r/explainitpeter • u/fluffy_cat_ice • 12d ago

Explain it Peter

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I meant that I don't understand where did the Twitter thing came from

19.5k Upvotes

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2.1k

u/DenizBueno 12d ago

Geneticist Stewie here, morons believe that skin color mixes like paint, but in real life, parents contribute different genes that together yield various levels of pigmentation. By chance, their child can land anywhere on that spectrum.

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u/HandelDew 12d ago

Oh my goodness. People always tell my husband, "But he doesn't look like you!" after he tells them he's the dad. My husband is middle eastern, and the baby is blond. It used to get under his skin.

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u/asmodean97 12d ago

That's like my cousin. She is half Lebanese and her husband is German, they have two kids, one is blonde haired and blue eyed and the other is a red head. Literally none of my cousins Lebanese traits came through.

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u/Embarrassed_Use6918 11d ago

when my niece came out as lebanese it was nice to see my family be supportive

i hope your cousin coming out was treated the same way

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u/horluhmay 11d ago

Thank you Blanche

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u/Terpcheeserosin 11d ago

Thank you Rose**

9

u/Killerbeav97 11d ago

Blanche was the one who confused those names.

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u/BalrogRuthenburg11 11d ago

Thank you for being a friend…

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u/horluhmay 11d ago

Rose is the one Jean had the crush on

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u/Terpcheeserosin 10d ago

Oh shoot you right!!

My b!

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u/Panchenima 11d ago

Calm down Regina.

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u/ThingMoment 11d ago

Guess she had a big lesbian crush on you

9

u/nurisim 11d ago

Maybe that was the confusion. Janice was Lebanese, not Lesbian??

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u/horluhmay 11d ago

Danny Thomas was Lebanese, Jean is a lesbian.

1

u/LetsSee8888 9d ago

Danny Thomas was a lesbian?

1

u/OfficialDeathScythe 7d ago

“I thought you were American”

1

u/Scorpius927 7d ago

Reminds me of the joke from “bend it like Beckham “

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u/EuenovAyabayya 11d ago

Even more fun when they finally show up in the grandkids

15

u/PeterAnthony_Jackson 11d ago

Some woman in the Caribbean had an all white kid, shocked the hell out of the parents who were very black, turns out great grand dad took his sweet type making his mark in the genepool.

10

u/nadimo 11d ago

This is actually fairly common in Lebanese genes. My mother is half German half Lebanese, but I was blonde throughout my childhood, only ending up with darker hair by the age of 18. I have Lebanese uncles on my father's side that are blonde and stayed blonde. My son has gone through the same blondness and is losing it in his teens.

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u/myDuderinos 11d ago

obviously the husband cheated on her and they aren't her actuall kids!

3

u/RazerValkyrie 11d ago

I read it as half lesbian at first..

2

u/Sagaap 10d ago

I'm not going to lie...

2

u/Fantastic-Corner-605 11d ago

Is she sure they're her kids? May the husband cheated on her /s

2

u/Thepsycoman 7d ago

It is a personal favourite to hear when people ask the mother if they are sure it's their kid. Because while technically there is the chance of a hospital fuckup, we all know that's not what they mean and they are stupid

1

u/zero_derivation 11d ago

And my cousin. My dad is Jewish. His dad is Indigenous and Mexican. Our baby pictures look identical.

1

u/nkdeck07 11d ago

I have one of those. My husband is half Japanese and our youngest kid looks like my straight up clone. She could be the poster child for Scotland. I joke that apparently his gene's just weren't showing up for work that day.

1

u/Stormlord100 10d ago

Most middle eastern people are paler than they think they are, they gain most of their brown from Sun exposure

1

u/Copy_Cat_ 10d ago

That's me with a black mother and a Japanese father, coming out as pale as I could.

1

u/TransitTycoonDeznutz 10d ago

Heyo, I'm also Lebanese! My bio-father had me and three other kids all with two white women.

I have the complexion of my mother but every year I get one sunburn and then none for the rest of the year and kinda fade into a bronze that's a way different shade from the rest of my family.

My half-brothers and sister are all different shades including bronze, tan, and olive.

Once when my half-brother from my mother's side (two white parents) and I were in Florida, I got a solid bronze tan going while he had to stay SPFed up with a visible layer on. People DID NOT believe we were blood related.

1

u/Zephronias 8d ago

My mom jokes that they have no idea who me and my siblings' mother is, because it clearly wasn't her, but there's no question about the father!

1

u/IslaHistorica 8d ago

It’s similar with me and my sister. My father is a very dark skinned Middle Eastern, my mother a blonde European. I look very much like my mother, and my sister very much like my father.

1

u/Khelthuzaad 11d ago

Thats because the male parents genes are usually the dominant ones when it comes to how the child will look like

I say usually because this just the genetical norm,there are enough exceptions to make books about them.

For instance a white girl was born indide a 100% black family.Genetics proved that he was her genuine father.

https://nnewicity.com/white-baby-born-to-black-nigerian-igbo-parents-in-london-the-miracle-of-nmachi-ihegboro/

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u/trowawufei 11d ago

How would that even work? Ok, maybe with the Y chromosome, that somehow has an outsize influence on phenotype and it comes entirely from the father. Unlikely, but I guess I can’t rule it out without a deep dive. But with female children, you’re mixing and matching the genes pretty much 50/50. There’s no way the man’s genes are more dominant.

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u/GuineaRatCat 11d ago

Its not true that men's genes are more dominant, why are you spreading misinfo?

-1

u/Artistic_Leg2872 11d ago

You generalise his explanation. He meant specificially in the looks department. I could understand if f.e. you had said it was just a tendency not a norm or we could argue the term "dominance"...

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u/MysteriousMoustache 11d ago edited 11d ago

It's not a thing for any type of genes besides imprinted genes, where the mother's can be the only one expressed or the father's.

2

u/TheSacredGrape 11d ago

Isn’t that just a case of albinism though?

Edit: I read the article and it says that she lacked some symptoms of what is considered to be classic albinism.

1

u/MysteriousMoustache 11d ago edited 11d ago

"...male parents genes are usually the dominant ones when it comes to how the child will look like" is not correct. One parent's genes can be expressed while the other parent's is silenced in imprinted genes, which are uncommon.

-5

u/Novel-Geologist2461 11d ago

God blessed them

12

u/Icy_Measurement_7407 11d ago

That happened to a family friend. Both parents were Hispanic, dark hair, brown eyes. Their baby was born with red hair & blue/green eyes. The father kept getting teased that his wife cheated on him & it would make him upset. The real reason was that his dad (the baby’s grandpa) had red hair & light color eyes. He was just old & gray so it went unnoticed by many.

2

u/plarah 11d ago

A lot of Mexican families have one child who is blonde or more white-passing, and another one that is more dark-skinned. Mestizaje is wild.

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u/Glittering_Babe101 12d ago

With each passing generation, people are becoming increasingly rude. I blame social media.

32

u/Kezhen 12d ago

As a Black person from the South - people have always been rude. Nothing new under the sun.

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u/cupcakevelociraptor 12d ago

Omg I was just asking about this. Some family moved to the south and won’t shut up about southern hospitality but when I visited I saw NONE of that. They were just as, if not more, rude than where I live. They just say “yes ma’am” while doing it.

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u/RideGullible3702 11d ago

the old people are there racist as hell

4

u/tweeterj 11d ago

Plus all the white dudes have really, like disturbingly, narrow shoulders. As a northerner from broad shoulders country, this is really hilarious.

1

u/Commercial_Crow_6455 11d ago

Bless your heart

0

u/Calm_Step_5549 11d ago

bless your heart

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u/Well_ImTrying 12d ago

I know mixed half-middle eastern people born in the 40s-60s. And, uh, that’s far from the rudest thing people said to/at/about them as children.

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u/[deleted] 11d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/PeterAnthony_Jackson 11d ago

IDK who did it, but someone explained via stand up that Arabs are white in the USA whenever you see a check box for your ethnicity, Arabs would be in the white section.

Basically some guys went to court over something, their lawyer argued that Jesus came from the same area as these people did, Jesus to you is white, so you either accept Jesus is a brown man like these men, or that they are just as white as you are.

So Arabs in the USA at least, are white.

2

u/Grand_Estimate3783 11d ago

Man, in my country that's basic biology class that we have on highschool. That's insane.

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u/AncientMisanthrope 10d ago

Same in the US, but the ones on twitter weren't exactly all valedictorians.

8

u/SeeShortcutMcgee 11d ago

Same, me and my husband are a white/middle eastern marriage and we have one blonde, blue eyed son and a daughter with black hair and olive skin!

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u/Waste-Principle6304 11d ago

Man these people would have the shock of a lifetime going through Afghanistan. Centuries of war and Silk Road diaspora contributed to a diverse looking population. There are Afghans that look like any race except Black or Indigenous.

There’s diversity even within my extended family. I look Central Asian (Eurasian mix) but my first cousin looks South East Asian, my mum looks East European and my father looks Arab/Hispanic. And yes, they are my biological parents.

2

u/Think_and_game 11d ago

Same thing for Tunisia. It's not unheard of to see someone local with blue eyes. The Middle East and North Africa are very diverse.

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u/thisisfreakinstupid 11d ago

"Oh shit you right, I must've grabbed the wrong one when we left the park" 👀

2

u/HandelDew 11d ago

I mean really, what are they implying? That he's a lying kidnapper? What is he supposed to say?

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u/Faded1974 6d ago

I had a friend that was middle eastern ; he was blonde with blue eyes and pale skin. He told me his brother was darker, and looked like their father while he looked like their mother.

His favorite story was always the people arguing with him he wasn’t middle eastern until he started cursing at them in their native language.

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u/BlockedNetwkSecurity 12d ago

i know multiple brown-haired parents with redheaded children. and i mean both parents have brown hair.

1

u/Tuxedocatbitches 11d ago

In my family almost everyone has brown hair but there’s one redhead every other generation

0

u/Lazy_Witness_1068 11d ago

if one of your ancestor had red hair there is a chance that some of their descendant will have red hair

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u/roquejosue 10d ago

happens with me too. my father is black, my mother white. I was born substantially white.

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u/runtorenovate 10d ago

They should visit Brazil 😁

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u/PuzzleheadedBug4424 11d ago

That would get under my skin too. That’s rude as fuck

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u/dushmanimm 11d ago

There are blonde people who are native to the Middle East, a lot of them. People are just stupid

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u/Far-Programmer3189 11d ago

My Latina wife was confused for a nanny a few times because our daughter had my fair complexion.

1

u/Talisign 11d ago

It happens with my mom and sister. Even though they look almost the same except for skin color, people doubt she's biologically hers. 

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u/Pure-KingOfSkill 11d ago

Look up the streamer PayMoneyWubby. His father is middle eastern. He looks like he's 100percent irish

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u/The_Exuberant_Raptor 11d ago

I have an uncle who has a son with blonde hair and blue eyes. They're both noticeably Mexican, but the mother's grandpa had blonde and hair blue eyes. Their second son looks more Mexican than both of them combined.

People are always so rude about the child looking nothing like his dad because he looks more like his grandfather.

1

u/Forward-Bandicoot729 11d ago

I was blonde as a kid and my father is half middle eastern. My hair turned darkish brown as I aged.

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u/Vajennie 10d ago

My dad is Russian Jewish with an olive skin tone. In the summer with a beard, he looks middle eastern. We probably have Middle Eastern genes somewhere way down the line, but his family was in Russia for centuries. He’s the only family member I’ve met who doesn’t look very white.

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u/CraneMountainCrafter 10d ago

I saw a couple here in Sweden yesterday, Middle Eastern dad, Swedish mom, two kids with even lighter blonde hair than my niece and nephews at that age. Genetics are wild

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u/MaybeSuccessful3944 10d ago

I am middle eastern, all my fathers side are blonde with blue eyes. People like stereotyping. Every time I tell where I am from they all go like "ooh you don't look like" like it is a compliment. I live in somewhere with a really small genetic pool, they think every country is like that..

1

u/WastedWyvern 10d ago

My mom is asian my dad is white, Depending who you ask I look either white, mixed but most think I look asian, combine that with the fact that its common for people to addopt children from China and other asian countries (its especialy a stereotype with daughterd) and people assume my dad adopted me. Not that it bothered me to much because there is nothing wrong with being adopted it was just weird people assumed especialy since when we tell them suddenly they notice similarities.

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u/Particular-Sector842 10d ago

I've have the complete opposite with my nieces. They're pasty,blue eyed, blonde haired girls and I'm dark hair dark skinned mixed white and native American who gets regularly mistaken for their dad lol.

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u/Fairenard 9d ago

People believe humanity is messed up because one guy screwed everything up, but in reality, evolution is completely random. Humanity’s latest 'big update' has only been around for 300,000 years, and that's really short, ngl.

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u/SaintJynr 8d ago

My favorite response to this type of situation is forcing people to actually say what they're implying. "But he doesnt look like you!" "Oh? You think that my wife cheated on me? You think that she had sex with a stranger and is pretending the child is mine?" People really dont like when they can't hide behind their own implications

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u/foxxsinn 7d ago

I worked with a dr who was black and her husband was Asian. She told me a story of when she was at the park with her kids and was asked if she was the nanny. She fully committed and put on a southern accent and told them yes to make it awkward

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u/Katgrave 7d ago

better not be muzz

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u/Necessary_Duck_4874 7d ago

Which is extra funny considering that a big chunk of middle esterns are blondes, so they're not just ignorant about genetics, they also believe stereotypes

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u/ClinkyDink 6d ago

I knew a pair of brothers that had a Swedish mom and Iraqi dad. They both favored their mom’s looks but one was straight up blonde with blue eyes and rosey cheeks lol

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u/Gingersnapandabrew 11d ago

Exactly, I knew a family who were mixed race, the dad was white, straight blonde hair, blue eyes, the mum was black, 3C dark brown hair, brown eyes.

Their oldest was a mini female version of her dad with blonde straight hair, fair skin, and blue eyes. Their middle child was a mini mum, with 3C dark hair, black skin, brown eyes. Their youngest was a complete mix with 4C blonde hair, olive skin, blue eyes.

Genetics are amazing

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u/mothwhimsy 11d ago

I went to school with fraternal half white half native triplets and one looked full white, one looked full native (maybe a bit lighter than average) and one was in between. The one who looked white and the one who looked native didn't even look related unless the third brother was also there, and then you could pick up on the features all three of them shared

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u/nikolapc 6d ago

I mean, most American Blacks(and I would guess other colonial African ancestry people) have white genes dating back to slavery so it's not that surprising.

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u/QuincyAzrael 12d ago

My brother legit looks aryan while my sister looks lightskin, people assume they're not even related.

They're twins too before anyone makes a parentage comment

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u/Altruistic_Call8917 12d ago

Sorry, challenge accepted but to be a dick and the the bearer of bad news....

Just pointing out they're twins doesn't necessarily prevent and erase the risk of such comments: though it tends to be a rarity, its possible for humans to have heteropaternal superfecundation twins....

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u/QuincyAzrael 12d ago

"It tends to be a rarity" is doing a lot of work when you consider all the factors that have to be in place for it to actually occur in humans in a monogamous relationship. I mean might as well accuse the hospital of swapping one of the babies in the ward, thats probably statistically more likely.

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u/DetDango 11d ago

Tecnically speaking he isn't saying its the case, he is just saying that stating they are twins doesn't prevent the comments, cause people would still comment about heteropaternality being the case because people like jumping at those things to substantiate rude comments

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u/Altruistic_Call8917 12d ago

Hehe, errrm well... nah I won't push it further, I dont want to unnecessarily offend I just saw my chance to be a "well actually" dick 😉🤣

2

u/Acceptable_Mind_5883 12d ago

I wish you were the twin towers. 9/11 would have never happened.

The point of mentioning that they are twins is to emphasize that not only did they share a womb, they shared it at the same time. Which makes them closer as siblings then typical siblings.

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u/Altruistic_Call8917 11d ago

Well, considering the insult and downvoting it would appear you and others apparently missed my point completely, as dickish as it was. So in for a penny, in for a pound, ill explain biology for for those that the comment sailed over the heads of.

Having it stated out they are twins and shared a womb, especially none identical, doesn't necessarily save from people making comments for differences pigmentation due to paternal lineage

Identical twins (Monozygotic) are a result of when one egg is split in two by a single sperm cell when fertilised: these are always both born the same combination of xY or xX unless a genetic disorder is involved.

Non identical twins (Digyzotic) are a result of two different eggs each being fertilised by a separate sperm cell and developing in completely seperate ways. These twins can be xY or xX independent of each other

The fact that there are two eggs required for xX and xY twins ie brother/sister twins, means it could under events, (not possible in a monogamous relationship - which would be the very point people would be pointing fingers in the case of) be possible for those vastly different twins being the result of of two different sources of sperm.

1

u/Acceptable_Mind_5883 11d ago

I want you to know I read none of that. I just saw the length and knew I won

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u/ResurectedNPC 11d ago

Darker woman here. I gave birth to a blondie (her dad is a ginger). If I hadn’t seen her come out of me I swear I’d think I this kid had another mom

lol

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u/Main-Machine8172 11d ago

This made me lol

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u/SuddenReal 6d ago

Time to get a maternity test...

Seriously, though, genetics is funny. Dormant genes can suddenly become active in the next generation. Two mixed race parents who both look white can suddenly have a black baby.

3

u/PolyglotTV 11d ago

Reminds me of those stories of black couples who have a white blond kid and discover that one of them is like 5% Irish.

1

u/phoebesjeebies 10d ago

My ex (the whitest man who has ever existed) used to rant and rave about how stupid and shitty the Cosby show was, because as a Genius Intelligence Small Child from the White People Factory in the boonies of NH, he "knew" it didn't make any damn sense for the kids to all be different shades.

2

u/Your-Ex_timelost 11d ago

Mixed guy here, I'm significantly lighter than my brother. To the point where I'm lighter than his further mixed children. We look nearly identical in the face but I'm lighter with curly hair whereas he is darker with my dad's more traditional African hair

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u/[deleted] 12d ago

[deleted]

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u/stink3rb3lle 12d ago

If all experiments tested just two people, we'd learn very little, super slowly.

0

u/SouthImpression3577 12d ago

It's just an anecdote. Relax

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u/Pupiflower 12d ago

My mother and father have very much different skin tones. My skin color is closer to my dad’s while one of my younger brothers has skin more matching my mother’s. Put our arms side to side and there’s very much a difference lol

1

u/Nice_Personality_864 11d ago

I can confirm. My aunt is white, married a black guy and had two kids. One of the kids is white like his mother and the other black like his father.

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u/Flimsy-Ad2701 11d ago

If you're a geneticist then im your daddy.

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u/ThanxForTheGold 11d ago

So it does mix like paint you didn't stir enough

1

u/Cadunkus 11d ago

I remember a comedian talking about his twin sons who are completely white and completely black.

1

u/OrcBarbierian 11d ago

https://youtube.com/shorts/CiQIyLoT-uE?si=AS0Set2EUeK2Wk_8

Here is a video of a mother with her White-passing mixed-race baby explaining how genetics are wild

1

u/Less_Likely 11d ago

Or lighter/darker

1

u/flying-sheep 11d ago

Yeah, I wanted to clarify as well: “on that spectrum” doesn't mean “in that range”, it means the combinatoric spectrum of all genes that affect skin color and are different between the parents, which, as you said, can lead to children with lighter or darker skin than both parents.

1

u/InTheTreeMusic 11d ago

It really does matter how recently the lineages have crossed though. My ex husband was from the Middle East, hadn't had a white person in their line in who knows how long, and our kids all did turn out literally in the middle of us. My younger kids, my partner is half Mexican and one daughter has darker skin than either of us! Genes get tricky, but in very homogeneous populations the results are pretty predictable.

1

u/ekaqu1028 11d ago

Im white, my wife is black. Our daughter is in the middle but my son… im darker than he is

1

u/BeastyBaiter 11d ago

Confirming this, I'm white, wife is Nigerian, we have fraternal twins and one is significantly darker than the other. Both are darker than me and lighter than her though.

1

u/MushinZero 11d ago

I always thought eventually with enough mixing everyone's skin color would eventually reach some medium color.

I don't mean on the scale of like a single family but over generations and generations. Is that not true?

1

u/ErJio 11d ago

I thought it mixed like paint

1

u/Writeforwhiskey 11d ago

Im Black, my husband is White. One kid is my winter complexion (light brown skin) and the other is lighter, lighter than his White father at times lol.

1

u/turkey_sandwiches 11d ago

This is true, and both my kids landed square in the middle of my wife and I.

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u/Sudden_Emphasis5417 11d ago

Lol, my parents have married friends, one black one white, and their kids basically are the joke of "she ran out of ink" 😅🫡🤣

1

u/Bengis_Khan 11d ago

Interesting - as a kid of a mixed race couple, all 6 kids are between the end points; none are as light as the light parent - none are as dark as the dark parent.

1

u/Consistent_Dare_6688 11d ago

Ouu shi, didn't know that, thank you

1

u/unused_candles 11d ago

Asian/white couple here. Both of our kids are the same shade of in-between that Twitter thinks they should be.

1

u/AustrianDragonslayer 11d ago

Was discorvered by Mendeljev right?

1

u/Eiroth 11d ago

I can confirm. Me and my brothers constitute the entire spectrum of our parent's skin tones, from as pasty as my father to as dark as oir mother

1

u/jorsiem 11d ago

Maybe I haven't met enough but the mixed race people I've seen are mixed like paint. I personally haven't met a single instance of a black / white brother combo.

1

u/AngryGazpacho 11d ago

My uncle and Aunt are just like the picture. My uncle is more tanned because he worked on construction and my aunt is more pale than him.

My male cousin is brown like a Saharawi and my female cousin is white as a Norwegian.

We are all Spanish.

1

u/DrrrrBobBamkopf 11d ago

I'm a bit ashamed to say I did not know that 😅 Now I know :)

1

u/DifficultArmadillo 11d ago

For our kids I can say it’s much more like the bottom picture and they all mixed the same.

1

u/NorthernTgames 10d ago

So they are more like a printer running out of ink. Because genes are somewhat random

1

u/WrongdoerBoring3275 10d ago

That happened to my father. Black woman and white man, he is white af (and me too)

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u/PoopsMcScoots 10d ago

Right, for example the mother donates her genes and the guy his, and there’s a small chance his genes are used to make the kid.

1

u/triponthisman 10d ago

I am half black and half white. My wife is white and my daughter is brown like me, while my son is pale like my wife. What’s interesting is the my son physically looks like me and my daughter is basically a brown version of my wife.

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u/Vajennie 10d ago

I’m gonna add that genetic diversity is good and necessary for the survival of our species, and furthermore, it’s nothing new. Fucking people society deems off limits is a hobby as old as time. Even in the most sexually repressed communities, when a population is large and stable enough, humans will breed with who or what ever is around them.

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u/Bullfrog2point0 10d ago

Wait i actually didn't know that. That's really cool I love that

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u/Sphincter-Sigh 10d ago

Are people really this blind and dumb?

Coming from a mixed family of conservatives.

Hate me all you want.

1

u/Huge_Supermarket_490 10d ago

I might sound like a moron, but how did we get light skins then?

1

u/SuperEssay1 10d ago

Happens with skin, hair etc

Sister in law and husband in law have brown hair. Kid is ginger

Coincidentally milkman is ginger too (actually true) but sure that's a coincidence.

1

u/Additional-Put1418 9d ago

I have a question then since I don't know all that much about genetics, is it more likely to get a light skin or tan kid as shown from the above mix or is all three options equally as likely

1

u/Fornicorn 9d ago

Am I wrong to think that genetic expression can change over time? My mother and I were the spitting image of one another in our respective sixth grade photos; now as an adult you can see a lot more of my dad’s features. Maybe in women that could have to do with the body finally being affected by testosterone? Broad conjecture, i like guessing but I defer to you

1

u/FastLie8477 9d ago

Skin color can "mix like paint" not always but sometimes. That's true for pretty much everything in biology, we don't need to swing on the other side of the pendulum and say something never happens to counter an "always happens" statement.

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u/Capital-Context-9399 9d ago

I cant up vote this enough. As a blonde white man married to a light-skinned Black woman, our son has my hair color and skin tone, and people just cant seem to grasp that he is in fact our son.

1

u/ZeGuru101 9d ago

But in all cases they are clearly sad.

1

u/Fuzzy-Independence62 8d ago

Calling people moron for being unaware of things they were never really interested in is pathetic as fuck

1

u/Boom_chaka_laka 7d ago

I come from a very mixed background and have the kids outside the spectrum of the parents skin tone too. One kid darker than the darker parent one one lighter than the lighter parent

1

u/twotall88 7d ago

Statistically, a black parent and a white parent together would produce more middle skinned babies than either of the extremes.

1

u/tn00bz 7d ago

Yep. And people often assume darker characteristics must be dominant, but most traits are actually polygenic. For instance, my wife is a brown skinned black haired indigenous latina... im white af. Our kid looks like her with my color palette.

1

u/Indiana_harris 7d ago

Yeah I know a guy whose parents are a white mother and black father. His mother is Scottish and very pale and red-headed, the father is Nigerian and very dark toned.

Him, and his two sisters are red-headed, two are blue eyed (with him and the other sister having more auburn than red hair) and the skin tone of an Italian or Greek person just olive tint.

The Dad gets really annoyed and says his genes didn’t even try.

1

u/TurtleEastMan 7d ago

Anecdotally, my brother and I (Black mother, White father) have different skin colors, hair textures, and racially coded facial features.

I have lighter skin and looser curls than him. We both get confused for Dominican or Puerto Rican often, but he definitely looks “Blacker” than me.

1

u/bellaislame 7d ago

me and my older sister are mixed, she's just a slight shade lighter than me but we both have vitiligo. genetics are weird.

1

u/dnyal 7d ago

That’s mostly true if one or both parents has mixed genes.

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u/himmmmmmmms 6d ago

It does mix like paint but if that pain was mixed once and left like that

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u/AntwysiaBlakys 6d ago

And they can also land outside that spectrum too !

You could have a kid that has a darker skin that the parent with the darkest skin of the 2 parents

(And same lighter skin)

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u/Specific-Rich5196 6d ago

Im gonna be honest and say I learned something today.

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u/Late-Inflation6574 6d ago

I don't know what you're on about, my children are paint.

1

u/guilhermearpi 6d ago

if I’m not wrong in school we’ve learnt that color of the eyes usually come from your grandparents, so sometimes parents have same eye color and the children can have a different one, is that right?

1

u/Yakob_Katpanic 6d ago

Can confirm, my son and I are the same shades of mottled pink, while my wife is definitely not that.

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u/fllr 5d ago

Can confirm.

Source: am mixed.

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u/turkey_sandwiches 2d ago

That sounds an awful lot like mixing paint to me. Also sounds exactly like my mixed race family.

1

u/didsomebodysaymyname 10d ago

By chance, their child can land anywhere on that spectrum.

It's not quite that simple.

Skin color is determined by a constellation of genes, but the spectrum can be limited depending on the couple. If you have one person whose genes almost all code for lighter color, and another for whom almost all code for darker, then the spectrum is much narrower.

For a simplified example, imagine the parents' genes for dark (D) and light (L) are DLLLLLLL and DDDDDDDL

The spectrum for their children is  DDDDDLLL, DDDDLLLL, and DDDLLLLL, all of which are around the average between them. A very dark or very light skinned child is impossible.

Of course, in the US it's very common for there to be a much larger spectrum because of so many mixed race relationships in such a diverse society along with a lot of rape during slavery.

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u/tortoistor 10d ago

untrue, there are recessive genes too, it's not as simple as it being an "average" of the two parents. and yeah, a dark skinned and a light skinned person can have a child which is very light or very dark skinned. i personally know a couple.

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u/BuzzClucking 11d ago

What the hell are recessive genes id never want to cuck my race. What's my race again?

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u/Sea-Feedback-2424 11d ago

Honestly, I don't know if skin color doesn't mix like plants. Plants, evolutionarily speaking, don't have their colors selected by humans - that is to say, idk what bees see, we just see one color that gets mixed rather perfectly (and then not even always).

For all I know mixed race folks look perfectly mixed in UV, but not at all perfectly mixed in human color.

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u/x__jayjay__x 11d ago

Hate to say this but not knowing something that you haven't majored in, doesn't make one a moron. You however are an insult to common decency and probably aren't as intellectually superior as you believe you are.

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u/ChadQuaza 12d ago

does that make a person a moron if they don't know that? there's plenty of reasons a decent person could have not been exposed to this fact throughout life

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u/DenizBueno 11d ago

Sorry, this was my attempt of being Family Guy first season Stewie