A mother and father of twins who were born different races have said that they hope their example will make people more tolerant.
Whitney Meyer, who is white, and Tomas Dean, who is black, were expecting twins but were somewhat shocked when they discovered that twin sisters Kalani and Jarani looked quite different from one another. Kalani was born with fair skin, while Jarani was born with brown skin, a rare but not uncommon phenomenon seen in twins of parents from different racial backgrounds.
Speaking on TODAY, Whitney said:
"You can't look at one and not love them both. They're the same girl, just different colours. Kalani was as white as can be. I was just in denial, because you know the odds of this?" she said. "I would never think I would have a black and white twin. That's why I asked if she was albino, because she was just so white."
While Tomas said:
"I was like, 'Yeah, she's a little light,' but I thought maybe babies are that way when they're first born. But then a couple of minutes later, her sister came out a little darker. In a million years, I never thought I'd have a girl with blue eyes. I didn't think I could pull that one off!"
"I hope that a lot of people can see that colour really isn't a big thing. What's important is love," the proud dad said. "Mysterious things can happen and life is a blessing. It doesn't matter if you are black or white. You are beautiful no matter what colour you are, always remember that!"
Speaking of the rare occurrence, Dr. Bryce Mendelsohn, a medical geneticist at the University of California, explained:
"The physical traits you can see in a person are just a very small sliver of the genetic diversity across human populations. A lot of times we only focus on the things our eyes can see, but what we see is a tiny tip of the iceberg of the actual genetic diversity in everyone. When you flip a coin eight times, sometimes it's going to be heads all eight times. And it's kind of like that when you have a bunch of genes. They're all randomly shuffling, and you can get all kinds of outcomes."
Whitney and Tomas hope that the story of their biracial twins will teach the merits of tolerance and that we are all one kind.
[Based on reporting by: Positive Outlooks]
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