The 25-years old mum calls them her “miracle babies” and there’s a good reason why. There’s only a one in 500 chance twins born to mixed race parents will have different skin colours.
“They are different colours, but sisters by blood,” mum Whitney tells PEOPLE. “One is light and one is mixed, but we love them the same.”
Whitney is Caucasian and partner Tomas is African-American, resulting in adorable two babies who each take after a different parent. Kalani inherited her mother’s lighter complexion and blue eyes, while fraternal twin sister Jarani got her father’s darker complexion and brown eyes.
“We don’t know how often it happens. The fact that these twins are biracial makes this a very extraordinary case,” Dr. Nancy L. Segal, psychology professor and director of the Twin Studies Center at California State University, tells PEOPLE. “It could be one child inherits certain genes from both parents and the other child inherits sets of genes from the other parent. And that explains the different skin tones.”
The nine-month-old pair even act differently!
“Kalani is wild and very energetic, while Jarani just likes to be cuddled!” explains Whitney. “Kalani crawls everywhere and gets into everything, but Jarani won’t let you put her down!”
“In this family we don’t see colour,” says the mother-of-three. She adds her seven-year-old son Talan, from a different relationship, adores the twin girls and even reads to them every night.
The young mum hopes her beautiful babies can show the world “why racism shouldn’t exist” and says Talan is a good example that people are not born racist.
“He doesn’t see any difference in the girls. He’s so innocent, he doesn’t understand racial tensions, because to him it doesn’t matter.”
The gorgeous baby girls follow the tragic loss of Whitney’s 2-year-old son Pravyn, who died in 2014 in a terrible drowning incident in the babysitter’s pool.
The twins’ touching story has made international headlines, with support and love flooding in for Whitney and Tomas and their growing family.
“It’s heartwarming, the response I’ve gotten to my biracial twins,” says Whitney. “It restores my faith in humanity, at a time when I, when this country, really needs it.”
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