Well, the headline is, technically, correct, if you take "black" and "white" to mean "black (or dark) skinned" and "white skinned", rather than a more essentializing conception of race that attributes to skin colour a whole set of other meanings beyond just that.

I find it particularly amusing nowadays as I see my kid going through the exact same phase I went through when I was very young - my skin turned quite extraordinarily dark for a few months during each summer. It stopped when I was a teenager, and tanning just made me, well, a bit tanned (or burnt, more often).
Hmmm... no point. Just rambling.

Very interesting! Other than their skin color, they look almost identical.

Categorical racial categories aren't real? What? I'll give you socially constructed, malleable, historical, etc. But unreal? Get real.

I'm sorry, I'm brazilian but I didn't get what you meant by this phrase "For example, from what I understand of Brazil, skin color and class determines race more than your parentage and so it is not uncommon to have siblings of various racial designations."

What do you mean by class?

Anyways, we do have a designation that is sort of like "multi-racial", it is "mestiço", but it is only when people can't really tell if someone is black, white or whatever. And depending on the context it is sort of racist to use the word "mestiço". Still, you're right, we hardly use "multi/bi-racil". I think it is sort of creepy.

They're not identical twins, so why should they look alike? Many fraternal twins don't resemble each other closely--they may have different coloring, as in these photos, or one may have a visible disability; boy/girl twins may start out looking pretty similar as babies, but diverge significantly as they age. These pictures show the children dressed to "match," but there's no reason to expect non-identical twins to look more alike than any other siblings.

fernando - I think that the point is that in the US, it ddosen't matter what is your skin color, what matters is the ethnic identity of your parents. if both your parents are afro-american, wou're afro-american - even if, by some weird mutation, you have the eyes and skin color of a swede.
If I understand correctly, in Brasil you're judged by your skin color, not your 'heritage'. i.e. - a swede-looking son of black parents will be considered white, not black.

Yeah, sort of. I mean, I can't generalise it, but that's pretty much how it plays out, unless the person claims a certain heritage.

Nadav Perez - I'm intrigued. How do Americans know what your parents look like (well, unless they see you with them) and what your heritage is? I'm not suggesting you're wrong; I just don't entirely understand how it works.

Britain... varies a lot depending on where you live. Where I live (the only place I'm qualified to comment on) I think people do take skin colour at face value, as it were. I think this is because the minority groups here are fairly small, so the balance of probability is overwhelmingly in favour of the most obvious explanation - if you look white, you probably have white ancestry.

In London, or somewhere else with a larger and more diverse population, the story might well be different.

It doesn't always work the other way around. For a while after the London tube bombings, people avoided sitting anywhere near my brother on public transport. Presumably because he has dark hair and eyes and (at the time) a deep tan, and is of the same sort of age as the bombers. That's how that poor Brazilian guy got shot, after all...

Of course, you can be a radicalised Muslim and be blond. Or look exactly like the popular idea of a radical young Muslim and be an atheist. Or a doctor. Or an ordinary person just getting to work.

It rather makes one lose faith in human nature.

I can comment on american ethnic issues only based on research (see, for example, here); however, in Israel - which I know first hand - the situation is similar.
here, the differntiation between jews and arabs is (unfortunatly) very important to most people. However, since about half the jewish population emigrated from muslim countries or are descendents of such immigrants, it's not always so easy to tell jews and arabs apart.
So you get confused once every while; but as soon as you find out that you were wrong - usualy based on accent - you quickly adjust your attitudes toward that person (yeh, it sounds horrible. it is horrible)

this makes me so happy!

brown is brown, doesn't matter how white your parents are.

"do you speak english?"

used to it.

It's sad that in this day and age that people consider race a stumbling block to acceptance. This is especially true because America is made up mostly of minority groups. The problem is that we don't all just unite and stop letting these physical traits determine how we all treat one another. This comes at a time when the one reason many people won't vote for Obama is because he looks black. His qualifications, charisma and intelligence take a back seat to his appearance. It's wrong, it's antiAmerican, but it's a sad fact of peoples' mentality.

Years ago, in the south, there was this saying: if you're white, you're alright. If brown, hang around. If black, stand back...when I taught college, during the Black is Beautiful movement and time, light-skinned blacks in my classes were scorned by dark black skinned African Americans. things change but we have always had a dislike of groups that are different, and blacks in America have had a horrible life from the earliest times till today (I am white). Faulkner had it right: slavery was a curse upon our land.
But though things are culturally created they are too genetically created, which means that putting down people (cultural) reflects back on you when genetics shows there is no difference in this or that ability.

There is One Race people.The Human race. The concept of different races is a lie.A lie people have used to de-humanize other people and place them in a lower class system which shouldn't exist. Slavery was/is wrong and Racism was and is wrong. Because it has always been doesn't mean that it has always been right! We speak of being civilized beings but I question that. The rich and powerful still throw up race as a card to play one human or one ethnic group against the other.We still speak of War before engaging in an intelligent discussion to avert violence. Instead of loving yourself , your fellow human your fellow creatures and this planet.Some seethe and plot against others lives.Some are much too greedy.and the lies , biases and untruths go on and on and on . Human beings are classified as homo-sapien. No other race of humans have been discovered on earth and yet we speak of Race as if it's true.Newsflash ! Just because it's reported on the news doesn't make it so. I am hoping that soon "we get it" because we can do a lot better as human beings !

maybe the whole world should be bi-racial-wouldnt there be beautiful children?

I feel there are many things we agree on. Here are a few. 1. Race (black, white, asian, ...for example) is a societal
construct. 2. Many people are ignorant and respond innapropriately regarding "racial" differences. 3. Different cultures exhibit different variants of racism. 5. Racism is bad.

We should however explore a few other ideas here as well. Let me share a few of my thoughts. Our preferences and fears seem to develop naturally based on what we are familiar with. People tend to be afraid of anything that seems particularly alien. People tend to prefer (or at least not fear) things that are more familiar and less alien. Consider why we tend to fear spiders, like cats or dogs, and love our family members.

Degrees of familiarity or similarity have a huge impact on how we perceive other individuals. Taken out of context the following statements may seem ignorant because there are many exceptions. But let's consider some generalities (even stereotypes). White people are more attracted to other white people. Black people are more attracted to other black people. Overweight people are more attracted to other overweight people. Jocks are more attracted to other jocks. And, ambitious people are more attracted to other ambitious people. The list goes on.

I am a fairly white skinned male. I wasn't as attracted to darker skinned females until I developed a few friendships with (spent more time with and became more familiar with) a few darker skinned individuals (male and female). We all have certain preferences that aren't in and of themselves wrong.

Here's another related issue. We often confuse "race" with culture. For example, I now find many "black" skinned females to be very attractive. But, I do not particularly like "black" culture, at least to the extent that it differs from "white" culture, simply because I am unfamiliar with it.

Let me leave all of you with one a couple final thoughts. We naturally make distictions. Some are essential to our health and survival (for example, red means stop, green means go). Others are critical for our enjoyment of life (for example, this movie is a romance, I prefer westerns). A crayon box with only white crayons or only black crayons would, I feel, be boring and kind of pointless. I would like to have red, yellow, black and white. Expecting us to ignore our differences in unatural. We should certainly recognize our differences, but also learn to appreciate and even celebrate them.

Please respond. I would like to know some of your thoughts.

So is the author criticizing people for assuming that a person with dark skin is an African American? So when I see someone that looks "Asian", I need to clarify that fact because 1:100,000,000 people may look like a race they are not a part of? For the record, when I see a black person, I assume they are of African heritage. Am I a bad person? :)

Americans are very colour conscious. There was a song
by a South African which I always experience when I
go to America; I become conscious of my colour, of the
colours of other people, when in Jamaica, they are just
people.

We have many families with mixtures, so that the
children look as if they belong to different continents.

"Sperm Wars: The Science of Sex" by Robin Baker talks about this occurrence. It is obvious that the mother slept with the father shown in the picture and a white man both within 7 days of each other. I bet they didn't think to do a DNA test did they?

What is wrong with being black or white? Why even make it a bigger issue than it should be? Everyone is different whether by race, by color, by interests, by skills, by abilities. We should be valuing differences not trying to make them the same. Cultures are different and they all bring great things to the table. God created us this way. I know that many don't believe this, but we are made in His image and are all unique and demonstrate a uniqueness of God. Not all are equal in abilities and capabilities but everyone has an ability to participate in each other's lives, making an impact. However, all are equally valuable before God.

you know...i am black, samoan, chinese and mexican. (god bless the sf bay area) and i have always seen race as an unimportant difference. i hate all that one race crap. there are many races, there just are. it just isnt important. to me it is more like the fact that there are many kinds of ants, but if they get into your picnic basket they annoy you just the same. i mean does a Labrador care if it is a german shephard or a pit bull? no, he'll sniff her butt and if in heat hump her just the same.

I came across this article because I am a nanny for a family of African decent and I have a son just a few month younger than their son. Someone asked if they were twins and I said that was impossible. When I told his mother she said it does happen but is very rare.

The beauty of independent assortment

aww they are all so cutie

History

Please tell me about this "black" culture and "white" culture. I kind of always thought (outside of business and other institutions) that it is more of a your-specific-heritage blended with your region/ location that you are living in culture.

Where I live, this is not a concept that people seem to have, at least not that I have ever seen. It could be here, but I am just curious about what it means (or doesn't mean) to you.

This discussion about how race is perceived in the U.S. is very interesting for me, because it so totally different from my cultural background (I'm from Switzerland), but I find myself pretty much in Kirstens statement, maybe european culture (as diverse it may be) has a different concept of ethnicity?
But what strikes me as bewildering is the use of the word "race" in general, as it seems to be used quite regularly in English, in German the word "Rasse", which is the exact translation, is since after the second world war only used to describe different types of animals, e.g. the human race as one.
This goes back to how the Nazis instrumentalized the word "Rasse": German citizens where made to be "members of the jewish race", "members of the arian race" or members of a lot of other types of categories, which was not something they were before or how they defined themselves, so many later to be deported and murdered people didn't even realize how much in danger they were, because they often didn't even think of themselves as being part of this or that minority, they somehow missed the shift in the societal construction of race.
So after the war the word "Rasse" in terms of how to categorize people became very very unpopular and nowadays don't ever make the mistake of using it to describe humans in Germany as well as in all other countries where people speak German, because you would be making a clear announcement of being a Neonazi. I think it is time to think about some words in the German language that are closely linked tho the Nationalsozialismus, and to maybe reinvent them, but in this case, I'm glad to have overcome the idea of different races, because (as these twins prove) it isn't a scientific or biological parameter - there simply is no such thing as "biological" human races. It just makes absolutely no sense to me - there are so many genes we have, why should such a minor thing as skin colour define who we are?

PS: this doesn't mean there isn't still racism and thinking in these patterns in Switzerland/Germany.. it's just a very different concept of what is politically correct and what isn't.

In the midst of this talk of races, etc, I think its marvelous to look at these beautiful little girls at that age and know that the color skin her sister has means absolutely nothing to her; she has no idea there is even a difference from her own. Inevitably, they will hear comments about their skin differences and be marvelled at by all, but perhaps we should all at least try to see how they do as toddlers. Simply love our brothers and sisters without even noticing a difference in race, color, heritage, or genes. I know this is unrealistic, but the innocence of these girls just strikes me with the sin of all human kind, and the inability to look past skin color has been something our species has never been able to overcome....

What is funny (or sad) is that skin colour overshadows the obvious physical similarities between the two girls.

Biologically interesting, but socially trivial in the 21st century. Discussions about human "races" are utterly boring. They are also an obsession of societies (like the USA) which have been historically deviated by Propaganda from discussing class issues, which are the basis for the racialization of trivial physical differences. So, a sort of intellectually-informed neo-racism is resignifying these differences in a peculiar way: by denying their existence, instead of denying their relevance for broaching class. It is as if "normalcy" is achieved by everybody's -- regardless of ethnic background -- acquiring the middle-class status where, precisely, middle-class diacritics other than skin color become the "zero degree" of identity by which the rest of markers are judged. An example: if we look at the young couple's picture, everything signals the paradigm of white middle-class: her straight hair, his short, neat hair, their clean looks, standard clothing (jeans, a plain T-shirt, a plain sweater), some non-ostentious jewelry... With some Photoshop, both persons could be easily rendered Caucasian. That's why they are "normal", and that's why skin color ("race") is unimportant for this trend of neo-racist classism. Now, add a few photoshopped lower-class markers and I bet the interpretation of the "non-importance" of skin color would be different.

Biologically interesting, but socially trivial in the 21st century. Discussions about human "races" are utterly boring. They are also an obsession of societies (like the USA) which have been historically deviated by Propaganda from discussing class issues, which are the basis for the racialization of trivial physical differences. So, a sort of intellectually-informed neo-racism is resignifying these differences
in a peculiar way: by denying their existence, instead of denying their
relevance for broaching class. It is as if "normalcy" is achieved by
everybody's -- regardless of ethnic background -- acquiring the
middle-class status where, precisely, middle-class diacritics other than
skin color become the "zero degree" of identity by which the rest of
markers are judged. An example: if we look at the young couple's
picture, everything signals the paradigm of white middle-class: her
straight hair, his short, neat hair, their clean looks, standard
clothing (jeans, a plain T-shirt, a plain sweater), some non-ostentious
jewelry... With some Photoshop, both persons could be easily rendered
Caucasian. That's why they are "normal", and that's why skin color ("race") is unimportant for this trend of neo-racist classism. Now, add a few photoshopped lower-class markers and I bet the interpretation of the "non-importance" of skin color would be different.

Biologically interesting, but socially trivial in the 21st century. Discussions about human "races" are utterly boring. They are also an obsession of societies (like the USA) which have been historically deviated by Propaganda from discussing class issues, which are the basis for the racialization of trivial physical differences. So, a sort of intellectually-informed neo-racism is resignifying these differences
in a peculiar way: by denying their existence, instead of denying their
relevance for broaching class. It is as if "normalcy" is achieved by
everybody's -- regardless of ethnic background -- acquiring the
middle-class status where, precisely, middle-class diacritics other than
skin color become the "zero degree" of identity by which the rest of
markers are judged. An example: if we look at the young couple's
picture, everything signals the paradigm of white middle-class: her straight hair, his short, neat hair, their clean looks, standard
clothing (jeans, a plain T-shirt, a plain sweater), some non-ostentious
jewelry... With some Photoshop, both persons could be easily rendered
Caucasian. That's why they are "normal", and that's why skin color ("race") is unimportant for this trend of neo-racist classism. Now, add a few photoshopped lower-class markers and I bet the interpretation of the "non-importance" of skin color would be different.

The only useful definition of "race" that I have ever been able to come up with is that a "race" is "a group of tribes having similar physical characteristics."

"This is also a nice example of a U.S.-specific racial logic. "

Well no, this article was written by a British newspaper about a British couple. Perhaps the author would have done well to understand that the British have different language than Americans for things on that topic. As Britain never experienced the slave trade like the United States did, racial topics don't suffer from the same required delicacy there that they do here.

Author of this story kind of stepped in it. I would get it if it was an American article, but to look at British language on the subject through the lens of American English and our racial hangups, even going so extremely far as to say it's US specific.... just comes across as ignorant of the existence of other English outside of this country.

I am from Brazil and, based on simple observation, couldn't agree more with your comment that our people's understanding of race is much more connected with the overall appearance of the individual, instead of who their parents are. It is not only skin color, though. Since we do have a lot of mixed race Brazilians (which we call "mestiço" or "mulato", specifically for white/black mixings) a significant portion of the population can be included in this spectrum where your genetic origin is not very clear, and we usually place someone in the race they most "look alike" (this is racist in itself, because people from different races may look very much different!). The parents of the girls are mixed race, but would very much likely not be deemed "black" in the Brazilian social construct of race.

I am almost ashamed to say that, but in Brazil classism and racism come together to define if a person is black, "mulato" or simply "moreno" (which is how we call dark skinned caucasians). Since the distribution of wealth in Brazil takes a harder toll on the black population (i.e., in general, there are more poor black people), if the person has a look that is more associated with poverty (for instance, lower quality clothing) he/she is more likely to be classified as black, while another guy/girl with similar skin tone but more "groomed" or with straigh(ened) hair, may be deemed "moreno".

what a load of complete crap

This happens quite alot in Mixed-race families.So lovely

And there is more of a reasoning for GOD's creation of one human race and only two genders. Whom but GOD, JESUS and the HOLY SPIRIT. Can we all stop fighting now?

Why is the title black and white twins I'm looking Hispanic parents, a Hispanic child, and one child that appears to be white. Where does the black person come into the picture? Secondly we don't even know if this woman had an affair on this guy and messed around with the white guy it's pretty easy to do that and one could have came out looking Spanish like her and white like the person she had the affair with. It would make no sense whatsoever to have a child that has all the characteristics of a completely different race and absolutely no traits of the actual birth father.