If that’s the case I’m thinking of, it was a fertility clinic mixup—they fertilized some of a woman’s eggs with her husband’s sperm, and some with the sperm of a black donor.
My best friend’s mother was considered to be black growing up (she’s 87 now). When my friend was a teenager, his father told him that his mother is black, and he could barely believe it. In terms of her skin tone, she seems white.
So it’s all a matter of how you define “black.”
Yes, if they’re not identical twins. I believe the twins you’re referring to are in England. The mother had sex with two men in a very short period of time. Each guy fertilized one egg. There you have it.
Apparently somebody didn’t clean the speciem jar very well, and one sperm from a black donor fertilized one egg.
I have native American ancestry and a brother who is very dark, yet I look as white as a person can. Someone once told me I couldn’t be part native American because “you don’t look it.”
Russian poet Aleksandr Pushkin had 1/16 African ancestry. While there are traces of his heritage in his appearance, in the US he would probably be accepted as “white” unless his ancestry were known.
I would guess offhand that a significant percentage of people with 1/8 African ancestry appear to be “white” (in the sense of appearing to be European enough to be accepted as pure European; of course, only under the “one-drop rule” would people with 7/8 white ancestry be classified as “black,” no matter what their appearance); at 1/16 many people would look “white”; at 1/32 most people would appear pure “white.”
Especially given, IIRC there are relatively few genes actually involved in skin color. Given one ancestor in 32, the chances are quite good that he might have not inherited ANY of those genes from that particular ancestor.
We had a thread on inheritance of skin color a while ago. Given two people who appear to be intermediate in skin color between African and European, there is a small but significant probability (IIRC something like 1/64) that any one of their offspring would appear to be pure European (or pure African) in skin color.
Nah, no problem. Honest question if you didn’t know this stuff already. Don’t sweat it, and welcome to the Board!
Which I started.
Come to learn, stay to teach.
Who knows what obscure fact someone may need, & you may know.
Be welcome.
I think this picture answer quite well the OP…
I suspect one problem the OP has is that he or she has bought into the “Black genes are dominant” saying. Even if there were such things as “Black genes”, and even if they were “dominant”, your point is well taken. You only get half your genes from any one parent, and after 5 generations, that’s a lot of chances to lose most of those “Black genes”.
That’s not a good proof at all, since she is almost certainly wearing lots of make-up and has most likely died her hair and altered its texture.
He was actually 1/8 black – his great-grandfather was Ethiopian, a fact that was celebrated at the time.
Interestingly enough, the British royal family, who are about as white as white gets, culturally speaking, have African ancestors, who at one point were trotted out as a justification for British rule in Africa.
Thanks. The site I checked gave the relationshop as great-great-grandfather, but my Encyclopedia Britannica confirms that Wiki has it right.
I’m Metis (a mixture of French Canadian/Native blood). I’ve got your typical Native poker-straight black hair, but I’m pale as pale can be. Some people think that I dye my hair or that I’m goth, but nope, it’s my luck of the draw with genes.
I know a woman who’s half Mohawk and is just as pale as me, but with wavy blonde hair. None of her features are what you would describe as Native. She got all the genes of her Irish side.
Another thing to remember is that “black” tells you little about how black someone is. The guy mentioned in the OP may very well have an ancestor that is black, but for all we know that ancestor could be as mixed as Mariah Carey. Just because someone is black doesn’t mean they are “fresh off the boat from West Africa” black.
One could even, from those parents, get one child who appeared pure “white” and one who appeared pure “black”, perhaps even (fraternal) twins. This could happen without any mix-ups of parentage at all, just a single monagomous couple.
Genes for darker pigmentation are generally dominant over those for lighter pigmentation, but as John Mace points out, this does not necessarily mean that the offspring of a dark person and a light person will be dark. Even in a simple one-gene-locus case, the darker parent could be carrying a light gene, hidden by the dominant dark gene.
No, this is not correct, at least not for human skin color. As descibed in the thread on the inheritance of skin color, most of the genes involved in human skin color do not show a dominant/recessive type of inheritance pattern, but are instead what is called “co-dominant.” Offspring show an phenotype intermediate between those of the parents, rather than showing either one or the other phenotype (as in the case of brown/blue eyes, for example). Since there are several different genes involved in skin color, each with two or more variant alleles, a large range of phenotypes can be produced.
Re: Pushkin. Many sources refer to him as a Black poet. At least, that used to be the case. I haven’t seen it much lately. This may have been a way to credit his African heritage or a reflection of the one drop is enough to taint you theory.
Also, keep in mind that the genetic variation within groups that are referred to as races is much greater than the average variation from one race to another. This is probably part of the reason that the concept of race is losing currency as a stable and immutable concept. But it helps explain why the notion of white blood or black blood is such a tenuous one.