Talk:Human skin color/Archives/2010/November

I'm stupid, and I have a question about skin color and genetics.

When I was born, and for most of my childhood, I had light skin. But then as time I went on, my skin began to darken (because of not using sunscreen), and, although this sounds bad, I started to become a bit depressed. I like the look of light skin over dark skin, but I'm not a racist as I don't discriminate based on skin color.

Let me get to my question. If I had a child with a light-skinned woman, would our child still come out dark because of the darkening of my skin, or does that not tie into the genes that I'll pass onto my child? I'm guessing that it won't because I inherited most of my mother's physical traits (with the exception of a few noted below), but recessive genes aren't eliminated but supressed, leaving them a chance to spring back up in another generation.

It sounds like a dumb question, and it is, but it's one that I can't answer, and I don't know how to search for this specific question on Google. But because I don't talk to anyone on my father's side of the family (my father is dark-skinned), and because I felt out of place at most family gatherings (for being darker than everyone on my mother's side of the family), I was hoping maybe the chances of me having a light-skinned baby would still be really high to keep my child from feeling alienated like I did.

Here's some extra information about me in case this would affect anything:

- I adopted most of my mother's physical features except hair. Everyone on her side of the family has straight brown hair, and I have curly black hair.

- My mother is between 12 - 15 on that skin color scale up there, and my father is between 27 - 30. I was born somewhere in between 12 - 15, but now I'm in between 24 - 27.

My first response was, "Jeeze. This guy is really sad/obsessed." The second was to delete this all together -- but I thought better of it. (Should it go? It's got no relevance to Wikipedia at all.) deeceevoice 10:22, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Look up a photo of Halle Berry's (half black) child with a white man. Yes a child will still come out dark. Likely you didn't darken because of sun exposure, it's fairly common for SOME children to be born lighter and darken in their late toddler years. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.136.162.64 (talk) 07:46, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Something you do during your lifetime (like sun exposure) should not affect the genes you pass on to your children. See Lamarckianism for more on that. --JWB 20:51, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

It's sad, I know, but it's something I think about quite a bit. Thanks, JWB.

Please remember that the talk page is for discussion of ways to improve the article itself, not general discussion of the article's topic. Ketsuekigata (talk) 14:50, 10 April 2008 (UTC)