Black woman with blue eyes=all african?

Question

I have a black girlfriend with light blue eyes and people always ask what she is, especially black people (as in what other ethnicities she is composed of). She is very afro-centric (this means she is really into the African culture). Then she says she is all African and that there are Africans with blue eyes just like there are Aboriginies with blonde hair. Most people look at her like she is crazy. Well, that is true?

So are there a significant number of pure Africans with blue eyes. I'm not talking about African-Americans that can be mixed with God knows what. I am speaking of pure Africans. Genetically. And she is a black american btw.

Answer 1

There are a few ways this can happen. If she has any blue-eyed ancestors on both sides of her family then the recessive gene for blue eyes could have been passed down to her. This gene can be passed from generation to generation without showing up, only to suddenly appear, as may be the case here.

Mind you, blue eyes are already rare in her race, so ancestral eye-color is most likely the case. Assuming that she does not have blue-eyed ancestors, then you would have to go to the two much more rare possibilties.

She might be an ocular albino. This is where you have the disease albinism, but it only affects your eyes. This is even more rare than the above possibility. You can rule this out if she has good eyesight as most ocular albinos have very poor eyesight.

The next option is that she is a mutant. No joke. Mutations are what give us such a wide variety of life on this planet to begin with so she may just be that... a mutant. The gene for her eyes mutated and, although she has no history in her family of blue eyes and she is not an ocular albino, the gene for blue eyes literally just appeared in her.

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

This is a rarity, but possible. Eye color in nearly all non-caucasian groups is defaulted to brown/black due to a superdominance of that allele in those gene pools. However, there can be very rare cases where highly recesessive alleles like that can show up in otherwise completely similar groups.

In your friends case though, the likely answer is probably that she has some white in her background somewhere. BTW- same story for the blonde African thing. Sure it might show up in maybe 1 of every 10M births, but its certainly not regular. Some aborigines are blonde bc the Australian govt had programs to breed "aboriginality" out of these groups through white breeding. Sad story, but certainly true. This is, sorry to say, also some of the truth with African Americans in the slavery era who bore the mixed children or their slave owners. These people continud to breed with other blacks by choice, but the white genes are always in the background and resurface sometimes. Genetics are mysterious and marvellous in the way they can mix and show up across generations.

Answer 3

we all are from africa, and we have all been mixing it up there for hundreds of years. If she was born in america she is american. if she was born in africa then she is african.

people should really stop identifying their cultural identity based on skin color. Its misleading to think an american could wander into an african village and BE african just because of their skin color or cultural heritage. The same could be said of anyone with any ethnicity who went to their grandparents home-country. You might LOOK like the part, but you wont BE it unless you live there an extended period of time and come to understand. and no, club med holidays and cruises that pass through dont count.

So guess what- she is HUMAN- not african. and its not the other peoples business how she got blue eyes and she should tell them so.

Answer 4

I will probably take a massive hit for this piece of truth, but the fact is that for almost 200 years slaves were interbred quite a bit. Slave owners wanted bigger workers so big white men impregnated black female slaves regularly. The slave owners even made and kept records to prevent interbreeding. The old Charleston, SC Slave Market had records of mix percentages and parentage. If you go to Africa (been to Kenya, Chad, Jo-burg, and Egypt) you will see black people are smaller and tall ones like the Watusi are thin as rails. Dinah Shore was reputed to have been 1/16th black on her mother's mother's side. Some people get riled up of the truth from both the white and black races, but if you believe in evolution you will understand that all races had common ancestors. So what is the big deal? Why not have some fun and trace your ancestors out? After all, you can't change your genes.

Answer 5

Interesting.

In order to get blue eyes you need two blue eyed genes.
We all have 2 eye colour genes. One from each parent but the darker one will mask the blue one (blue is considered the absence of pigment)

In order for her to have blue eyes both her parents would carry the gene and each would have passed a blue one to her.

I don't know how prevalent blue eyes are in so called pure Africans.

I suspect that somewhere in her distant family tree there were a few long forgotten white folks.

By the way I don't think this makes her any less African. She should be proud of her heritage.

Answer 6

well, we don't know the extent of the gentic spectrum. blue eyes doesn't mean that all pure africans have blue eyes, as there are pure africans who come from regions where a genetic pattern is dominant, so it is past along. So if she has blue eyes, it doen't mean all pure africans have blue eyes, just those related to the one(s) who originally had that pattern.

Answer 7

I've seen a few African men with blue eyes. Very blue! It's awesome.....I don't know why the world thinks that "DARK SKIN PEOPLE" have to look the same.

Answer 8

mutation maybe? contacts