I'm still a little confused. Sorry. Are you referring to him as the white child of a black parent or is his son the white child of a black parent?
I agree with what you said about people needing to realize which celebs are halfies. I mean, everybody understands that mulattos/biracials can look like Halle or Barack or Lenny, but do they realize that some of us look like Slash, Jennifer Beals, and Rashida Jones?
No, I can tell you most people don't and that is why I am assumed to be Puerto Rican, Italian, etc.
Other, this thread is about appearance not how the mixed person identifies. So Felicia was just dealing with appearance as such with the rest of the people posted in this topic.
Yeah most likely, if in the U.S where the definition of what looks Black is more loose and yet that still doesnt stop many Americans from constantly confusing you for being Nonblack, than in Brazil you would definitely for sure be seen by most Brazilians as being racially different from your husband. Didn't you say once that you and your husband have been confused for an interracial couple before, judging by the ugly stares that you would get from some Black women ?
I'm still a little confused. Sorry. Are you referring to him as the white child of a black parent or is his son the white child of a black parent?
I agree with what you said about people needing to realize which celebs are halfies. I mean, everybody understands that mulattos/biracials can look like Halle or Barack or Lenny, but do they realize that some of us look like Slash, Jennifer Beals, and Rashida Jones?
No, I can tell you most people don't and that is why I am assumed to be Puerto Rican, Italian, etc.
Other, this thread is about appearance not how the mixed person identifies. So Felicia was just dealing with appearance as such with the rest of the people posted in this topic.
Oh, my bad. I've only peeked in on this thread a few times, so I didn't realize it was based on appearance. I guess I should go read through the thread, huh?
Posted: Tue 03 Jun 2008 22:12 Post subject: parsons
Karyn Parsons (Fresh Prince of Bel-Air) with daughter Lana and son Nico.
Her husband is director Alexandre Rockwell, the -ex of Jennifer Beals and father of Beals' daughter.
Jan Kristian Silva - 6-yr old tennis prodigy of Swedish/African decent.
Last edited by pitta on Wed 04 Jun 2008 01:32; edited 2 times in total
Posted: Mon 09 Jun 2008 15:31 Post subject: Re: Beals
pitta wrote:
Karyn Parsons (Fresh Prince of Bel-Air) with daughter Lana and son Nico.
Her husband is director Alexandre Rockwell, the -ex of Jennifer Beals and father of Beals' daughter.
Jan Kristian Silva - 6-yr old tennis prodigy of Swedish/African decent.
Jennifer Beals' current husband is the father of her daughter, not ex-husband Rockwell:
Posted: Sat 06 Dec 2008 17:06 Post subject: Re: Black parents with White kids
Altertude wrote:
fwsweet wrote:
Discussions on the heredity of phenotype often focus upon whether Black parents can have a White child. More precisely, whether a parent who self-identifies as a member of the U.S. Black endogamous group can have a child who looks so White (has such a European phenotype) that he or she has little choice in adulthood but to either self-identify as White (like Carol Channing) or to evade the question altogether (like Vin Diesel). The following collection of photos may make this clearer.:
The Hogdson twins
Eartha Kitt and daughter
In addition, there are many photos available of White celebrities with sub-Saharan African ancestry.
The case which interests me here is The Hogdson twins. In this picture we have BOTH parents so we can note the "base" and resulting phenotypes. I find that useful information.
Are these Hogdson twins before the era of IVF because some of these one white one black twins have come about through clinic error? I still see gradation mostly. Could the "white" twin here perhaps result from the random combining of only certain of the parents underlying genotype?
These are fraternal twins in any case.
Eartha Kitt and daughter draw my attention too. As I just caught a part of a 1973 talk show appearance where Eartha Kitt justifies going to South Africa. She went there because she felt this was the best way to understanding the racist system of Apartheid; through first hand experience. I was always struck by the powerful and dramatic way in which she spoke. She always had what seemed to me a upper class European accent.
I read about Merle Oberon and her possible East European heritage on IV.
christ.. whats wrong with america lol the Hogdsons are mixed people not black.. they dont even look black lol.. and thus their babies came from a random mixture of their genes... the light skinned genes that were dormant in both parents became active in the second twin.. l
Posted: Sat 06 Dec 2008 20:22 Post subject: Re: Black parents with White kids
hamasen1 wrote:
Altertude wrote:
fwsweet wrote:
Discussions on the heredity of phenotype often focus upon whether Black parents can have a White child. More precisely, whether a parent who self-identifies as a member of the U.S. Black endogamous group can have a child who looks so White (has such a European phenotype) that he or she has little choice in adulthood but to either self-identify as White (like Carol Channing) or to evade the question altogether (like Vin Diesel). The following collection of photos may make this clearer.:
The Hogdson twins
Eartha Kitt and daughter
In addition, there are many photos available of White celebrities with sub-Saharan African ancestry.
The case which interests me here is The Hogdson twins. In this picture we have BOTH parents so we can note the "base" and resulting phenotypes. I find that useful information.
Are these Hogdson twins before the era of IVF because some of these one white one black twins have come about through clinic error? I still see gradation mostly. Could the "white" twin here perhaps result from the random combining of only certain of the parents underlying genotype?
These are fraternal twins in any case.
Eartha Kitt and daughter draw my attention too. As I just caught a part of a 1973 talk show appearance where Eartha Kitt justifies going to South Africa. She went there because she felt this was the best way to understanding the racist system of Apartheid; through first hand experience. I was always struck by the powerful and dramatic way in which she spoke. She always had what seemed to me a upper class European accent.
I read about Merle Oberon and her possible East European heritage on IV.
christ.. whats wrong with america lol the Hogdsons are mixed people not black.. they dont even look black lol.. and thus their babies came from a random mixture of their genes... the light skinned genes that were dormant in both parents became active in the second twin.. l
If I'm not mistaken most of those couples that have been presented were from Europe. The first one I read saying " couple has black and white twins" was a European/British news read. So don't go jumping on America so fast.
I do not think that we have a special topic, other than this one.
But Melanie's picture is amazing. If those are two sets of twins from the same parents, you are looking at 1/100 (chance of having twins) X 1/16 (chance of one sibling lighter than both parents and the other darker) X 1/100 (twins again!) X 1/16 (outlier kids again!) = one in 2-to-3 million! Astonishing!
Related to the "black" and "white" twins here's an episode of the Montel Williams Show with two British women who are also "black" and "white" twins. They are the same women who were profiled in an article posted here some time ago.
Aug. 14, 2008--My son, Liam Kojo Johnson, entered the world pink and screaming, slate blue eyes squeezed shut. Peach fuzz covered his perfectly shaped head, a place-holder for the blonde hair that would soon grow there. His twin sister, Chloe Adjoa, came in peace. She was the color of gingerbread, with jet-black hair. Her calm, stoic face carried traces of beloved matriarchs on both sides of the family tree. Upon arrival, each baby looked a bit like their older sister, Jasmin, but nothing like each other.
In African-American communities, it's fairly common to see family members with different hair textures and skin tones. Fraternal twins are no exception: By definition, they're the product of two fertilized eggs who just happened to have shared the same uterus. Wombmates, if you will, no big deal. Or at least I thought so until I saw the rash of headlines from abroad. Over there, twins like my own, with both African and European ancestry, are being called a scientific anomaly. They say the odds are a million-to-one, yet scanning the headlines ad nauseum makes that kind of hard for me to believe.
Last month, little Ryan and Leo Gerth were born in Berlin to a Ghanaian mum and German dad. The hospital called a press conference to cover their "black and white" twins. In 2006, Alicia and Jasmin Singerl were born in Australia to parents of West Indian and European descent. Great Britain has done a particularly fine job at welcoming two-toned tots, claiming Remee and Kian, Layton and Kaydon, Orlando and Natalia and Marcia and Mille, just to name a few. Not to mention the myriad of "black and white" twins we probably have here in the states, including those of Libra Thompson from the 10th season of Big Brother. The press said the odds were "a million to one," but no matter how many examples have been reported, the odds never seem to go down.
Even in the United States people didn't quite know what to make of the sight of my twins. In those first years after Liam and Chloe were born, my family lived in New York's Hudson Valley. And almost anywhere I went with my twins, strangers would ask me questions about them.
How could one be so pale and bald, the other considerably browner, with kinky curls atop her head? Do they have the same daddy? Are you 100 percent sure you're not the nanny?
In the beginning when the twins were tiny (and I was a hormonal zombie), the silly questions at the supermarket would frustrate me to the point of tears. Then I learned to force a smile and just try not to smack shoppers for trying to guess my twins' ingredients.
These days, I'm ready for the elderly lady in the dairy section—the one who sizes us up and stares us down for two minutes before saying anything. The kids look slightly more alike now, at age 3, so the questions aren't as blunt as they used to be, but I still have my stump speech ready: My husband is biracial, and although I'm not, there are slaves and slaveowners in my lineage. Trust me lady, it's not really that deep when you consider the history of our country—ever heard of Sally Hemings?
At this point, I just try to make it to the next aisle before laughing aloud at the nerve of some folks. But it seems that as far as the rest of the world is concerned, the joke might be on me.
When the Western World starts ignoring our skin colors and starts getting real, maybe we'll see these "miracle twin" stories for exactly what they are: living proof that it's time we rethink the concept of "race."
Ethnicity and culture will always be real, but the concept of race is not that straightforward. In America, there are some truths to face. We can start by facing a history many people are still too ashamed to talk about directly: slavery, miscegenation, class, caste and rape. Any American that looks at two siblings of different colors and is confused doesn't just reveal their ignorance of race, they show their lack of understanding of the history of this country, and where their own story fits into it.
It would have been very easy for me to just give in and play along with the twin delusion, too.
Contact some smarmy tabloid and put my whole family on parade. Maybe get a nice little check out of the deal, as well. It would have probably been enough for an evening on the town with my husband. (And what new parents don't need that?) But I wouldn't even do that for Knox and Viv photo-shoot money. As for the other parents with twins much like mine who chose to go public with them, despite the fact that all of these babies are obviously of mixed ancestry, I try not to be too judgmental.
I just hope that when the lights go down and the reporters go home, that the show is really over. That the novelty of these twins doesn't overshadow the more mundane reality beneath the surface. And that those parents of unmatching twinsets—and the rest of us—don't really believe the fantasy that "black and white twins" peddles in. Every set of so-called "miracle twins" is a blatant but beautiful reminder that the concept of "black" and "white" is still a gray area.
Meera Bowman-Johnson is a writer who recently left upstate New York for Houston, Texas, with her husband, Mat Johnson, and their five-piece family band.
Joined: 07 Oct 2007 {Posts: 248 } Location: United States
Posted: Fri 09 Jan 2009 18:11 Post subject:
fwsweet wrote:
I do not think that we have a special topic, other than this one.
But Melanie's picture is amazing. If those are two sets of twins from the same parents, you are looking at 1/100 (chance of having twins) X 1/16 (chance of one sibling lighter than both parents and the other darker) X 1/100 (twins again!) X 1/16 (outlier kids again!) = one in 2-to-3 million! Astonishing!
But are the twins really darker and lighter than both parents?
But are the twins really darker and lighter than both parents?
Ah. Excellent point. I merely assumed that they were, but now that you mention it, they may well be within the skin-tone range spanned by the parents, in which case the odds rise dramatically.
Also, come to think of it, it is incorrect to multiply the two 1/100 probabilites of having twins. This is because twin-having tends to run in families. If a couple of parents have already had a set of twins, the chances that they will do so again are better than the original 1/100.
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