Yes, Lena Horne has a razor sharp straight nose. As does the aforelinked Wentworth Miller. But yes, I grant that it’s uncommon in people with African-American ancestry. Of course, as pointed out already, it’s also uncommon in people with white European ancestry.
Another thing to mention as a racial marker (or whatever) is the Mongolian blue spot.
Granted, not a facial characteristic, but interesting to note that my kid with the dark hair and eyes did have a one while the blond and blue did not.
In my experience it is common for black women to be aware of the chance of a baby having a Mongolian blue spot, as it can be mistaken as a bruise by the ignorant.
Of course…it mght say more about the Native American heritage present in many US blacks than anything, as it is more seen in East Africans than West Africans (West Africans being more likely to have been enslaved and have descendants in the US) According to one of the articles above it is present in 90% of Native Americans.
I find it irritating when people like Halle Berry (who is lighter than many “white” Spaniards, specially in the summer) get classified as “black.” What, doesn’t she have a mother?
Mind you, this is usually done by the same folks who will call Sade african-american… or claim that Charlize Theron can’t be from Africa… (I’ve met the first in the US and the second in Spain)
Eh, c’mon, with your location? Gerard Depardieu has an even bigger nose than my (Basque) Dad… and bigger than Tiger’s 
Well, this is one white chick who’s never heard of a Mongolian blue spot. Learn somthin’ new every day. Thanks!
My kids are half English, half Japanese. The elder boy had just the very faintest shadow of a mongolian spot (they can actually be quite big, his was about a handspan across the top of his butt crack) that only showed up at first after a hot bath. They normally fade by four or five years old but his got darker as he darkened until it was a definite shadow there all the time.
My English girlfriend whose boy also has a Japanse dad had a sticky moment when she took her three month old baby to a clinic in her very white area of England. His spot was broken up and looked rather like a set of finger prints across his back. He is much darker than my son and the spots were dark purple. She got taken aside and asked a lot of questions until she was able to tell him about Mongolian spots, then he went to check, and came back to apologise. She was very scared that the baby was going to get taken off her. I think this would not happen in a more ethnically diverse area.
My younger son was born with no Mongolian spot, and blond, though neither kid ever had blue eyes, they were very very dark slate grey and went brown very rapidly - still were the talk of the hospital here! First kid as it came out - no “It’s a boy/girl” from my Dr, just a yell of “Ara! Kami ga akai!” “Wow! Red hair!” On the other hand, my MIL took one look at my huge blond, pink slug and crooned that he was the spitting image of my very, very dark husband. Hmph!
In England they don’t quite look English and one woman asked me if their Dad was Italian which I thought interesting. In Japan they are constantly called “gaijin” (foreigner) which drives them wild… It does seem to be a case of people seeing what they want to see.
Actually I have proof positive of this, with COUNTLESS numbers of women rushing up to either baby and yelling, “Yappari, me ga okii!” (Of course, his eyes are big!) even when the baby was asleep!
The Fulbe (found throughout West Africa from Senegal to Cameroon) typically have straight, fine noses. Here is an example of a Fulbe (also known as Peul or Fulani) woman. They claim Arab origins, but there has been some admixture I think most of us would classify most of them as “black.”
I would guess these genes are rarely found because the Fulbe were more likely to sell slaves than to be slaves.
I heard that Korean features are especially dominant over white. On an episode of “John and Kate Plus 8”, so very scientific! Kate tells the story of her mother in law telling her when she got pregnant, “I hope you will not be disappointed that none of your children will ever look like you. Korean genes are very dominant” (paraphrased.)
John of the aforementioned series is only half Korean, IIRC. He looks Korean. His wife is white “mutt” by her own account. (Blond, blue-eyed.) So their children are only 1/4 Korean, yet all 8 of them look very Korean.
Not sure if this would be true with a Korean / black mix.
In addition to the all the points have been raised elsewhere, it also comes down to how we define the “black” construct. Black = having any African ancestry. America sets the bar low when it comes to the amount of Africanness one has to have to be black. When, for example, even sven says she mistook an American black guy as white, what she is communicating is that the guy had a mixture of Euro- and African-looking phenotype. But that doesn’t give us much information on what he really looked like or what his heritage is.
To generalize, the way we use “black” affects they way we perceive mixed race people. People don’t become “mixed raced” in our minds until we know what their parents are. They are just black until someone provides us with that info. Even when we do have that info, our social programming still leads us to lean towards the black classification because it has been the default until very recently. So instead of being able to see the African and European features equally (or at least to the proportion in which they are exhibited) we disproportionately see that which makes that person “less than white”.
Anyone else notice that the title doesn’t match the discussion? One black and one non-white parent?
Anyway, my anecdotal contribution: I knew a man (picture a younger, slightly darker and more handsome Bill Cosby) who had 2 daughters with his Filipina wife. Neither of the girls looked to me like they had any African-American heritage whatsoever. They were the same skin tone as the wife, and their features were completely Asian.
I do think a fair amount of it is hair. American white people in particular use hair color and texture as a primary identifier. It’s one of the first markers they go for.
Many years ago, Mom and I argued about the ethnic makeup of the guy next door. She’d seen him in daylight and swore that he was black. I’d seen him at night under a porch light with a hat and was quite sure he was Indian (American variety).
He’s mostly Indian and white, with one grandmother from the West Indies. His facial features are very Indian, but he’s got kinky hair. People who saw him at night or in a hat the way I did almost always pegged him as Indian, people who saw him in daylight without a hat always thought he was black.
I’ve got a mixed-race friend - black father, Italian/mutt mother. The Italians swear he’s Italian, the Greeks swear he’s Greek, the Persians think he’s Persian, Hispanics think he’s Hispanic, etc. etc. etc. He’s got such a generic “olive skin, curlyish dark hair, dark eyes” look that everyone tries to claim him.
Halle Berry, who has a black father and was raised from age 4 by her white (English) mother, self-identifies as “black”. Wikipedia quotes her regarding this.
Her statement you quoted sounds like quite the opposite – she declines to self-identify at all; however others want to characterize her race is fine with her.
I don’t know if I agree with that. It was obvious to me that all three photos are of sub-Saharan Africans who were albinos. The color of their skin is as light as typical white people but their features are totally African.
And I don’t know what his racial background is, but does anyone else think Obama looks a lot like Brian Stokes Mitchell?