By Max Musson:
Following hot on the heals of the Rachel Dolezal case we have been presented by the mass media with yet another story obviously designed to confuse people and blur our perception of the issues of race and ethnic identity, the case of Verda Byrd. Unlike Rachel Dolezal however, Verda Byrd is not a White woman pretending to be Black, she is described in the media as a ‘White woman’ who for seventy years believed she was Black.
We are told in the various news media accounts that have been published that Verda Byrd was as a baby, first fostered and subsequently adopted by an ‘African-American’ couple, Ray and Edwinna Wagner, and was raised as a ‘Black child’, having been told by her adoptive parents that she was a ‘light-skinned African American’. Having lived as an ‘African American’ for most of her life, Verda decided at the age of seventy to begin tracing her biological parents and discovered they were both recorded as ‘White’. Subsequently, Verda has been re-united with three siblings, the only surviving children of her biological mother who had ten children in all.
Verda Byrd has been angered by the Rachel Dolezal case and has spoken out critically, as she feels that Dolezal has deceived people, claiming to be something she is not. This however causes us to examine Verda Byrd and her true racial status, as Byrd’s criticisms of Dolezal would appear to be misplaced if not hypocritical if she too were found to be claiming to be something she is not, and this issue of true racial status is brought sharply into question when one sees photographs of Byrd, who would appear to be of mixed race and not ‘White’ as she claims.
So, free from media hype and stories driven by an evident bias towards causing confusion over these issues, let us examine the facts of Verda Byrd’s background, just as we did regarding Rachel Dolezal, in my earlier article about her.
Verda Byrd was born Jeanette Beagle on 27th September 1942, apparently the fifth child born to a White couple, Earl and Daisy Beagle. Very shortly after Jeanette was born however, Earl Beagle walked out on his wife and never came back. It would appear that something significant had happened that motivated Earl Beagle to abruptly end his relationship with Daisy, the mother of his four other children, and sadly in February 1943, just months after Earl had walked out, Daisy was involved in an accident at work which left her hospitalised and unable to care for her children for many months. The children were all placed in care and while the older siblings were later returned to their mother, Jeanette who was still a baby and by this time had no memory of her biological mother, was deemed as too settled with her foster parents to have her life disrupted again. Daisy agreed to Jeanette’s adoption by the Wagners, who renamed her Verda and raised her as their adopted African American child.
If one examines photographs of Verda as a child, and as a young woman, she bears a striking similarity in appearance to her adoptive mother Edwinna Wagner, who was a ‘light-skinned African American’ woman and this was undoubtedly something that would have pleased Edwinna Wagner and been a significant factor in her decision to adopt Verda.
If one compares the photographs of Verda as a child and a young woman with a photograph of Earl and Daisy Beagle, it becomes apparent that she bears very little resemblance to either parent. We know that Daisy acknowledged Verda (Jeanette) as her biological child, but the obvious physical dissimilarity between Verda and Earl Beagle leads one to strongly suspect that he was probably not her biological father. For Verda to have the appearance of the ‘light-skinned African American’, one would logically expect her biological father to be a somewhat less lightly-skinned African American rather than the very European looking Earl Beagle.
In a report of this case in the San Antonio Express News, it states: “Interesting questions have been raised on the journey of self-discovery. One of Byrd’s sisters [presumably Sybil Panko] wondered whether their father was the same man. She noted Byrd seemed to have black features … [another sister, Kathryn Rouillard] said any concerns about Byrd’s heritage, or why Byrd was put up for adoption are a moot point …”
If one looks at a photograph of Verda Byrd with her three surviving siblings, it is evident that appearance wise, she is very much the odd-one-out. Sybil Panko, who is seventy-six years old and was evidently one of Earl and Daisy Beagle’s first four children, bears a strong similarity to her father, while Verda does not. The two younger siblings, Kathryn Rouillard, who is fifty-nine and Debbi Romero, who is fifty-six, resemble their mother and because of their ages, are obviously children that Daisy Beagle had much later with her second husband — her name was Daisy Pierce at her death.
The balance of probability therefore overwhelmingly suggests that Daisy and Earl Beagle had four children together and when Daisy became pregnant once again, eventually giving birth to Verda (Jeanette), Earl noticed the non-White appearance of the new baby and suspecting his wife of infidelity, walked out on her.
Once Daisy had recovered from the accident she later suffered, she regained custody of the four ‘legitimate’ children by her former husband, but was persuaded by social services to allow her ‘light-skinned’ but evidently mixed-race baby to be adopted by the Wagners. In race conscious 1940s America a White woman with four White children could still envisage finding a new husband, but a White woman with four White children and a mixed-race baby would have great difficulty finding a new husband, either Black or White.
While a comparative DNA analysis of Verda and her three half-sisters would be interesting to see, it seems virtually certain that Verda, a person of very dilute non-White ancestry, was correctly identified by her adoptive mother and is as she has always previously believed, a ‘light-skinned, African American woman’ — not the ‘White woman’ she now believes herself to be.
By Max Musson © 2015
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frederickdixon
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Someone once remarked that most Americans of African descent are white. DNA analysis has shown that the average white American is 1% sub-Saharan African by ancestry, but that 70% of whites have no African blood at all. The other 30% of whites are therefore about 3% black -almost all on female, mitochondrial, lines. Three per cent is the contribution of one great, great, great grandparent, and these are “old stock” Americans of largely British descent who have been around blacks the longest.
I don’t think it usually matters – a person is white if he looks white, thinks white, and has no recent non-white forebears, as in the case of these “old stock” Americans. On the other hand, a rare unfortunate combination of the wrong genes can bring out these long hidden, and long forgotten, characteristics – and then it does matter because the individual fails the “looks white” test. This has happened occasionally in South Africa, where the white population (Boers rather than Brits in this case) also have some non-white ancestry.
So while Verda Byrd is undoubtedly coloured, there is no need to assume immorality by Mrs. Beagle; Verda was very probably just an unfortunate genetic accident.
Max Musson
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Much of what is bandied about regarding inheritance is little more than ‘old wives tales’, including the belief that two White people with no trace of non-White admixture can have a Negro child that is allegedly a ‘throw-back’ to some forgotten ancestor, generations back in their lineage who was Black. That belief is a fiction invented by well meaning family doctors to save the marriages of wives who have been unfaithful to their husbands.
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Black genes are dominant over White genes, because White genes are of relatively recent evolution. Therefore while a person who appears to be entirely Black can carry recessive White genes which have no effect upon their physical appearance, someone who is White cannot carry hidden Black genes. When an individual has inherited Black genes, those Black genes will always have an effect upon that individual’s physical appearance.
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In terms of skin colour alone, there is a remote possibility that two slightly olive skinned White people might produce a child who is perhaps one half shade more olive skinned than either of the two parents, but those parents will not produce a child that is significantly darker than the darkest of the parents. In the same way, two blonde-haired parents cannot produce a dark-haired child, nor two-blue eyed parents a brown-eyed child.
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If we then consider the other features that are characteristic of Negros, i.e. A very broad, flat/low bridged nose, large mouth, everted lips, prominent cheek bones, facial prognathy etc., White parents who do not possess these characteristics will not produce children who possess them to any pronounced degree.
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In Verde Byrd’s case, despite being very light-skinned for someone of partial Negro descent, the fact that she exhibits other Negro characteristics in her physiognomy, characteristics that appear to be completely absent in her alleged parents, in my view makes it highly probable that she is the product of infidelity on her mother’s part.
Reality Chick
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I to believe that she is probably for African American heritage and unfortunately the product of infidelity. However, Your explanation of what constituent negro features in concerning to me:
“characteristic of Negros, i.e. A very broad, flat/low bridged nose, large mouth, everted lips, prominent cheek bones, facial prognathy etc.,”
I’m just hoping that this isn’t a broad statement.
I have met many Negros who do not process any of those characteristic.
I have also heard that as you say “Black genes are dominant over White genes”
I don’t find that to always be the case especially when I see people like Cash Warren, Pete Wentz, Troian Bellisario, Rachel Meghan Markle, Jennifer Beals, Carol Channing. All of the aforementioned have the “Black gene” and in every case the “black gene” appears to be drown out by the white gene. It is also possible for some to be very light skinned and of partial African American decent.
I also met someone whose parents are both black but who features are clearly European and i know of two dark skinned African Americans who produced a child with very very light skin. A friend of mind who is white is the only olive skinned person in her family. Her mother, father, sister, and brother are all fair skinned. She is also clearly the product of her mother and fathers union. Her father as a gift to his father conducted extensive research on the family through historical record and DNA. We would always joke that the mailman was her real father, but alas her father is in fact her real father. There was no infidelity involved here. A women standing in front of me in line handed the women behind the counter some documents and the women said “I think there is a typo on your paperwork it has you listed as African American and the women responds “I am” I laughed my ass off. The women turned around as says to me “I get that a lot, but I swear both of my parents are black”.
I think genetic is fascinating. I don’t think any one can really know what there are going to get.
Max Musson
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Hi Shay, it is good that you are astute enough to agree with my assessment of Verda Byrd’s likely ancestry.
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As for the issues that you raise regarding the inheritance of archetypal Negro characteristics, you are correct that many people of mixed race may exhibit some of those characteristics without exhibiting them all. They may only exhibit one of those characteristics, it all depends upon the genes they have inherited from their parents. However if for any specific physical characteristic they have inherited the Black gene, they will exhibit the Black form of that characteristic.
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By chance, an individual who has two mixed race parents may inherit for most of their physical features only the White genes, and so they will appear to be almost entirely White, but for the one gene that affects for example, their hair. They may look White and be White in every other respect but have frizzy Afro hair. As you say, the Black gene will appear to be drowned-out by the White genes. However if in addition to the Black gene for hair they also had one Black gene for lips and one White gene for lips, the black gene would dominate and they would have fleshy, everted lips of the kind normally only found among Africans.
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Where people with significant African ancestry are concerned, they can carry recessive White genes that will not affect their appearance in any way because their Black genes will dominate, but the recessive White genes might manifest in their children, so that two people of obvious mixed race can have a child that looks almost White, that sometimes will actually be as near as makes no difference completely White in terms of their nuclear DNA, but who will have Mitochondrial DNA (MtDNA) that will still show significant Negro ancestry. Please read my earlier article that explains this more fully: https://www.westernspring.co.uk/dna-testing-how-white-are-you/
Charles
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Minority ancestry was massively overstated in the early days of DNA testing, the 30% of Whites are 3% Black statistic is outdated. The new figure is 3% of American Whites are 1% Black.
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See
https://www.unz.com/isteve/nyt-white-black-a-murky-distinction-grows-still-murkier/?utm_source=feedly&utm_reader=feedly&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=nyt-white-black-a-murky-distinction-grows-still-murkier
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“This [a throwback] has happened occasionally in South Africa, where the white population (Boers rather than Brits in this case) also have some non-white ancestry.” F.D.
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The Boers are about 5-8% non-white, an order of magnitude more non-white than the Americans, so while this has happened in South Africa, I think the odds are astronomical for it to happen in America, and infidelity to be far more likely.
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“ … parents will not produce a child that is significantly darker than the darkest of the parents. In the same way, two blonde-haired parents cannot produce a dark-haired child, nor two-blue eyed parents a brown-eyed child.” MM
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I have to disagree on this point. Blue eyed parents can create a brown eyed baby, its just very rare. Multiple genes determine eye colour and parents can carry a brown gene thats not expressed because there are two blue genes of the same kind present.
Max Musson
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Hi Charles,
I accept what you say regarding the percentage racial ancestries among White Americans and White South Africans, but believe me there is no such thing as a Black ‘throwback’ where White people are concerned.
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Two blue-eyed parents will not produce a brown eyed child. If you don’t believe me the internet is littered with ‘Baby eye colour predictor’ tests, such as the one shown here: https://www.athro.com/evo/gen/genefr2.html
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In the test that I have linked to, the first step is to state the eye colour of the parents, which for this purpose should be ‘blue’ for both.
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The second stage is to choose from the list of eye colour genes that are possible for people with blue eyes.
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The third stage is to click on the ‘Produce child’ button and observe the eye colour of the many babies that such a blue eyed couple may produce. The predictor will not produce a brown eyed child even if you click the button over one-hundred times. Nor will it produce a brown eyed child for parents that both have green eyes.
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The test that I have directed you to is a simplified test, as it does not cater for the genes that may produce grey, hazel or black eye colour, but such colours still follow the same principle, that a child will not have eyes that are darker than their darkest eyed parent. A couple, one with blue eyes and one with hazel eyes (which often appear dark green, but which are in reality a combination of green and brown) can have a child with brown eyes, but that child’s eyes will be a shade of brown no darker than the hazel coloured parent’s eyes.
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As I have stated, ‘throwbacks’ are a fiction invented by well-meaning family doctors who are attempting to save an unfaithful woman’s marriage. If you are blonde and your wife is blonde and she produces a brown haired baby, she has been unfaithful; if you are both blue-eyed and she produces a brown-eyed baby, she has been unfaithful; and if you are both White and she produces a baby whose skin colour* is any more than just a fraction darker than the one of you with the darkest skin, she has been unfaithful. It’s as simple as that!
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* Some medical conditions such as jaundice in a baby require the baby to be treated with intense ultra-violet light, which can make the baby’s skin darken significantly and the effect of this may take two or three years to wear off, but in the argument above, I’m talking about natural skin colour.
Charles
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I agree that where White people are concerned, there is no such thing as a Black throwback. Frederick Dixon was referring to the case of Sandra Laing , an a individual from a mainly-white mixed race ethnic group that looked mixed race. It is extremely rare, but not impossible, though most cases probably are fiction.
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Regarding blue eyes, this result gives a nice explanation:
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https://genetics.thetech.org/how-blue-eyed-parents-can-have-brown-eyed-children
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Another one goes into a bit more detail and is from the University of Delaware:
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https://udel.edu/~mcdonald/mytheyecolor.html
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It finishes:
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“… eye color is determined by variation at several different genes and the interactions between them, and this makes it possible for two blue-eyed parents to have brown-eyed children.”
Max Musson
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Hi Charles,
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The links that you have provided take us to two websites which have a superficially authoritative appearance, and one might suppose the authors speak with the weight of much proven science behind them, however you may notice from the second sentence on the first of the websites you have linked to that the author states: “This [article] will deal with a plausible way that blue eyed parents might have a brown eyed child.” Clearly therefore the author is not presenting proven science, but simply a ‘plausible theory’ which ‘might’ provide an explanation of how two blue-eyed parents may produce a brown eyed child.
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The author does provide a plausible sounding hypothesis, but clearly that is all it is at this stage. Proof will only come if in such instances the parents and children are independently DNA tested and both blue-eyed ‘parents’ proven to be the biological parents of the brown-eyed child. It would appear that this obvious conclusive step has not been taken, ever, and we must wonder why that is? If it had been taken, the cases concerned would have been quoted and ‘plausible theory’ would have been established as ‘proven fact’.
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The second website begins by declaring my assertion a ‘myth’, and yet still does not cite evidence that proves that declaration to be proven fact.
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The website begins by attempting to make the reader believe that this field of genetics is very complex, suggesting that it is so complex that we shouldn’t rely on the evidence of our own eyes in determining the truth of this matter. The author discusses the melanin and the collagen fibres that determine eye colour and informs the reader that many blue-eyed baby’s eyes become darker as they get older, and describes how some people have a blue or green iris with a brown ring around the pupil — “which makes the classification of eye colour even more complicated”, both phenomena that have no bearing whatsoever on whether or not two blue-eyed parents can produce a brown eyed child. What this does suggest however is that the author is inclined to ‘fudge’ the issue by including in his assessment consideration of whether or not people with green or hazel eyes should be considered ‘blue’ or ‘brown’ eyed. Any scientific assessment however would begin by recognising that green and hazel eyes are intermediate stages between blue and brown, and in order to eliminate any potential for these colours to distort the outcome of any scientific investigation, to exclude them from the study.
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The author goes on to cite a study by Davenport and Davenport (1907) which supported my assertion, quoting the conclusion of that study that: “… whenever both parents had blue eyes, all of the children have blue eyes …”
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The author then cites a separate study by Hurst (1908) which showed that whenever both parents had blue/grey (simplex) eye colour, they did not produce any children with darker (duplex) eye colours. This again supports my assertion.
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The author then cites a third study by Holmes and Loomis (1909), which produced results which were not absolutely in line with my assertion. Out of 52 children of parents with blue eyes, one apparently had brown eyes, however this study was conducted in the days before DNA testing and therefore this one ‘exception’ to the rule could have been the result of infidelity on the part of one of the mothers involved. If only two percent of children apparently born in wedlock are the result of undiscovered infidelity on the part of the wife, that would be sufficient to explain this anomaly. Furthermore, as any statistician will tell you, a study involving only 52 subjects is not statistically valid.
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The author then cites Franz Boas (1918), a man who is known to have falsified the statistical data upon which his spurious anthropological assertions were based, so you will forgive me for discounting this one entirely.
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The author states: “Surprisingly, there don’t seem to have been any parent-offspring studies of eye color since then, at least none that I could find”, and on the basis of one anomalous case and the spurious findings of Franz Boas, confidently concludes “… this makes it possible for two blue-eyed parents to have brown-eyed children”!!!!!
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When a scientific assertion can be proven conclusively through the use of DNA analysis, I am suspicious that so many ‘authorities’ seek to assure us using nothing more than ‘plausible’ hypotheses and spurious statistical evidence derived from a politically motivated Jewish researcher linked to the Frankfurt School. Not surprisingly, I stand by my original assertion.
Erdman
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Also in race conscious America of that time, there would be no way that the authorities would give a white child to a black couple.
frederickdixon
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“When an individual has inherited Black genes, those Black genes will always have an effect upon that individual’s physical appearance”. Really? How then can it be that that 30% of American Whites who are 3% Negro by ancestry are in fact White rather than Black? Would Black genes still be turning White people Black if the proportion was not 3% but 0.3%? Is there a cut off point? If so, what is it?
Max Musson
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The assertion that “30% of American Whites … are 3% Negro by ancestry” is a very unscientific statement and has all the hallmarks of a politically correct pundit attempting to bamboozle the public with ‘statistics’ that are in fact distortions of the truth. I’m not suggesting that you fall into the category of such a pundit, simply that your innate honesty has caused you to accept an assertion that is based upon the principle of the ‘big lie’.
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Most genetic tests related to ancestry focus upon Mitochondrial DNA (MtDNA) which is the DNA of the mitochondrion, which is a single celled organism that exists within each of our cells and has a mutually beneficial relationship with us. The value of MtDNA in terms of tracing ancestry is that MtDNA is much simpler than human nuclear DNA yet it still provides a kind of simple ‘Bar-code’ record of our ancestry. The problem with relying on MtDNA analysis however, is that it provides a genealogical history of the individual rather than an analysis of their genetic composition. It is therefore possible for someone to appear on the basis of their MtDNA analysis to be as much as of 50% Black ancestry, without having a scrap of Negro nuclear DNA in their bodies. Please read my earlier article for a fuller explanation of this: https://www.westernspring.co.uk/dna-testing-how-white-are-you/
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Homo sapiens first evolved in Africa we are told and therefore it is logical that a small percentage of the DNA we all carry will have originated within the geographical boundaries of what today is regarded as ‘Africa’. However, Africa north of the Sahara was pre-historically and up until the days of the Phoenicians part of the European (Palearctic) faunal zone and so much of what is regarded as ‘Black DNA’ from an MtDNA perspective, i.e. DNA originating within the continent of ‘Africa’, in fact is White DNA that evolved among the European tribes that pre-historically inhabited Africa north of the Sahara up until the end of the last Ice Age when they migrated northwards into the Middle East and the European peninsula as the ice sheets retreated.
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We may all recall the episode of the ‘Trisha Show’ when Craig Cobb was embarrassed by the revelation that he supposedly had c.12% Black DNA. In fact this was a MtDNA analysis which probably only showed that 12% of his MtDNA originated within the geographical boundaries of the continent of Africa. As far as his nuclear DNA is concerned however, the DNA that determines what sort of a human being he is, he probably has no non-White DNA at all. The Trisha show embarrassed him through the use of ‘genetic smoke and mirrors’, and their assertion was in all probability utter BS.
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Possessing DNA that originated in ‘Africa’ does not mean that our ancestors were Black. Blacks evolved south of the Sahara and the Sahara desert acted as a barrier to interbreeding between the proto-Negroid peoples in the south and the proto-European peoples who existed north of the desert.