Twin Teens: One Black, One White, And A Legendary Story

The story of the twins Lucy and Maria has fascinated millions of people around the world.

The twins were born to Donna and Vince in 1997. They were thrilled when a sonogram revealed they were having twins — but when Lucy and Maria were born in 1997, their parents and doctors were completely astonished.

Despite being born to the same mother and father, the girls were entirely different physically. Maria has a caramel complexion, brown hair, and curly brown hair while Lucy has ginger-red hair, blue eyes, and pale skin. The three older siblings of Lucy and Maria are of similar skin tones. But the twins were born at poles apart in terms of their appearance.

Now consider this. Donna is half Jamaican while Vince is white. So the play of the genes is pretty understandable.
The girls don’t resemble each other unlike other twins. Their mom would nevertheless dress them in matching outfits until they were 10 after which their individuality began to surface.

As the days passed by, Lucy and Maria became susceptible to odd glances, bullying and rude comments from their peers. Friends even made them show their birth certificates to them to prove that they are indeed twins. Despite facing the stereotype, their bond only grew stronger.

Today the story of Lucy and Maria inspires millions of people all over the world.

If you wondered if Lucy and Maria looked more like best friends and not twin sisters, here you have it – they are both!

Watch the video below for their amazing story:

Lucy and Maria are not the only examples to different skin color, non-identical twins born to a white father and a mixed-race mother. Shirley Wales, who lives in West Yorkshire, has twins Leo and Hope. Son Leo has black skin while daughter Hope has white skin. Shirley is mixed race, and the father of her twins is white. Shirley describes her daughter as the “double” of her father but wants to ensure that she does not forget mixed race heritage. “Her skin tone is white,” she says, “but she is mixed race, and if I were to ever fill out a form, as much as she is white, it’s ‘no my daughter is mixed race,’ because I want her to be proud.” While proud of her mixed race heritage, Shirley also finds it bizarre that she created her daughter with a totally different skin tone.

As per a BBC report, the probability of non-identical twins with different skin colors born of a mixed race and a European couple is about one in 500. In cases like these two eggs are fertilized by two sperms. The trend seems to be growing because of the increasing number of interracial relationships. But about fifty years ago such cases were very unheard of. In Britain alone around 12,000 sets of twins are born each year but only a few are born with a very different skin color to each other.

Shirley even went on to take her DNA test. It turned out that she is exactly 50% European and 50% African. Dr. Jim Williams, a population geneticist at the University of Edinburgh, who analyzed Shirley’s test results, attributes her ancestry to the skin color of Shirley’s twins as it could be the chance result of different gene variants that Shirley carries. “Our skin color is determined by a number of gene variants – at least 20 variants, I would say, probably quite a few more than that,” says Dr. Wilson.

“Some of these we know, and some of them we don’t yet know, and at each of these genes, that are influencing the color of our skin, there tend to be two or more variants. One of which is producing a darker skin tone, and one of which is producing a lighter skin tone,” he adds.

It has also been found that many such non-identical mixed race children are vulnerable to emotional and psychological factors. But Dr. Wilson believes that social attitudes will evolve as the phenomenon grows. As of now there is already a surge in mixed race offspring and the times might not be far away when black and white non-identical twins will no longer be a rare incidence.

Was this article helpful?
thumbsupthumbsdown
The following two tabs change content below.