# Can an black African baby born with pale skin and soft hair maintain features?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-black-african-baby-born-with-pale-skin-and-soft-hair-maintain-features/773193>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [November 27, 2016, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-black-african-baby-born-with-pale-skin-and-soft-hair-maintain-features/773193 "2016-11-27T18:19:57Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\
**Post date:** [November 28, 2016, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-black-african-baby-born-with-pale-skin-and-soft-hair-maintain-features/773193/21 "2016-11-28T23:40:53Z")

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> [@Jane\_Smythe](#):
>
> Why do you care about this? Is it better to look like an Indian or an Arab than look black? WTF?

> [@crinoidgirl](#):
>
> I’m having a hard time with this, too. It shouldn’t matter. You’d think this thread wouldn’t exist in 2016.

> [@DrCube](#):
>
> Not sure, because I’m not from anywhere near there, but my impression is that much of Africa is far more racist (for want of a better term) against dark skinned people than the US is. Lighter skinned people are considered more beautiful, healthier, smarter, they get better jobs, earn more money, etc.
> 
> I mean, I’m not racist at all, but if I had a choice, I’d only have tall, beautiful white children, myself. The economic privileges alone are impossible to deny.

**Moderator Note**

These questions and comments are inappropriate and irrelevant for General Questions. The OP asked factual questions that potentially can be answered factually. Let’s refrain from questions about the motivations of the OP.

Colibri  
General Questions Moderator

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**Author:** ![Nawth\_Chucka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c57346/32.png) [@Nawth\_Chucka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nawth_Chucka)\
**Post date:** [November 29, 2016, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-black-african-baby-born-with-pale-skin-and-soft-hair-maintain-features/773193/22 "2016-11-29T01:04:38Z")

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His features will set in regardless, b/c they are his features. He’ll look like him, though his facial features will shift as his teeth move down and then out of his head. He has all of them, under those chubby cheeks and chin fat.  
I don’t know what you mean by his hair follicles **restructuring** , what is it you believe they do as a person ages?

From the pics (btw, did you ask your cousins if you could upload their baby’s pics to Wikimedia, or did the parents do that under the heading of ‘Black African Baby With Pale Appareance [sp] At Birth’ themselves?), it looks as though his skin is the color I’ve seen of most brand new babies; his soft hair is very much like most baby’s hair. They’ve been cradled for months in protective goo, no sunlight or ambient air has reached them to have any kind of affect. Heck, he stayed curled up for probably the first 3 months of his life out of habit.

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