Hey, Hunger Games casting-failers!

[gryphonsegg]

Read this article about Melungeons with the links to short articles on other tri-racial isolate populations in the South. It should clear up a few misconceptions, like the idea that there are no people of color in Appalachia and the idea that a multi-racial man who married a blonde, blue-eyed white woman couldn't possibly have one dark-haired, olive-skinned daughter and one fair-haired and fair-skinned daughter. Pay attention to the photo of the family with widely varying skin colors, including one daughter who is significantly lighter-skinned than everyone else. In human genetics, the alleles for light-colored skin, hair, and eyes are usually recessive and the alleles for dark coloring are usually dominant, so it is totally possible for a tri-racial population to produce people with dark hair, medium skin, and light eyes and for a man from that population to carry "masked" alleles for lighter skin and hair colors which might be revealed in some of his offspring if his wife also carries alleles for light coloring. Or for two people who each carry both dominant and recessive versions of relevant alleles to have some children who are lighter than both parents and some who are darker, as in the photo. I don't usually go to Wikipedia for information like this, but I like that the Melungeon article because it contains so much information in so few words about how much racial classification in US history is socially constructed and how multiracial people have had all kinds of labels applied to them depending on the racial anxieties of the time. That seems just as relevant to the Hunger Games race discussions as the fact that there have been populations of multiracial people in and near Appalachia for as long as there have been white people there. Still think that Katniss and Prim are definitely white?

Also, here's an image that might be very surprising to those who insist that Cinna can't be black because he has green eyes and also to ATLA casting-failers who continue to believe the Water Tribes must be white because their eyes are blue: . The linked image is a close-up of the face of a person with moderately dark brown skin, obviously sub-Saharan African features, and very, very blue eyes. It's from this blog, Mixed American Life, which contains much information that those who believe that people of color can't have any other hair color than jet black will find startling.

This entry was originally posted at http://gryphonsegg.dreamwidth.org/49318.html. Please comment there using OpenID.