
Black And White Twins
James and Daniel are identical twins. What sets them apart is that one is white and one is black, and a population geneticist at Edinburgh University says this is a more common occurrence than one would think among Jamaican fathers. “Most Caribbean people, though black-skinned, have European DNA because in the days of slavery, many plantation owners raped female slaves, and so introduced European DNA into the black gene pool,” says Dr. Jim Wilson. “The Caribbean father will have less European DNA than African DNA, so it's more likely he'll pass on African DNA – but rarely, and I've worked it out to be around one in 500 sets of twins where there's a couple of this genetic mix, the father will pass on a lot of European DNA to one child and mostly African DNA to the other. The result will be one white child and one black.”

