Michael Jackson claims that he is the biological father of his son, Prince, who has anglo features including blonde hair. Is it possible for someone of African heritage (black) to have a recessive blonde hair gene and produce blonde white kids? What are the odds?
He can’t. Mike Walker from the National Enquirer talked about Michael Jackson at length on the Howard Stern show this morning. (MJ and the N. Enq. have a looooonnnng history.)
MJ has a long documented history of lying, telling stupid lies, and contradicting himself.
I’ve known quite a few people with at least one black parent who have naturally blonde hair, and I’ve seen plenty of kids with at least on black parent with anglo features.
Coloring is just one aspect of “racial” appearance. Also children often tend to be blond and light skinned compared to adults in the same family. And other features such as the nose, the jaw line, and shape of the head shouldn’t be ignored.
Having said that, with everything else we know about Michael’s lifestyle, there is every reason to have doubts here. While it is entirely possible for people of mixed ancestry to look “white”… , I don’t believe Prince Jackson is his natural son.
The answer is, the hair isn’t genetically “blonde.” It is light enough to appear blonde, but the hair will darken over time, sometimes not until the person enters puberty. Even two white parents can have blonde kids whose hair later turns brown.
Case in fact: A cousin of mine married a white woman and they had a little girl. Lisa was very blonde and very light-skinned. In the California sun, she maintained a beautiful tan and the sun kept her hair bleached. The effect was quite striking. We recently received Lisa’s high school graduation picture. Her hair is now a light rusty brown.
So, I have to say that’s it’s quite possible MJ’s children can appear white and blonde. Don’t raise your eyebrows too far until they reach puberty.
I watched the interview and saw his kids–I thought the boy’s hair looked as if it had roots (had been dyed.) Did anyone else notice that? Obviously, it may have been the lighting, but at the very root the boy’s hair appeared darker.
Yes, I watched with friends and we all agreed that it was bleached blond.
plain_jane - Mr. Adoptamom and I noticed the dark roots also.
We are white parents who’ve adopted black and biracial children. When our son was born (white mom, black dad) he was a light, toasty color. By the time he was 4 or 5, he’d already darkened to the color he remains today at 11, a medium brown person who gets very, very brown in the summer time.
Our daughter, 10 years old, black, came to us appearing white, with bright blue eyes at 3 days old. I told the adoption agency they’d made a mistake. We were there to pick up a black daughter. She remained light skinned and her eyes began to darken, first to green, now a beautiful hazel with green flecks. Her skin has settled into a light cinnamon color, and in the summer, she gets golden brown.
My coworker is a biracial man, married to a white woman, and their 4 year old daughter appears white, with white blond hair.
Hmm, we have a friend, white, who had a daughter by a black man. The daughter, now grown, is mulatto but looks completely black.
This daughter (#1) had a daughter by a black man. Daughter#2 is 1/4 caucasian and at 11 years old looks completely white: blond hair, peaches & cream complexion. Daughter#1 later had a son by a different black man; at 8 this boy looks completely black: black frizzy hair, deep brown skin.
Hard to say how those genes are going’ta mix, I guess.
My father, a very light-skinned black man, had blondish-hair when he was a child. I have biracial cousins who could pass as white easily, but their black parents are all light-skinned, like my father.
I noticed the dark roots too, but it also seemed like Prince’s hair looked straightened. To me, these are disturbing things unto themselves. But I would not be surprised if it came out that those aren’t his kids. The fact that all three of his children are very “white-looking”–not a brown baby in sight–suggests to me that something’s fishy.
There’s a little boy at my church who has very light skin and bright blond hair. His grandfather did too.
There was a family at my high school with 11 kids, of whom I knew three. Their father was part black. Two of the ones I knew were indistinguishable from white people. The third one, although very lightskinned, was obviously black.
Even so, I would think the chances are very rare that MJ would get 3 out of 3 being white as paper, especially considering his original skin color.
From what I’ve read, he stated that the mother to the third child was black. Huh?
Lamarkian inheritance from the masked one’s constant skin bleaching 
Prince’s hair is almost platinum.
I hope to god he’s not dyeing that kid’s hair-that’s not good for someone that young.
Even Michael Jackson’s mother has gone on the record doubting that the latest child, Prince II (“Blanket”), the one he dangled over the balcony, is Michael’s natural child.
I definitely agree that there’s somethign weird going on with MJ’s children. HOWEVER, I used to know an african american girl whose parents were both medium to dark in their skin tones. This girl, however, didn’t really look black AT ALL. Her skin was porceline (sp?) white, and her hair was naturally auburn/red, her facial features were still like that of an african american, but that was it. She was amazingly striking.
I guess it’s theoretically possible that MJ’s kids are actually his own, but I have my doubts.
This is sort of an odd thought…there is a thread around here about mule fertility, and the finding that if a mule breeds successfully with a horse, it produces a horse (100%), and if it successfully breeds with a donkey, the offspring will be 100% donkey. There is some sort of “original gene” segregation going on, such that all of the (for example) maternal horse genes go line up with other horse genes to give a horse, while the donkey genes would go with other donkey genes. Of course, mule fertility is a rare thing, and I don’t know how well this mechanism is known.
My thought is this: is it possible to have a similar thing going on in humans when it comes to colour? If a black-appearing person is half white, for example, and has a child with an white person, could there be some “imprinted” mechanism pulling out the other “white” genes? I know that this is taking a step towards saying that white and black are different races, and I don’t want to get into that debate, but I’m just trying to sort out how this can happen to such “extremes”. Is it random segregation of genes, or are the maternal genes (in the case of donekys) somehow imprinted to segregate a certain way?
I don’t know if any of you have an answer to this…maybeI I’m thinking too much about the mules!
What does the OP mean by “anglo”? Doesn’t that refer to language?
My brother has 2 boys to the same woman - no doubts on parentage. My brother is very light-skinned and the kids’ mother is pretty dark-skinned. The oldest boy is a rich brown, closer to the mother’s complexion and the younger one is called, quite appropriately, “White Johnnie.”
As another poster pointed out - you never know how the genes are going to mix.
It originally and properly does, but in some places, especially the wastern US, it is used to mean “White American” as opposed to the Hispanic, Native American, Asian, and African-American populations and so on…but to me an African-American or Jamaican (especially with a name like “Michael Jackson”) is as culturally Anglo as anyone else.
Sometimes I snicker when I see things in the local newspapers such as “Councilmen Kowalski and DeMarco, the anglo candidates for mayor…”