by Tami Winfrey Harris, ARP editor
Over at The Root, Meera Bowman-Johnson has a predictably compelling and thoughtful article, titled “Double Take,” about recent breathless headlines about twins who appear to be members of different races–one black and one white. In the piece, she speaks eloquently about her own beautiful babies:
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. Read more…
What deserves a hard look–a “double take,” if you will–is the article’s comments section where responses create a kind of microcosm of some of the varying arguments in the overall “race discussion.” You have the “race doesn’t exist so why are we even talking about this” people…the “identifying as multiracial is a rejection of blackness” folks…the “why are you minorities always talking about race” crowd. The responses to Meera’s piece require as much discussion as the article itself. They offer proof (as if any of us need it) that this race thing is complicated and emotional and oftentimes very personal.
What do I think? I think that those “Twins born: One black, one white!” headlines are the result of our society confusing social construct with science. Throughout our country’s history, the racial equation has gone something like this: white + ”other” = “other,” particularly when the “other” is black. And so, despite the mixed heritage of most African Americans, we are, in this country, “black” and nothing else. That is social construct. It is so, because society says it is so.
Meanwhile, genetics wil
l out. The mixed heritage of African Americans reveals itself in a wide range of facial features, hair textures and skin colors–some that favor the European and some that appear more African. We all have light-skinned, freckled cousins with kinky hair and deep brown ones with European features, too. But the mainstream is perplexed by the dark brown child with blue eyes or the twins with different skin tones. Heck, some black people, ignorant of their own history, are perplexed by these ocurrences, too.
Even when mixed heritage is recent–when a child is biracial with one black and one white parent–people seem hard-pressed to imagine how genetics could work to create someone who possesses physical markers of European ancestry. In my experience, it is easier for people to accept that a biracial child may look like someone of African ancestry. I think this is because society wants genetics to follow the “one drop rule” and genetics does not have our biases.
What do you think?
(Note: I’m talking about this in black and white, because the headlines seem focused on sets of twins where one appears white and the other black. Also, European ancestry is prevalent in African Americans due to slavery, but of course I realize that many black people also have Native American and other ancestry, too.)
Image courtesy of csskclark at Flickr
I’m reading Sweeter the Juice right now (a woman’s memoir about her family many of whom made the decision to live their lives as white people) and this post was especially compelling because of that. Thanks.
“I think this is because society wants genetics to follow the “one drop rule” and genetics does not have our biases.” – I agree. Wholeheartedly. And yes, the one drop rule is still being used today, as to why the headlines are as you described. Short-term historical memory.
I think that as long as we are so fixated on the physical attributes of people (trying to figure out their ethnicity/background, as opposed to preferences/personality), this debate can go one forever. I, for one, do not see the point in figuring out why these twins look so differently. That’s like trying to figure out why they will have different temperaments. But, I know for most it is really fascinating. I hope that one day people’s foci will shift to traits that are much more relevant to a person’s well-being.
Sometimes the fixation on skin color is unspoken but obvious, nonetheless. I have an adopted sibling pair, ages 5 and 6, brother and sister, respectively. They are Biracial, born to the same white mother and Black father. My son has light brown skin, course, medium curly hair, and dark brown eyes. He is obviously Biracial. His sister has white to olive toned skin, much softer, loosely curled dark brown hair, and dark brown eyes. She is not so obviously biracial, though she has a broader nose and fuller lips than her brother. We also have 2 other biracial children and 2 Black children, all of whom are adopted, as well. All of the children are physically beautiful kids, but the one who gets the most attention for being “cute” or “pretty” is the whitest looking child,(according to skin color) our 6 year old daughter. I think this is a direct result of the fact that she is fair skinned in a culture that still determines beauty according to color.
I don’t really pay attention to racial issues, people are people and I don’t get into the drama.
But I am fascinated with genetics! It is really neat how many different looks can come from the same two people!
I was a Teen MOPS leader years ago and a typical blonde white teenager had a baby with a black teen. Their baby was soooo pale skinned and blond! He was even more pale than his mom. I’m sure neither of them was expecting that, but boy what a qtpie!
It is always fun to see what a child will look like. We have 7 children and all but one have the same coloring of hair and one child appears to reveal a very far back line of Native American, though he is blond, his skin is more tanned and never burns.
I remember hearing about the “one drop rule” when I was in my late twenties. I must admit it horrified me that people thought like this. It also shows how naive I was about things.
Recently, a neighbor and I were talking and she started to talk about Obama. At one point she talked about how even though he was raised by a white mom and white grandparents he kept identifying himself as black, she didn’t understand it. In looking back at my past views on things I understood how and why my neighbor thought this. But thanks to ARP and other blogs I was able to explain that how he was raised isn’t how people saw him. His skin color would always be what people saw first. I honestly believe that my neighbor was surprised by this. Just as I would have been before reading ARP.
Thank you for a great website. I just discovered loveisntenough a few months ago and I have really enjoyed the thought-provoking discussions you provide. Huffington Post covered this “one in a million” biracial twin story a bit ago and it made me so mad. My children are not part of a freakshow and neither are those twins. It’s nice to know other people noticed the strangeness of the black/white twin story too!
This is indeed a provoking discussion, and in the spirit of discussing reader comments, I would like to hear more from Qtpies7 about why she chose to describe racial issues as “drama”. My aim is not to call into question her intentions, but rather to encourage other readers to question more broadly the influence that our word choices have on the way we are perceived. I think that when we discuss issues of race, ethnicity, white privilege, and prejudice, it is especially important that we honor these racial issues as the very real struggle that they are. I am not a parent myself, but I am deeply grateful to my own mother for sharing with me the painful experiences she had as a biracial child and continues to have as a biracial parent and adult.
I think that our willingness to be deeply self-reflexive (although this is a difficult and painful task), especially about our language and what our word choices mean, will help us to share our commitment to love others honestly and without fear.
Sara: You’re being very nice. Maybe too nice.
QTPies 7: >I don’t really pay attention to racial issues, people are people and I don’t get into the drama.
Please go read the post above this one – “people are people” and “I don’t see color” are dismissive of people’s very real CULTURE and ETHNICITY. Thanks for triviliazing heritage. In my experience, people who “don’t pay attention” are privileged enough (or want to be) to not HAVE to pay attention.
> Their baby was soooo pale skinned and blond! *snip*boy what a qtpie!
And you sound really happy about that. European beauty standard much?
>one child appears to reveal a very far back line of Native American, though he is blond, his skin is more tanned and never burns.
This is a really common (if often wrong) idea among people, mostly of European descent, in the US at least (possibly Canada too, i don’t know). Skin that tans easily and doesn’t burn may have nothing to do with native peoples ancestry and everything to do with central and southern European ancestry. After all, all Europeans don’t look alike, any more than all Africans or all Native Americans, Asians, South Americans, etc. look alike.
Not to mention that a “Cherokee grandmother” is often a euphamism/familial fiction to cover a much less acceptable alternative – such as a black or Latino ancestor.
I am biracial (Black father/white mother) but often people can’t tell. I look white and people assume they know me when they look at the color of my skin. It has always been a struggle for me because it has meant that I’m always on the outskirts of every group even among biracial adults. I am fortunate to be surrounded by my siblings and my children who are all biracial as well. We all have different features, skin colors, and identifications. My sister identifies as a black woman and my brothers identify as black men but they understand why I identify as a biracial woman. I have had friends tell me that I should pass as a white woman but that would mean that I would be denying part of myself and my heritage and I try to communicate to them how horrible this would feel to me. I have definitely seen the one drop rule in action. At college I was identified as a black woman. You should have seen people’s faces when I showed up in their class or on committees. I definitely wasn’t what they were expecting!
Wasn’t the case in one British sets of twins (5-10 yrs ago, if not more) by a white mother with fraternal twins from 2 different fathers from different ethnic backgrounds? ‘Cause twins from 2 different fathers are probably rare.
>‘Cause twins from 2 different fathers are probably rare.
We covered it here many moons ago.
http://www.racialicious.com/2007/03/23/fertility-clinic-mixup-results-in-black-baby-for-white-parents/
It’s a case of fraternal twins conceived via in vitro fertilization, and one twin was not the intended father’s because of shoddy business practices on the part of the lab doing the fertilization. The article involved much stress and angst on the part of the parents, mostly about appearance (instead of the obvious – strange parent = unknown medical history, etc.)
What made it worse is that the article acted as if the mother was a pale northern european person, while the picture shows that she is clearly a Dominican woman of mixed descent. Her daughter who is not her husband’s child is not DRASTICALLY different from her other daughter or herself, but the article makes it seem so.
As a lot of commentators said at the time, it’s hard to tell if the article’s attitude actually reflects the parents’ attitudes – but if it does, both little girls are going to need some serious therapy.
Other sets of twins that i’ve read about with phenotypic disparity (there’s been publicized British, Aussie, and US cases) have been with the same parents for both twins. It’s just that one or both parents are ethnically diverse. Either mom’s eggs both happened to carry either extreme of the skin color genes (plural – there are up to 7 alleles at last count), or dad’s sperm were also divided, or both.
Funny thing is with all these fraternal twins is that we only see baby pictures. I don’t know about you, but my toddler looks nothing like her newborn pictures.
I’d bet that if you saw them now as toddlers and kids, with longer hair and sets of teeth and more defined features, someone with experience with diversity and a non-prejudiced eye would spot them as related, and possibly siblings.
I must say i was a little irritated by this story also. These people would have had a field day with my family. Both sides of my family have mixed heritage but nothing recent
(My fathers great grandmother was black and great grandfather was irish and on my mothers side her fathers grandmother was a creole quadroon and her mothers grandmother was either a black seminole or some other mixture as she was adopted by a native mixed family and she gave little information about her real heritage before she passed on. At the end of the day we are all black, unless referring to the people in my family that have a parent of a different race.
So people on both sides of my family get the “what the heck are you people” all the time. I have family members with the same parents who look very different. Example: I have three cousins with the same parents, both black and they all look like siblings and resemble their father but people constantly question why Tanya has blond hair, grey eyes and light skin while her sisters have reddish brown hair, brown skin and hazel eyes. Only a small majority of black people ask why Tanya is different due to their knowledge of the multicultural past of the black family but many white people seem intrigued that this can happen among siblings with the same parents.
I find it funny that something so common is a phenomenon, especially when these are fraternal twins, who always look different from one another anyway. Now if they were twins who were identical in every way except for their skin color that would be amazing….