Quote:
Originally posted by RHOyal-Silence
ok sorors, i'm not any type of scientist, however....
if a black man has a child with a white woman, won't there be SOME kind of signs of blackness in the child (kinky hair, broad nose, thick lips) something?
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Hi there--I hope you'll pardon the thread crash. I majored in molecular biology and genetics, so I thought I'd help on this one.
AfAm people (and even some African-by-birth people) have some "white" genes. You just can't see the result because, as someone else said, the "black" genes are dominant. However, there are about 50 different genes involved in skin and hair color and texture, all of which combine to give the visible result. Hence, a very wide variation is possible. This is not the straight Mendelian inheritance we learned about in high school (remember the red/white/pink pea plants?)
So in answer to your question: it may be uncommon but a child w/ one black parent and one white parent may look "white" becuase of this variation. Most of the time you are correct, hair texture, facial features, and skin tone will reflect genetic "input" from the black parent, but it is not always 100%.
Hope this helps.
Adrienne (PNAM-2003)
PS--I'm not even going there w/ Michael Jackson......
