The Study of Racialism

If a biracial (white-black) couple has many children, some will look mixed, some will look white, and some will look black. For those who look white, for instance, is it the case (most of the time, at least) that they inherited the genes that code for European appearance (I know I'm making it appear far more simple than it is, but bear with me) only, and the genes for phenotype that they can bequeath to their descendants will only be those for European appearance?

Is it then the case that only in a few rare cases, a European-looking person with some African ancestry will have inherited some genes that code for African phenotypes, but not enough to change their appearance? And when this person mates with a person with the same genetic situation, an African-looking "throwback" child may (not definitely will) appear?

It comes down to probabilities. Considering only skin tone, a first-generation Nordic-Bantu child must have an in-between (50-50) skin tone. But where both parents are first-generation Nordic-Bantu mix, then their children could span a very broad range--a bell curve of probabilities centered on the 50-50 skin tone, but with the two tails going all the way to the extremes. Finally, if one parent is already at one extreme, but the other is 50-50, then the bell curve is skewed or shifted toward the extreme parent.

For the specific computed probabilities of a White-looking child born to Black-looking parents and vice versa for Philadelphia, Spain, and the Sea Islands of South Carolina, see The Heredity of Racial Traits.

Your article is excellent, as always.



So a very white-looking child of parents who are a 50-50 Nordic-Bantu mix would probably have descendants who look completley European, provided he or she mated with a European. And those children, provided they married Europeans, would bear European-looking children, and so on, right? Is this the way darker populations in various countries "whitened" themselves?

Yes.


Yes.


I thought that they used cosmetic hydroquinone. <grin>

Do you have MS-Excel? If so, download http://backintyme.com/admixture/Genetics.xls to your computer. This will let you experiment with the genetics of various imaginary populations. Type a set of numbers into line four. Colums A-G represent how many people are of each phenotype from the fairest (A) to the most African-looking (G). Then press the "Run" button. The program will compute how many children in every subsequent generation fall into each phenotype column. You can easily see that even if everyone is 50-50 mixed at the start, it takes only a few generations produce European-looking and African-looking individuals.

I'm surprised at you, Frank. I thought you would have said...Clorox!

Yes, I have Excel, and I will try what you recommended. Sounds interesting. Thanks