The Surprising Tea on the Black Colorado Child Born With Blonde Hair and Blue Eyes

A Black mother from Colorado shared a viral video of her children admiring her children for their blue eyes and blonde hair. Yes, her Black children. Despite the seemingly odd chance of these features showing up, it’s actually more common than we think. 

Nadiya Luwan Smith took to TikTok to share clips of her children - both of which have fair skin, crystal blue eyes and blonde hair. Her son Kuhvari X'Xivion Simmons-Smith, is three quarters Black and one quarter white while her daughter, Malaïa Louwella Smith, is half Black and half Puerto Rican, she told Newsweek. She also told the outlet she and her husband expected their children to come out with brown skin and eyes but her genes had other plans.

"My son's father is half Black and half white, I'm full Black, so my son is a quarter white and three quarters Black. My daughter's father is Puerto Rican, so she's half Puerto Rican and Black,” Smith said. 

Smith said her own parents are fully Black. However, her husband’s father is Black and his mother is white with blonde hair and blue eyes - which seems to be the answer as to why the little ones inherited the features they have. If we want to be real, it is also very evident that recessive genes from white people who made babies with enslaved folk could also be the source of our features today, generations later. Though, there is some more science mambo jumbo that explains this trend for Black folks.

Traditionally, blonde hair and blue eyes are associated with people of full European descent. However, Black people can end up with those same features naturally. The first group of humans to emigrate from Africa, Melanesians, are a known population of African descent who were found to have a natural rare gene that produces blonde hair, per researchers from University of Cambridge. 

On the other hand, research has proven that all humans pretty much started with brown eyes until a genetic mutation - by way of the OCA2 - that resulted in the alteration in melanin in our eyes resulting in the blue color, per Medline Plus. It’s also believed that everyone with blue eyes shares this mutation.  

Yes, Black people can have these features regardless of their multiracial makeup.