Black and white twins defy odds
February 25, 2011
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Kenyon Wallace
TORONTO STAR
Twins Triniti and Ghabriael Cunningham are your average 17-month-old siblings who like to wrestle, give hugs and blow kisses.
Apart from the fact that they were born 11 weeks early and needed to be monitored closely at the beginning of their lives, the now-healthy twins are as much of a handful for their parents as any other toddlers.
The only thing that sets them apart from others their age is the fact that by all appearances, Triniti is black, while her brother, Ghabriael, or “Gabe,” as his parents call him, is white.
“People don’t really react when we’re out in public until they realize they are twins,” said the children’s mother, Khristi Cunningham, 29, from their home in Akron, Ohio.
“Most people think they are siblings or I am babysitting. Once they realize they are twins, they will usually call over people they are with or even in some cases complete strangers.”
Cunningham, who is white, says she and her husband, Charles, who is black, used to joke during her pregnancy about the possibility that their kids could be born with different skin colours.
“We weren’t as surprised as everyone else,” she told the Star. “They were our perfect miracle babies. We were more worried about them being healthy and eating properly.”
While the twins share the same genetic material and parents, Triniti was born with dark eyes, hair and skin. Ghabriael, on the other hand, has blonde hair, blue eyes and fair skin. The Cunninghams, who met five years ago while working as juvenile correctional officers at a Columbus prison, say they aren’t worried that the twins won’t be accepted by other kids as they grow older, but rather how they might be treated by adults.
“There will always be people who cannot see past colour, and our children will not be ignorant to that fact. Above any of that, they will be raised as strong individuals who know they are loved and wanted in this world,” Khristi Cunningham said.
The odds of twins of mixed-race couples being born with different skin colour is rare, but scientists have yet to quantify such odds given that the possible assortment of genes controlling that factor are exceedingly large.
Dr. Ronald Bachman, former chief of the genetics department of Kaiser Permanente Hospital in Oakland, California, says the Cunningham twins are fraternal, meaning each of them came from two separate eggs and sperm that combined in the womb at the same time.
This is opposed to identical twins, which are the product of one egg and one sperm that splits to become two embryos.
While the fact that Triniti and Ghabriael were born at the same time is unusual, Bachman says he thinks of the twins no differently than siblings from any other mixed-race family.
“One simply got more genes that controlled for more darkly pigmented skin colour, while the other got more genes that coded for less pigmentation,” he said. “If you look at other mixed-race families, siblings often have different skin pigmentation, eye colour and height. It just so happens these kids were born at the same time.”