One white and the other black: the English twins who challenge racial theories

Marcia and Millie star in an incredible cover of ‘National Geographic’

“These twins make us rethink everything we know about the race.” The subtitle chosen by National Geographic to illustrate its latest special issue says it all. “Negra y blanca”, illustrates the text that accompanies a curious photograph of two girls, one with a pale complexion and long wavy blonde hair, the other with dark skin, black hair curling and full lips. They are sisters, but not only that: Marcia and Millie are twin sisters. Their case, unique in the world, has been chosen by the prestigious scientific journal to turn racist discourses upside down in their issue entitled The racial challenge, which pretends, in addition, to launch an appeal to readers to tell their own story with the hashtag # DefineMe (define me, in English). Maria, on the left in the image, looks like her mother Amanda, born in England; Millie, on the other hand, is the living image of her father Michael, a descendant of Jamaicans. They are 11 years old and they recognize that people are stigmatized when they confess that they are twins. They say Amanda and Michael that when they fell in love they cared “a little pepper” about the challenges they would have to face as an interracial couple. The important thing, for them, was to be together.

When the girls were born, in July 2006, they looked very similar but, yes, their skin color was completely different. “We never cared, we accepted it, without more,” acknowledges the father in this National Geographic story. “When they were babies, I took them in the cart and people looked at them, first one, then the other, and then the question came up: ‘But are they twins?'” Recalls Amanda, and she released her type response when she arrived the expected “but one is white and the other black!”: “They are the genes”. She herself calls her little ones her miracle “one in a million”. And it really is. As the magazine explains, when an interracial couple has twins, the traits of each child depend on numerous variables, including the genetic background of pigmentation of their ancestors. According to Alicia Martin, who specializes in genetic statistics, the color of the skin, in genetic terms, “is not a binary trait”. “Each one has a degree of color in the total spectrum,” he says.

Source: National Geographic