AboutSophia Jane Expertise I can answer basic questions related to heritable diseases, and moderate level questions regarding genetics and biology in general. Please, no questions on what your future children will look like. I will happily answer questions regarding the inheritance of hair or eye colour, genetic diseases, genetic traits, etc..., but anything phrased as "I look like X and my partner look like Y; what will our baby look like?" will be sent to the question pool.
Experience
Education/Credentials BA (biological) anthropology, UC Berkeley.
Expert: Sophia Jane Date: 3/8/2008 Subject: mixing ethnicities
Question If a Caucasian person had children with anyone of a different ethnicity, is there any chance at all for the children to express any of the Caucasian parent's traits, such as the eye colors or hair colors for example?
Thank You! I appreciate your knowledge and advice.
Answer Thanks for the question, Brian. A child of a mixed-race union shares both of it's parents genes. However, some phenotypic characteristics deemed "Caucasian traits", such as blue eyes or fair hair, are due to recessive genes and require that the non-white parent have that gene as well to be expressed. In the United States of America, for example, African-Americans usually have some European admixture, so it's possible that a child from one white and one black parent can have blue eyes, provided that both parents carry the gene. The same for admixtures between mestizos (native America/European; the majority of Mexico). Also keep in mind that hair and eye colour depend of the combination of pigment concentrations, so conceivably a dark haired non-white person and a fair-haired white person can produce a child with an intermediate colour, such as golden brown hair, or light eyes and dark eyes can net hazel or greenish coloured eyes.
