Two different races in the same womb
JC
Dateline tonight will follow up with a family in Holland that has attracted media attention since its twins were born (the boys are now 11 and a half years old). Using in-vitro fertilization, the mother got pregnant by the sperm of two different men. One white (her husband, I presume), one black. Hence, two sons — one white, the other labeled “black,” although he is really mixed since their mother is white. I don’t really want to comment more until I see this for myself! (Thanks to Kim and Negrorage for the tip!)
Their story, in brief: Willem and Wilma, a white Dutch couple, were trying to have a baby with IVF. They managed to get pregnant, but only after the twins were born did they discover that there was a problem. One boy, Tuen, was white, the other, Koen, was black. Truly by accident, these twin brothers were half-brothers, grown in the same womb, but with sperm that came from two different fathers. The lab mix-up that caused this one -in-a-million bi-racial birth was unearthed just over a year after the twins were born. By then, the biological father of the black child, Koen, was comfortable that the Stuarts loved the child, and let them continue raising him.
kim wrote:
How can they be differnt race with there brotheres?
Posted 23 Sep 2005 at 7:43 pm ¶
kim wrote:
How can they be a diffrent race when there brotheres.
Posted 23 Sep 2005 at 7:46 pm ¶
Nikki B wrote:
Different races because of sperm used from two different men during In Vitro (lab mixup) -
See the complete story at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9438648/
Posted 25 Sep 2005 at 4:41 pm ¶
Jason wrote:
“only after the twins were born did they discover that there was a problem.”
…why does it have to be a “problem”?
Posted 25 Sep 2005 at 5:55 pm ¶
Joanne wrote:
Quoted by Jason: Why does it have to be a problem?
Are you for real? She was impregnated with a black man’s sperm and has given birth to a half caste. It isn’t her husband’s and everyone will see that.
Posted 25 Sep 2005 at 8:27 pm ¶
Lyonside wrote:
The funny thing is, this kind of thing (a mix up at a clinic) is statistically possible (no idea what those stats would be), so it has likely happened before. But it goes unnoticed if the sperm donor is of the same general phenotype as the intended donor (in this case, the husband). Or the mistaken-donor doesn’t pass on a genetically-linked trait or disease that the intended-donor doesn’t have.
Posted 25 Sep 2005 at 8:55 pm ¶
janeeyyeee wrote:
This is so sweet! ….and precious too.
Posted 26 Sep 2005 at 5:22 am ¶
Lyonside wrote:
Joanne - HALF-CASTE? That’s a little dated, isn’t it? Unless you’re from Johannesburg? Don’t think Denmark has castes…
I think what some people are reacting to, is the fear that other readers may think that the “problem” is that one twin was black, as opposed to the problem being that one has a different daddy. The problems the kids have faced have been because of their phenotype, but it can overshadow the fact that these kids seem relatively well adjusted and know how to handle themselves, and seem to have the bonds of any sibling and any twin. It’s an argument for nurture, not nature.
Posted 26 Sep 2005 at 9:27 am ¶
Jase wrote:
I have to agree with the last commenter. If there is a problem, it should be the use of the wrong man’s sperm, not the fact that the man is ‘black.’ However, the media plays up the race angle for shock and fear-inducing hysteria: “Oh, Lord! We have a BLACK baby!!” Not “I’ve delivered another man’s child; the doctor screwed up!”
BTW, I love this site! Hey, you’re A.D. Powell free, that’s a damn good thing! It seems that every other multi-racial site has been tainted by her hateful comments.
Posted 30 Sep 2005 at 8:51 am ¶
Jane Howard wrote:
These people are Dutch, not Danish. Pay attention.
And if there is a screw-up at the lab, it IS considered a problem because it means that there is some sloppiness in record-keeping involved, or, as alluded to in a previous post, there could be some future medical problem that might have to be dealt with.
Posted 30 Sep 2005 at 11:37 am ¶
Lyonside wrote:
>These people are Dutch, not Danish. Pay attention.
Sorry for the typo - I mistyped the country. But I still think my argument was valid. Mind your tone, PLEASE.
Posted 02 Oct 2005 at 8:07 pm ¶
Morgan wrote:
I’m just glad they decided to raise the child…here in America the family probably would have run screaming for hills or something. Dutch people and people in Europe in general are much more colorblind and tolerant than Americans.
Posted 03 Oct 2005 at 7:05 am ¶
Jena wrote:
Lyonside Says: HALF-CASTE? That’s a little dated, isn’t it? Unless you’re from Johannesburg?
No offense, but what’s this supposed to mean? “half-caste” is a European term, leave Jo’berg out of it! Of course there *are* plenty of other racially insensitve names, but please!
Morgan Says: Dutch people and people in Europe in general are much more colorblind and tolerant than Americans.
I have to disagree with you there - I know plenty of Indian-Brits and African-Belgians who have been shat on by society to agree with that!
Posted 04 Oct 2005 at 9:24 am ¶
Lyonside wrote:
>No offense, but what’s this supposed to mean? “half-caste” is a European term, leave Jo’berg out of it! Of course there *are* plenty of other racially insensitve names, but please!
It is? My European roommates and college friends didn’t. The term still irks me - implying color and social status in the negative. And I didn’t find the term used in either of the linked articles.
Posted 04 Oct 2005 at 3:54 pm ¶
Jena wrote:
Lyonside Says:It is? My European roommates and college friends didn’t. The term still irks me - implying color and social status in the negative. And I didn’t find the term used in either of the linked articles.
I just meant that its origins are European (it used to be the English word/slur for Anglo-Indians) - and that it’s not one that you’d particularly hear in SA.
Posted 04 Oct 2005 at 9:36 pm ¶
randi wrote:
hey your all gay, by the way lyonside i feel sorry for ur european roomates, having to live with you!
Posted 13 Oct 2005 at 7:57 am ¶
Daisy wrote:
randi says:hey your all gay, by the way lyonside i feel sorry for ur european roomates, having to live with you!
WOW! Is this a Grown up making this statment *sigh*……
Lyonside your on point Two thumbs up!!!! *smiles*
Posted 13 Oct 2005 at 2:22 pm ¶
Salsassin wrote:
Reminds me of:
Teen people August 2003
Sister Act: Cheryl Grant looks white. Karen Grant looks black. For these twins, race relations is a family affair.(Real Life/Get Personal)
by Butler, Juliet
It has pictures of the father, mother and daughters.
Teen People; 8/1/2003; Butler, Juliet
Byline: Juliet Butler
One day, when they were 10 years old, twin sisters Cheryl and Karen Grant were crossing the street when a boy pointed at Karen and started shouting: “N*gger!” Cheryl took off after him, angrily chasing him all the way home. “I was so furious,” Cheryl, now 19, recalls. “Especially when I banged on the door and his grandfather came out and didn’t think there was anything wrong with it. I got even madder when he refused to believe we were twins and called me a liar….”
That kind of ugly racism was rare in Chelmsford, England, where the girls grew up, but strangers’ looks of disbelief were more common. Even their parents–Linda, a white Englishwoman who works in a fabric shop, and Carl, a Jamaican bricklayer–were shocked when the nurse directed them to the different-color babies in the hospital. After all, doctors call the odds of such a pair a major long shot. “It’s a million-to-one chance,” says Karen, adding with a laugh: “As far as the whole science thing goes, I’m normal and Cheryl’s the freak of nature!”
So what happened? Every child receives half her genes from her mother and half from her father. Karen’s skin is darker because black pigmentation genes, which are usually dominant, masked most of her mother’s recessive white ones. In Cheryl’s case, though, it appears no black genes at all were handed down. “It is likely that their father has white genes in his ancestry and those were the ones he passed on to her,” says Anand Saggar, M.D., a clinical genetics expert in London. (Karen and Cheryl’s siblings–Leanne, 18, and Wayne, 17–look like a blend of their parents’ skin tones.)
Face-to-face with such rarities, people are far more likely to presume dark-haired Karen and ash-blonde Cheryl are friends rather than sisters. And people who saw them out with their parents often assumed Mom and Dad must be their baby-sitters. “It drove my mom up the wall,” says Karen.
It got to the girls sometimes too. “I still remember getting odd looks from passersby as I walked along holding Dad’s hand,” says Cheryl. “They were obviously thinking, `What’s that black guy doing with that little blonde girl?’ It was weird.”
Sometimes, other people’s reactions even triggered doubts in the girls themselves. “It got me and Cheryl worried that [we weren’t] really their daughters,” says Karen. “So we asked my mother if I was adopted. She got out our birth certificates and showed us photos of when we were newborns.”
Without the stares, the girls might not have even considered themselves unusual. “Because we’ve always been this way, we don’t really think about it unless someone points it out,” says Cheryl. They were treated the same as their siblings by their parents (who separated eight years ago), and, as girls, they were always dressed in similar clothes and received the same birthday presents. As they got older, they both participated in local beauty contests and competed in figure skating. In school no one seemed to notice anything unusual, either. “The other kids thought it was cool we were twins,” says Karen, “but they didn’t make a big deal about us being black and white and never treated us differently.”
Still, there were times when the twins’ color did seem to complicate things. While Karen says she never wanted to be white, Cheryl often wished she resembled Karen and her other siblings more: “I’d love to have a bit of color like my brother and sisters.” She also would get confused about her heritage. Once, she ticked off a box on a school form identifying herself as white. “I just presumed `white’ meant `English,’ and since all my friends ticked that box, I did too,” Cheryl says. Her dad, who always encouraged her to be proud of her black roots, told her to tick the “black” one in the future, which she did. “But you know,” she says, “if I ticked that now and then turned up for an interview, they’d think: `Er, who’s this?’”
These days Cheryl and Karen feel it’s easier to let people assume they’re friends. “I like that we don’t have to stop and explain our story for hours,” says Karen. Cheryl attends Leeds University, where she is studying fashion design, and Karen is majoring in accounting at Anglia Polytechnic University. They still share clothes, but now when they get dressed up, it’s to go listen to garage bands and R&B. “We’re closer than ever!” says Karen.
They also share the same philosophy about dating: “When it comes to choosing boyfriends,” says Cheryl, “we both go for personality, regardless of skin color.” Karen is currently dating a guy from Nigeria, and she told him that if they had a baby, it could be white. “He was like, `No way!’” she says. The chances are very slim, but if it happened, it certainly wouldn’t bother the twins. Says Cheryl: “We’re happy being who we are.”
[QUOTE:]
“I STILL REMEMBER GETTING ODD LOOKS FROM PASSERSBY AS I WALKED ALONG HOLDING DAD’S HAND. THEY WERE OBVIOUSLY THINKING, `WHAT’S THAT BLACK GUY DOING WITH THAT LITTLE BLONDE GIRL?’”
Posted 13 Jan 2006 at 12:36 am ¶
Jillian wrote:
I always wonder how parents of a different race than their child will raise the child on race relations.
That little Black one is too adorable for words.
Posted 24 Feb 2006 at 1:44 pm ¶
CASEY wrote:
I guess this is a learning experience for many people!
Posted 03 Mar 2006 at 10:08 am ¶
monkeylumps wrote:
Both children are adorable! And I’m with Casey…it will be a learning experience.
Posted 01 May 2006 at 11:26 am ¶