This story greeted me on the Yahoo! front page this morning:
Medical rarity, Reuters/Fabrizio Bensch. (Click on the last picture with the two tiny hands.)
Mixed-race couple Florence and Stephan Gerth show off their twin boys Ryan and Leo in a Berlin hospital. The twins, who have radically differing skin tones, were born by Caesarean section.
Here are some additional headlines about this allegedly rare occurrence:
Twins With Different Skin Color Born In Germany. Not bad so far.
Black and white twins born to German mixed-race couple. Hmm.
Black and white twins: Brothers from the same mother. Yeah, they're from the same mother. They're twins.
Rare twin boys born - one black, one white. Rare? Really?
One-in-a-Million Twins: One White, One Black. I don't think it's one in a million if it keeps happening. Did these reporters skip the genetics sections in their high school biology classes? Both parents pass on their genes to their offspring.
Two in a Million: Twins Born - One Black, One White. Two in a million?! That's actually less rare that one in a million. And the closing line of the article:
"Both kids have definitely the same father," the doctor added.
Nice subtle suggestion of adultery when referring to an interracial family. That's Fox News. Keeping it classy with a K.
Medical marvel in Germany. Marvel? I'm not even certain that this baby is a medical marvel in 2008.
Miracle twins, one dark-skinned, one light, born to interracial couple. It would be a miracle if they could heal the sick, or turn water into wine. But fraternal twins with different skin colors is not a miracle.
Twins defy all odds. What odds? As far as I can tell, this was not a high risk pregnancy, and the babies did not pop out significantly early.
Woman gives birth to 'black and white twins'!. Exclamation point!
This whole thing simply confirms what kind of ignorant people run our news media. People who still cannot grasp the concept that skin color literally does not define who you are.
It reminded me of Andrew Kennedy, the comedian, who was born to a Colombian mother and a British father. And a black grandmother. Yet he came out white like his father, just like many other Latino people. But sometimes when Mr. Kennedy speaks Spanish to Latinos of a browner persuasion, he gets stared at in horror, as if he were a dog that started talking. In his act, he also mentions that he and his siblings all look different, with their various sizes and colors. So when they get together, they look like a bunch of strangers gathered at a bus stop. I couldn't find that specific clip, but this one is fun, too:
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