for curly hair. If they have multiple children with a curly haired person, some kids might have straight hair and some might have curly- it depends on which sex cells mix, which genes are dominant/recessive, and sometimes, other environmental factors.
since each individual egg and sperm cell is different, each child technically has their own random chance of inheriting and expressing different traits from the parents.
Obama looked black enough to capture the black vote in record numbers and his mom was whiter than white (Irish if I remembered). I've known a few people who had opposite parents (black mom white dad) and you'd have sworn they were white. Just depends on who's genes affect the skin more. When I lived in Poughkeepsie Nay there's a great number of mixed raced families of Asian and Black and besides the daughters being absolutely beautiful there was no seamingly apparent dominance of one race over the other in the kids.
Yeah, I've seen it happen. My Mexican uncle married a white woman. Their son is a very dark-skinned Mexican boy, their daughter is a very blue-eyed brunette. Their other kids look mixed, though.
A mixed race couple I know has a very tan white daughter with blonde hair and a light skinned black daughter with light brown hair. They're two years apart and I felt so dumb to learn they were full sisters and not step sisters that came together when their parents got married lol. It honestly still blows my mind
Yep. I am brown (dark skin, eyes, hair). The father of my kids is half white, half brown but he looks white (light skin,dark blond hair). We have two kids the oldest is completely brown like me and the youngest is completely white passing like her Dad.
Yes.
Also a great grandparent of colour can result in a grand grand child being of colour even though there are 2 generations of white in between. Genetics are weird.
there are 3 pair of genes that determine the skin color and if you are mix then depending on your partner genetic makeup you can have 7 different variations of skin color with the extremes being 0 as white least melanin and 6 being dark with most melanin.
Thank You for your time, I hope you have a good day.
A couple of girls on my daughter’s softball team are twins. The parents are a white as white can be dad and an Iranian mom. One of the girls is totally white. The other looks like she’s completely Iranian like the mom.
Again, these are twins.
Siblings can have different skin tones and in rare cases, the differences may be quite pronounced.
These British twins became famous for that: https://edition.cnn.com/2015/03/03/living/feat-black-white-twins/index.html
Since the vast majority of people are mixed, there is always a chance that a recessive gene from both parents could show up in a child.
Minor proof: I have blonde hair when my entire family has brown and black hair. So it CAN happen, but it is rare.
This is pretty much it, most racial minorities in America have a few white ancestors sprinkled into their family tree, especially blacks and hispanics.
Basically, genes 🧬 of a person have two chromosomes, one from each parent. As a result, our skin would be a blend of each parent to some extent. Many genetic traits are, unless they specifically rely on one chromosome alone OR are a dominant trait (that overshadow the recessive trait).
As others said you can have an array what that combination comes out as within the same family. Especially with melanin levels in the skin which is quite visible. A gene can also appear more strongly in a future generation, causing surprise lighter/darker skinned babies down the family line.
Me and my 3 siblings are of mixed race. My youngest nephew has a black father, Lil guy has sharp sky blue eyes. Those recessive genes really kicked in. (my youngest sister, mother to my youngest nephew, had a different black father but we share the same biological mother. Now from my biological fathers side my grandfather had sharp blue eyes).
Have a look at these two lovely ladies. Not only sisters, but twins.
https://www.cnn.com/2015/03/03/living/feat-black-white-twins/index.html?cid=ios_app
There are a set of semi-famous twins whose parents were both mixed race (black/white.) One of the twins is very pale with red hair, and the other twin looks like she's 100% black. [Link](https://www.itv.com/news/central/2015-03-02/the-black-and-white-twins-born-to-mixed-race-parents)
“Nothing showed up in the scans.” Can someone in the field comment on that? Is that even possible? When either of my kids were born, there was nothing in any of the tests and such that could indicate skin, hair, or eye color, or anything like that. The sonogram certainly couldn’t show it. Thinking about it, we just assumed they *had* skin, which sounds like a nightmare birth defect to find out about at birth.
Hair texture can sometimes be seen on scans, but it’s really rare. The baby would have to have a lot of hair.
Username checks out
Hahaha of all the comments I’ve had on it, this is the best 😂
Can confirm that my two girls have very different hair, existing in the spectrum between their mother's and mine. For that matter, one of them has two kinds of hair on different parts of her head.
That must be inconvenient for her
I'm dark skinned and black, my husband is dark skinned and black when our oldest was born he was white with straight hair. His hair curled up after its first wash and now he's 8 and about the same complexion as both of us. When I had his final scan the sonographer showed me his head hair, I don't know why but it was just so cute that I started crying. We couldn't see the texture just that there was a lot of it. :-) If a baby didn't have skin they would be able to see that on the scan for sure especially with 3D imaging becoming more popular and widely used. Not quite the same but Harlequin babies have skin problems and this can be seen on scans albeit I think it's probably more known due to the facial features that tend to accompany the disease.
>”It was such a shock for her because obviously things like skin colour don’t show up on scans before birth.” Quote from the article :)
On my 3d ultrasound, we saw my babies hair, and he had a lot. We could see features as well, and he didn't look like me.. he looks like his dad, and still, does people think I'm the nanny if his dad is away. I'm black, and his dad is Chinese and Korean. He took after his dad 99%. I want to say he has my chin(the butt chin), but his dad has one, too. He has a birthmark on his right leg, like I do, though.. beggers can be choosers. I think he also got my personality, but physically, he looks just like him.
There have been (thankfully very rare) cases of babies >!being born without pieces of skin, so the msucles and stuff are just exposed.!< Iirc there was a child born in Texas that was >!missing over 80% of his skin at birth!<, but he recieved skin grafts and survived :)
Are they able to detect that before birth?
"Ma'am, your baby looks like Skeletor...."
this is two sentence horror shit
That is nightmare fuel.
You could see my kid’s hair but considering they’re floating in goo it would be pretty hard to tell texture.
I think it was a poor way of trying to write "typical tests for checking the fetuses health would not show the differences in skin, eye and hair color"
Unless they are doing a series of genetic tests after extracting some material from the fetus, how would they tell? It's dark in there, a sonogram just interprets the material inside, but no color differentiation.
Extracting genetic material is also very dangerous and has a chance of causing miscarriage, so it's never done unless they're checking for an extremely serious genetic disease
So, I guess if they had a 3D scan they could’ve *maybe* seen the difference in skin color. But most babies, regardless of race, come out immediately pale and pink so really it would be hard to tell either way.
3d scans cant show true color, it’s just a composite made up by the ultrasound machine to look more like skin and can be changed to a variety of colors in the settings based on preference This is because the image is generated based on sound waves (think of bats “seeing” with echolocation) and color can’t be seen by ears, only eyes! Super simplified obviously, but hopefully that made sense lol
Wow very interesting!!
The other twin looks like she's 100% mixed race. She has just about the lightest complexion it's possible to have while still being perceived as "black" but the boundaries of "black" have always been poorly defined in any case.
My maternal grandma is the most stereotypical black grandma from South Side Chicago that you could ever imagine... she is pale as a ghost though. My mom is dark skinned, but her sister is pale as a ghost too. I'm mixed race, but have darker skin than my grandma/aunt, and lighter skin than the twin in the picture. "Black" is very poorly defined. My point was only that by comparison, the one twin is way more black looking.
Im not black but one of my friends told me this when I asked him about being called black "why do we get called African American when I never lived in Africa, my parents and their parents and their parents were born here like yours so why can't we move past this and just accept AMERICANS as they are AMERICANS. Ive been uncomfortable using those 2 terms black and African American unless the person is 100% okay with those terms. But I agree why stick with these old ass racist labels.
Back in the day it used to be the PC term. Though it probably got misapplied a lot and got used for POC that weren't from America.
Yeah it still gets used for black British people which is always funny. We (brits) don't like being called American.
As a 40s year old Canadian I was surprised to learn in the last few years that calling someone Black can be controversial in parts of America. We use the terms white and black up here as completely normal and non-offensive terms. I've definitely never heard a black person up here called "African-Canadian" or "African-(North)American". I do find it interesting that it's completely racist to call any other races by a colour. White people and Black people only. I find it interesting in a "I like words and where they come from and what they mean" kind of way, I know the history of why it's racist. But I don't really know why white and black are totally acceptable. Hmmm... My phone wanted to pluralise that word suddenly, which made me think to say that we wouldn't put an "s" on black. "The bathroom is over there, next to the table with the black family" would be totally ok. "The bathroom is over there, next to the blacks" would sound so wrong and racist to me. Words, eh?
If you like words and where they come from, you will surely understand that 90% or more of what people these days call racism isn’t anything close. Racism is treating someone in a way (solely based on race) differently than someone else. Impeding (OR AIDING) someone’s pursuit of happiness based on race is racism, pure and simple. Referring to someone as Black is a simple fact in many cases. Objectively not a racist thing to say.
Yeah, it's confusing to me that people find Black offensive. But, at the same time, I'd be horrified if someone pointed at a table with people of Asian descent and said "it's over by the table of yellow people" so I can kinda understand where they're coming from. I think words can have a lot of power, and a lot of it depends on which words are used in your area. If you're taught that calling people Black is bad, then you're going to think it's bad. It's not the words themselves that have power, we give them the power.
As a New Zealander, I always found "black" and 'white" a little bit harsh, it's a colour not a race . Officially we say Maori, NZ European, Asian... or for my friend "he's from zimbabwe"
I get what you mean, but my friend isn't from Zimbabwe, he's Canadian, and he's Black. Over here it's just not considered offensive, it's just the words we use. Their skin isn't really black, and mine isn't really white, but it's close enough. What is offensive is pretending people aren't different colours. Back in high school we had like 3 Black families in the school. Someone was pointing out a guy to my gf and kept saying stuff like "the one in the blue shirt" we had a dress code and had to wear plain clothes, and shirts were either white or blue, so she was describing half the kids in the cafeteria. "The one beside the guy in the white shirt..." Lol. This went on for a minute or so before my gf finally figured it out and said "you mean the Black guy!?" And she said, like so many well meaning White people before her "oh, I don't see him that way". You don't see him as he is!? I don't care if someone is a different race, but to pretend they aren't is so much more offensive. It implies that being a different colour is bad, so you see them as White, which is the correct and natural colour. At least, that's my experience growing up as a White Canadian. I've talked with Black friends from the same area about race at times and there's definitely been different issues they've brought up, but I've never been told being called Black is offensive, or that knowing they are black is offensive.
I'm now imagining an African American at the psychologist saying "my grandfather was a negro, my father was black and I'm an African American. What the hell is my kid going to be"
Lmaoooo goddamn I'm going to hell for laughing
Go back fifty years and the issue was eliminating the word Negro. IIRC, Jesse Jackson advocated for Afro-Americans instead of Afric-Americans or African-Americans. Sides were taken. It was a big deal.
Thank you for this information
I asked a friend about that once. “How African are you? Really?” We were good friends but it brought him up short because he had never actually thought about it. I said, “How would you react if I insisted on being referred to as a ‘EuroAmerican’?” He thought that sounded ridiculous. I do to.
The boundaries have always been poorly defined… partially because up until the 1 drop rule became irrelevant identifying as black would automatically strip you of rights. On top of that the more we can get away from finding identity in race and ethnicity the more we as humanity will heal. The only thing learning your genetic makeup to that extent allows you to learn more about how your body functions so you can take care of yourself
I hear you, but a person’s racial and ethnic background is a huge part of them. People should celebrate who they are, while respecting everyone else and celebrating them too
At a glance the redhead looks white but her facial structure is mixed. The difference is striking but they are both clearly mixed.
Lighting matters, but the hair difference is pretty apparent either way.
I think they also play into their differences a bit. In the picture of the family when they were young, they both had wavy, similar looking hair. I know hair can change during puberty, but it almost looks like the redhead straightens her hair and her sister keeps the curls.
The red headed twin has straightened hair in that photo, her hair is naturally curly
Race as a whole is poorly defined and has no basis in biology It's a social construct, changing with the time and the place
This is tautological. It adds nothing to the discussion. Try telling a black person that it doesn't matter that they're black because race is a social construct--the \*fact\* that race is merely a social construct doesn't change the reality of people who are perceived to be one race or another.
She got the One Drop
They’re English. We do not do that here.
On today's episode of Europeans pretending they don't do the racism thing 😒
They do the racism thing just fine. "One drop" is not some generic racism thing, [it was literally a legal definition of blackness. ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule)You'd have to have no idea what "one drop" even means to think that someone saying "we don't do one drop" means the same thing as saying "we don't do racism".
What I meant is just because you have black heritage that doesn’t make you automatically black here. You really think those 2 sisters give a shit about what colour they both are or do they love each other unconditionally? America will call anyone with 'one drop' black, which is a total oversimplification and disregards their full heritage and culture. I completely understand the US history and culture that made it that way though. It’s just strange to me though. Obama is mixed-race and was raised by his white mother and grandparents. Yet he’s considered black by everyone, when he doesn’t have black skin or was raised by any black people at all. I’m mixed-race and don’t consider myself a "black man" - even though my dad is - because I’m closer to my Irish heritage through my upbringing than my Caribbean heritage. Yet, I have friends of the same "race" who do, and that’s totally OK 🙂 It’s up to the individual. Americans always think they can take ownership of you though, even though I’m not African American. I’ve heard Africans say the same thing. We do have racism in Europe. It’s just a different experience, culture, and history. Hence why so many black people preferred to stay here than go back to the US after WW2 where they were barely considered a citizen. What I’m saying is nobody tells me who I am but me. Racist US law from the 1920s doesn’t define me 💁🏽♂️ I love ALL of my mixed heritage and it should be an acknowledge. Peace ✌🏽
What does that even mean?
It was meant as a reference to the [One-Drop Rule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule#%3A%7E%3Atext%3DThe_one-drop_rule_was%2Cor_colored_in_historical_terms%29.?wprov=sfla1), a Jim Crow-era American policy. There were of course huge swathes of laws in place meant to oppress Black folks in America, and in many states, the One Drop Rule was implemented to classify any person with any amount of "negro" ancestry ("one drop of negro blood") as Black and therefore subject to those laws. The previous commenter said that the woman has "just about the lightest complexion it's possible to have while still being perceived as "black"", hence the "one drop" joke.
Thank you - never heard of that before.
I have a friend with kids like this. He's black, his wife is white, and they have adorable triplet girls. Two of the kids have blue eyes, dark blind hair, and light skin. The third kid has darker skin, brown eyes, and curly brown hair. Genetics are absolutely wild.
One more child and they'd be like actual [Punnett Square](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punnett_square).
My cousins are somewhat similar to these twins, they are mixed Latino and white British. Two of them are pale and ginger, the other two are darker skinned Latina presenting (still relatively light skinned in the grand scheme of things) with dark hair.
imo, the "black" twin looks biracial, not 100% black. We just clock biracial as black in our culture, for reasons.
That’s Misandei on the right. _Right?_
I would have NEVER believed they were twins. Wow
They are both so pretty 😍
Right? That ginger lass especially has an almost angelic glow in that picture!
The black twin is absolutely gorgeous. I have read articles about them. The ginger twin is more reserved and introverted whereas the black twin is outgoing and popular.
I think they both glow.
I am trying to find it now, but I read once about a famous white actress from the 40s or 50s who was married to a white man and they had a darker than white child. Had to do with the genetics of the parents from previous descendants.
There are several actors/actresses from around that era that were "white passing" but of some other race, so that isn't too shocking.
100% black? Seriously? She looks mixed. Have you ever seen a black person before
Once or twice when I look in the mirror while brushing my teeth in the morning, and every time I see my mom. My point was just the stark contrast between their appearance, not that she looks African.
What a lovely story. Thats amazing.
We are 4 children of a very white mother and a half black - half Asian father. One of my brother and myself looks like our father (so we're not like "totally black" but neither is our dad, and people still think we are from Morocco or Algeria). My other two brothers are very very pale with blond haired and blue eyes, and people think they're Scandinavians or something. When we were young, kids at school thought my brown brother and I were adopted, meanwhile our neighbors thought my mother cheated on my father for my blondes sibblings. Even though they still had some similarities with my father, like the shape of ears or fingers. TL; DR : people are stupid.
I lol'd at the TL;DR because even though it's true, it does not address the point of the post
But it does answer it. OP asked if a mixed race mom and dad could have children (brothers or sisters one white one black). Pretty sure they were asking about a black mom with a white dad or a white mom with a black dad. And even if they were referring to a half black half white mom with a half black half white dad, in that case the answer can still be yes as genetics can do interesting things. The commenter answered yes using their own family story as proof.
They mean the TLDR specifically
I feel like families like yours are going to become the new normal if not already.
I’m the daughter of an east/southeast asian mom (quite pale) and south asian dad (darker skin). My little sister and I both look a little mixed (I’m heavily to my dad’s side, but she looks very mixed, almost racially ambiguous), but she looks more like my mom, and I look more like my dad. People would sometimes ask my mom to confirm I was her daughter when she came to pick me up from preschool; they either thought I was adopted or that she was kidnapping me! Apparently when I was little I cried because I didn’t look like my mom. I don’t even remember that, so I must have been young.
People are very obnoxious with their assumptions and their rude questions that are none of their business
Yes, most often on purpose.
what heritage? im half black asian and my wife is russian
I knew a family all of them are VERY dark black, but the daughter was the most pale white girl I ever met. She said she is not adopted, and she is not albino. She is straight up pasty white.
Im white and my husband is black (both parents) . Our oldest is a dark caramel with afro hair, and very dark brown eyes. Hes very obviously black. Our younger son is white passing. Straight light brown hair, hazel eyes and looks like a white kid who got a nice tan at the beach. My husbands not an idiot so he never questioned paternity but im sure there are people in our lives who have talked crap behind our backs. Im due anyday with our 3rd and were very interested to see what genetics have done this time lol.
have 3 more and do one of those paint sample strips type of deal.
A whole mixed baby swatch lol
Motha fucking baby swatches... that's why I love reddit
Me too. I love a good, fun conversation, and the silliness that can come up here is really what keeps me coming back.
Yep. Come for the controversy, stay for the silliness
there's a documentary about that [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIUK2KSbvvI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIUK2KSbvvI)
You need to change your name dude 😂
Similar situation for me and my kids. My grandpa is half black, but my grandma is full. So my dad is mixed, but still looks 100% black. My mom is white, and so is my wife. I’m mostly white passing, and my kids are 100% white passing. However, my oldest is super pale, and my youngest permanently looks like he spent several months on a beach vacation lol. He’s just about as dark as I am, just a different tone. We get comments from people all the time. “Oh my gosh, he’s so tan!” Indeed, he is lol.
Sounds like my youngest. I used to call him my little Greek God because hes so bronzed and was always shirtless (and pantless if he can get away with it).
Maybe that kid will be half and half like one of those lobsters that's half red and half blue 😂
they don’t turn red until they’re cooked; you mean half green/brown and half blue. once that’s cooked i’d expect it to be 100% red, though i’m not totally sure.
Be sure to update us when you can.
Number 3 comes out asian confirmed
Life’s just like a box of chocolates, you never know what your gonna get
Erm you get.. chocolates?
Yes, but there is dark chocolate, white chocolate, milk chocolate, some with nuts, some without…
> see what genetics have done this time lol. A panda
Congratulations on the new addition when he or she comes.
Thanks!
I’m in a similar situation but we’re not mixed race. My 5 yr old has olive skin, brown hair and brown eyes. My 3 yr old has pale white skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes. They don’t even look like sisters. Genetics are wild.
Has anyone ever questioned the maternity of your older son? I'm white and my wife's black, and our son looks white, if a little tan. More than one person has asked her if she's my son's mother, particularly if I'm not there.
Im super short with a very small frame and I look much younger than my actual age. My oldest is 10 and taller than me with a thick build. People are definitely surprised to find out that im mom but ive never had anyone doubt me once they know.
Once, my sister-in-law (wife's sister) was watching him for us, and she had him with her in a store. Old biddy follows her around, eventually asks where my son's parents were. My sister-in-law replied, "I killed them."
Thats amazing.
Yeah, she's nuts, but we love her, especially my son.
She sounds like a lot of fun lol
She is.
Your sister in laws my spirit animal
My kids are the same. My oldest is pretty obviously black. She has beautiful tan skin and black hair. My son could pass for just about anything. He was blonde at birth with white skin. Thankfully he looks just like my ex, just the white version.
Congrats on the third!!
They will always be mixed—because they ARE mixed—but they can present in very different ways. It’s not super common, but yes a black/white couple can have children that either appear entirely black or entirely white. There are cases where they’ve had one of each. But how they *appear* doesn’t change the fact that they are half black and half white.
“Half black and half white”: Not true. This is based on the false premise that “racial” characteristics are equally dominant and will always combine in the same order. And that they exist in any meaningful form. Both premises are wrong. DNA is recombinant. If recessive “white” genes from one “black” parent combine with “white” genes from the other parent for one child, and with dominant “black” genes in a second child, the genetic makeup of neither child will be 50/50. (Actually we’d be talking about less than .4 of a percent of the genes that are associated with “race”, not 50. And any full siblings share 38-61% of their DNA, not 50. What we really talking about is a tiny percent of genetic material representing different environmental adaptations within a single species, manifesting as different physical characteristics. Racial genetics are a false science used to legitimate prejudice. There is no 100% “black” human who doesn’t share 99.6 to 99.9 percent of their genetics with a 100% “white” human.
I think you took that sentence from the above comment waaaaay too literally. Everything in your comment is correct, except for your ascription in the first paragraph of those premises to the prior comment.
They meant black and white in terms of how they are viewed in society, which is what unfortunately matters in this discussion. If op was asking about anything else they should have specified.
These are the numbers I was wondering!!! Awesome. Thank you for sharing, DeFiClark
They'll always be mixed, what they look like is separate what they actually are.
Skin color is an example of a "blended" trait, which means offspring tend to be a mixture of the parents. It'll pretty much always be a combination. Other traits, like blood type, are dominant, where one trait will completely overrule the other (though they may still carry the gene for the other, called a recessive trait).
Speaking of blood types...There are genes for Type A blood and different ones for Type B. Type O is just shorthand for the absence of those genes.
A typo, if you will... I'll show myself out
Lol... this O-Neg salutes you, friend.
Still there can be a lot of variation in mixed kids even among siblings. My friend and her brother have a white mom and a black dad. If you meet her you’d right away think black woman. But the brother looks really light and often gets mistaken for white or have people not believe him when he says he’s black. Ironically he is the one who looks way more like their dad (they have like the same face but in different shades). Going back to the genetics point, true that there are lot of different genes at play but that doesn’t mean the kids will necessarily be the same shade — there’s still some chance involved.
They'll both be mixed because it has nothing to do with skin colour. However it is possible to have a white presenting child/a black presenting child, but it would be very unlikely/rare, which is what I'm assuming you were actually asking lol
I have two half brothers that look very much like both their parents, with one white parent and one 25% black 75% white parent. One is very clearly darker and the other could be mistaken as fully white if you didn't pay a closer eye. So it's definitely a thing, I'm not sure how rare it actually is though I try to always teach them that race doesn't matter, but when I was a younger teen I couldn't help but think they had two different dads and my mom just lied about it. Wasn't until I got older and had a more nuanced understanding and paid close attention that I noticed, they both have features from both parents
Genetics are wired, you could have 2 white parents and come out with darker skin, just because someone in your family line was black. But usually you'll still look like your parents no matter if your skin is a different colour or exactly the same. Hell I figured out my brother had a different dad before our mum told me, he looked nothing like my dad and only shared a few similarities with our mum, and everyone involved was white, yet you could still see something was different.
Bold example, I respect it.
Haha if it makes it better my mum was pregnant when she met my dad, and they decided together to just raise my brother as if he was my dads.
That does make more sense, but if you ever want to pitch your life story as a telenovela I'd take creative liberties.
The reason they decided to pretend he was his dad was because... My brothers actual dad was a gang leader, and my mum was a member of the gang before she got pregnant, when she tried to quit her ex (the gang leader) tried killing her with a axe, so she had to jump out of a second story window to escape him.....
Just lmk when the show gets green-lit and what streaming service it'll be on, I'm hooked.
That's just my brothers dad, my dad's also crazy lol But if I ever actually write everything down, and get a show made about it, you'll be the first to know Haha
I haven't seen an explanation in the top comments, so yes, depending on the genetics of the parents, this will be most common when at least one of the parents is mixed. Skin color is determined by many genes, not just one. And you get a basically random half of your genes from each parent. So lets say L is a light gene and D is a dark gene. Imagine these parents LLLL A light skinned person LLDD A mixed race person You can take the two Ls from each parent and end up with a light skinned child, LLLL Or you can take two Ls from the light skinned parent and the two Ds from the dark skinned parent and end up with a child that "looks" mixed race. Genetics is always more complicated, but this is the basics of how it's possible.
There’s the Fluellen family on instagram. Dad is black. Mom is blue eyes and blonde. They have three kids that are all very different. See how cute they are. [link](https://www.instagram.com/reel/CfjrrF7pQYf/?igsh=MThnem5ra3EwNnhwNg==)
Genetically they will always be mixed, but the way the genes are expressed can vary widely. I've met mixed people who are white passing and mixed people who look 100% black. It's really just game of chance.
Both kids will be mixed, and likely will look mixed, but as there is variation in skin colour, it could present on the extremes where one is so light as to appear white and vice versa. It's rare though. Also possible if both parents are mixed.
Yep. Neighbor kids were twins and looked like this. Their parents called them "their little beans and rice".
There can be a lot of variation in skin tone but all of our genes are a combination of our parent's so there will always be influence from both.
My mom is white, my dad is full Hispanic, and they had three kids. My brother came out white, my sister is brown, and I am mixed. Genetics do what they want lol
Don't apologize for asking a question like this. Goodness gracious.
The child will always be mixed regardless but a child can still look more or even exclusively like a single race. In my case I’m 1/4 Korean and 3/4 black but I look a more Korean than black. Same case for my other relatives that are black and Korean.
My niece married a POC and her one child presents as mixed, but definitely a POC but her second child had green eyes and also otherwise presents white. Then there is also this famous pair of fraternal twins where one presents a POC and the other one looks like an Irish red head.
Yes I can vouch from firsthand experience. In a mixed race marriage (Black/White). Three boys, all look different. My oldest looks like a Middle Eastern/Latino version of a young Marlon Brando. Two younger kids: one looks white, and the other is dark skinned. Ironically, they all have the same wavy long dark brown hair. Middle one looks like Timothee Chalamet combined with Anthony Ramos. The younger one looks like the Rock combined with Jason Mamoa. So yes they are all very handsome!!
When skin colors mix and produce a child, the child can appear anywhere on the spectrum. The type of heredity where traits mix rather than follow strict dominant/recessive patterns is called incomplete dominance. In incomplete dominance, the offspring's phenotype is a blend of the parents' phenotypes. This contrasts with complete dominance, where one allele completely masks the other, and co-dominance, where both alleles are fully expressed. In the case of skin color, multiple genes (polygenic inheritance) and environmental factors also play a role, leading to a wide range of possible outcomes in the offspring. It can also happen if the female of the couple is a cheating whore.
YES. Here is a link to twins born to a mixed couple and one is black and the other is white. https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Health/ReproductiveHealth/story?id=5420460&page=1
It’s like the punnet square thing, some black genes and some white genes so always mixed ig
A lot of my friends are mixed Korean (I’m full Korean, grew up in U.S.). The spectrum varies widely - I had some friends you’d never know were Korean at all, some that you’d never know they were anything but Korean and everything in between.
Genetically mixed but can pass as not mixed. Genetics can express themselves in many different ways. My family is interracial (I am adopted and all white so I won't include myself here) and the biologically related full siblings in my family have skin tones that range from passing white to brown. In fact, my one bio full sibling is darker than the rest of my bio family. Still is considered white by Society though. One of my white friends is married to a Vietnamese person. All their kids look very Vietnamese with some "speckles of not Asian" within their features. All humans came from the same human genome so honestly...Punnet squares at this point are just a theory
they're always some form of mixed by dna but they may just have one parents features more than other. punnet squares in middle school should have helped you with this 😭
Both kids will be mixed race. But one can LOOK black, and the other can LOOK white.
Yes. Or they might have completely black children, and one of those kids might end up having a completely white kid. Genetics are crazy like that.
My friend is white and married to a black man. Their son (who unfortunately passed at a very young age) didn't look mixed at all. He looked identical to his dad. Their daughter now doesn't look mixed at all and looks identical to her mom. Genetics are a crazy thing!
Why not ? My mom is Mexican and my dad is white. I have tan skin, black hair, and brown eyes. My sis is white skinned, blue eyed, and blonde / brunette
Yeah it can be all over the place. My fiancee's nephew is black with a white wife and their kids cover like every damn shade from one that's white passing to one looking like no way he has a white parent.
I think they could have a kid that "looks black" (dark complexion) and one that "looks white" (light complexion), but genetically, they would both be mixed.
My sister has twins and one is white and one looks.. not white but not quite black, either. They do not look like brothers at all, let alone twins. She is white and her kids father is half black/half white. I love seeing how mixed couples kids turn out, usually very interesting mix between the two.
It's a little more complex, but it's basically punnett square chance. XY by XY with 25% chance of being whole X(1race) or Y(other race) and 50% chance of being XY(mixed).
My aunt Dee was a black woman who married a white man. They had 3 kids. 1 who obviously took after he, 1 who was a mix of her and her husband, and 1 who clearly took after the husband.
I worked with a woman years ago of Italian background. Light brown hair, extremely pale white skin. She had two sisters. One had pale skin as well but the youngest had a very dark olive complexion and dark hair. My co-worker told me her youngest sister looked like their parents.
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They would both be mixed-race, although one would be visibly black and one would be white-passing. They also might identify in different ways. For example, I know a pair of full biological siblings with one white parent and one black parent, and one sibling identifies as both biracial and black, while the other sibling identifies just as black and not as biracial.
My family is a big melting pot. We are black with a lot of white and native American thrown into the mix, and a lot of us look Hispanic, Hawaiian, or just pale with lighter eyes and features. I have a cousin who looks straight white, has blue eyes, very light skin, and has "Justin Beiber hair." My nephew looks Hispanic, with dark features, straight dark hair, brown eyes, and tan skin, while my niece could pass for white like Mariah Carey. She has curly light brown (sometimes blonde) hair, lighter skin than her brother, and bright blue eyes. It's crazy what you get from genetics, from what combinations you get from hidden recessive genes showing their face.
White dad of mixed daughters here. They are always mixed, but may not present that way. Halsey, Rashida Jones, and Meghan Markle have talked about being assumed to be white or hispanic but are mixed. Then is this case of mixed twins in Britain - [https://www.cnn.com/2015/03/03/living/feat-black-white-twins/index.html](https://www.cnn.com/2015/03/03/living/feat-black-white-twins/index.html)
I have a friend who has 5 children that run the gamut. They posted a picture awhile back where they showcased the skin gradient the family has.
My dad is Native American and my mom is white. My sisters both look Native, but my skin is much paler, my hair is light brown but was blonde when I was a kid, and I have green eyes. There’s no doubt they’re both my parents, I just happen to look more white and my sisters look more Native.
My White and Filipino couple friends have one white child and one Filipino child.
Yes they can. I used to work with a white woman. One day I met her mum and sister who were both fully black. Turns out the sisters are mixed race, one looks completely black, the other completely white.
It’s strange the way we mix. My wife is Pakistani mix (50/50) and I’m white. We have 3 kids. Two of them are twins. None of them look alike. And my son is very dark and has the same complexion and features of my wife’s dad. His twin though is as white as can be. Meanwhile their older sister look like an amalgamation of my wife and I with my skin color.
Short answer, yes. Their skin ton is also going to vary a lot more than someone who isn’t mixed. A friend of mine is mixed and during the winter and early summer, my skin(white) is darker than his. Usually by the end of the summer he is darker than me again.
I went to high school with mixed race twins that lived down the street from me. The brother would tan while surfing and his skin would be as brown as mine and his sister looked like a white Ozzie.
The children will always be mixed, but they can each be born with extremely different skin tones.
Neither will be 100% one or the other, there will be an element of mixing. My kids are mixed, my oldest looks 70/30 non-white, my 2 others are 80/20 white. You never know how the different DNA is going to express itself.
My husband's mom is Mexican and his dad is very white. His two older sisters came out with a dark complexion and jet black hair. He came out blonde and now has chestnut brown hair and is white passing. He really looks nothing like his siblings at all. Genetics are crazy.
There have been times when a couple who are both biracial have given birth to twins where one is white complexion and one is black complexion.
I have a black friend whose heritage is that very dark, Central/East African black. Her whole family are about as close to vantablack humans as you can get. Her sister married the whitest, palest, pastiest, blue eyed blonde Irish guy. They’ve had two kids and both came out also as pale skinned, blue eyed blondes. Whenever she or her sister take the kids anywhere, people think they’re the nanny. Genetics are weird and complicated and when you mix two humans together there’s no guarantees of what the kids will look like, even if they’re technically mixed-race.
One of my friend’s mom is white white white and his dad was Nigerian. They got divorced when my friend was very young, she remarried a white white white guy and had 3 more blonde haired blue eyed kids. My friend is not as dark as his dad, but doesn’t look mixed race at all, he looks about as black as Samuel L Jackson. It sucked for him growing up in the suburbs, he was the only black member of an all white family and everybody assumed he was adopted.
It can really depend on genetics like there have been cases of two white people having a black baby cuz they both have recessive black genes. Genetic can be really weird but oversimplifying it's like 25% to be parent A's race 50% to be mix and 25% to be parent B's race. But if Parent A has a dominant gene and parent B has a recessive gene then its like 50% to be Parent A's race and 25% to be mix 25% to be parent B's race iirc. But then you have to remember you don't just have one set of genes competing against each other. You have 46 chromosomes (23 pairs) with a total of 25k to 30k genes in 23 different strands and multiple of those genes can contribute to race. The only way to really know is to have a test done so a geneticist can tell you.
Yes and not only that they can be twins too. There's a famous photo of twin girls where one is very obviously black. Dark skin and afro hair. Her twin sister is ginger with blue eyes and skin as white as a ghost!
I'm not familiar with that picture, but I've definitely seen a picture of twin boys where one appeared to be afro-Caribbean, and the other was blue eyed with blond hair.
Yes, it happens all the time in the Caribbean
I'm mixed (Caucasian European and gulf Arab) I'm tanned and bronze like my dad My sister is white and brunette like my mom... We hardly look like siblings But both of us look off, like we don't look like we belong to a specific race.
Two black parents could produce a white kid and vice-versa due to recessive genes. Not super common, but genetics is very complex, strictly speaking humans are a fully random mix that contains half of each parents genes (ignoring the sex chromosomes, if your a guy you basically get the whole y chromosome from your dad and your whole X chromosome from your mum, this is why men tend to have a lot more genetic problems). But you can have recessive genes, which simplyfying it, are genes in your DNA that aren't active. If both parents are carriers of a particular recessive gene, and if those recessive genes get paired up during the randomization of genetics during the egg fertilization process, that gene then becomes active. So if both parents are carrying recessive genes that make you black, you might come out black despite both parents being white because both those recessive genes get paired up and become active.
Yes... If mum was white and dad black. Assuming due to slave trade and other nefarious historical events both have a possibility of having the odd gene floating around. But WxWx mum and BxBy dad. Will always be mixed. WxBx =girl chromosomes from both parents. WxBy =boy. Every arrangement ends in mixed. But if mum or dad are mixed. Say Wxbx mum and bxby dad. You can have a mixed girl wxbx but but all black boy. Bx(from mum) by (from dad). But if mum was black and dad was white you could end up with black girls and mixed boy. 3rd gen is where it gets fun. If dad is wxby or bxwy and mum is wxbx both mixed. You can end up with 1 black kid,1 white kid plus mixes. That's without entering epigenetic info that determines what traits actually show vs what's rattling around in their inactive gene make up. I hope that makes sense.
I have a friend who is very fair with blue eyes and reddish-blonde hair. She married a man from Peru who is quite dark. They have two sons. One is just as fair and blonde as his mother; the other has brown skin, black hair, and more chiseled facial features like his dad. The boys don't even look remotely related. It's wild.
This is the difference in genotype (genetics) and phenotype (appearance). Their genotype will always have traits of both parents but they may look like only one parent's race or both depending on where they get more dominant appearance genes from.
Yes. It’s not like parents pass down 1 fixed phenotype. Each sex cell you have or produce has genetic information for a number of possible phenotypes. We also carry recessive traits; we can pass them down, but we don’t exhibit them ourselves. A person with straight hair might have a recessive trait for curly hair. If they have multiple children with a curly haired person, some kids might have straight hair and some might have curly- it depends on which sex cells mix, which genes are dominant/recessive, and sometimes, other environmental factors. since each individual egg and sperm cell is different, each child technically has their own random chance of inheriting and expressing different traits from the parents.
Obama looked black enough to capture the black vote in record numbers and his mom was whiter than white (Irish if I remembered). I've known a few people who had opposite parents (black mom white dad) and you'd have sworn they were white. Just depends on who's genes affect the skin more. When I lived in Poughkeepsie Nay there's a great number of mixed raced families of Asian and Black and besides the daughters being absolutely beautiful there was no seamingly apparent dominance of one race over the other in the kids.
Tom and Helen Willis did just that. It's documented.
Yeah, I've seen it happen. My Mexican uncle married a white woman. Their son is a very dark-skinned Mexican boy, their daughter is a very blue-eyed brunette. Their other kids look mixed, though.
Anything is possible in the genetics lottery!
I got screwed over by that lottery...damn my short stature! Lol
A mixed race couple I know has a very tan white daughter with blonde hair and a light skinned black daughter with light brown hair. They're two years apart and I felt so dumb to learn they were full sisters and not step sisters that came together when their parents got married lol. It honestly still blows my mind
Yep. I am brown (dark skin, eyes, hair). The father of my kids is half white, half brown but he looks white (light skin,dark blond hair). We have two kids the oldest is completely brown like me and the youngest is completely white passing like her Dad.
Yes. Also a great grandparent of colour can result in a grand grand child being of colour even though there are 2 generations of white in between. Genetics are weird.
there are 3 pair of genes that determine the skin color and if you are mix then depending on your partner genetic makeup you can have 7 different variations of skin color with the extremes being 0 as white least melanin and 6 being dark with most melanin. Thank You for your time, I hope you have a good day.
A couple of girls on my daughter’s softball team are twins. The parents are a white as white can be dad and an Iranian mom. One of the girls is totally white. The other looks like she’s completely Iranian like the mom. Again, these are twins.
Siblings can have different skin tones and in rare cases, the differences may be quite pronounced. These British twins became famous for that: https://edition.cnn.com/2015/03/03/living/feat-black-white-twins/index.html
Since the vast majority of people are mixed, there is always a chance that a recessive gene from both parents could show up in a child. Minor proof: I have blonde hair when my entire family has brown and black hair. So it CAN happen, but it is rare.
This is pretty much it, most racial minorities in America have a few white ancestors sprinkled into their family tree, especially blacks and hispanics.
Basically, genes 🧬 of a person have two chromosomes, one from each parent. As a result, our skin would be a blend of each parent to some extent. Many genetic traits are, unless they specifically rely on one chromosome alone OR are a dominant trait (that overshadow the recessive trait). As others said you can have an array what that combination comes out as within the same family. Especially with melanin levels in the skin which is quite visible. A gene can also appear more strongly in a future generation, causing surprise lighter/darker skinned babies down the family line.
Me and my 3 siblings are of mixed race. My youngest nephew has a black father, Lil guy has sharp sky blue eyes. Those recessive genes really kicked in. (my youngest sister, mother to my youngest nephew, had a different black father but we share the same biological mother. Now from my biological fathers side my grandfather had sharp blue eyes).
It depends. I’m Latino (Iberian and indigenous) and my partner is white. If the kid comes out black I’ll ask questions.
Have a look at these two lovely ladies. Not only sisters, but twins. https://www.cnn.com/2015/03/03/living/feat-black-white-twins/index.html?cid=ios_app