Tyra Banks
Banks in 2011, kathclick/bigstock.com
Birth Name: Tyra Lynne Banks
Place of Birth: Inglewood, Los Angeles, California, United States
Date of Birth: December 4, 1973
Ethnicity: African-American
Tyra Banks is an American model, television personality, producer, businessperson, actress, author, and singer. She was the host of The Tyra Banks Show from 2005 to 2010, created, and presented, the show America’s Next Top Model, and appeared in the films Coyote Ugly and Halloween: Resurrection, among other works. She is also known as BanX.
Her parents, Caroline (London) and Donald Banks, are both African-American. A picture of Tyra with her parents can be seen here.
Tyra has a son with her former partner, Norwegian photographer Erik Asla.
A DNA test whose results were displayed on the show America’s Next Top Model (2014) stated that Tyra’s genetic ancestry is:
*79% African
*14% British
*6% Native American
One of Tyra’s great-great-grandfathers was named Walter Taylor.
Tyra’s maternal grandfather possibly was Ernest London (the son of Edward London and Ophelia Christopher). Ernest was born in Louisiana. Edward was the son of Charles London and Maria. Ophelia was the daughter of Antoine/Antony Christopher and Susan West Duncan/Champ.
Tyra’s maternal grandmother was Florine B. Coleman (the daughter of Fletcher Coleman and Lucinda/Loucindy Wisner/Hampton). Florine was born in Texas. Fletcher was born in Texas, the son of Ezekle “Zeke”/Ezekiel Coleman and Julia Beasley.
Sources: Genealogical information on Tyra Banks – https://blogs.ancestry.com
good words bah, good words
Look. I’m an anthropology major. Trust me when I say this: if Tyra has hazel eyes, she is of a mixed ancestry. Light-colored eyes are a European trait. Whether she chooses to identify w. that is her business, but it’s the truth. There really aren’t many people who are “pure” anything anymore…and really, does it matter? I guess I don’t understand why someone would brag about that…it’s like the equivalent of a White person claiming pride in being 100% White and that’s just weird.
Someone said that the slave masters raped the slave women (true), but then sort of lost me by claiming that the resulting issue aren’t mixed. ??? How do you figure that one?
Also, NO ONE said that someone has to be partly of European decent to be beautiful. Wtf.
black comes in all shades and the silly assumption that everyone in africa is dark skinned is evidence of how ignorant how people are. people from botswana are actually very light skinned some even lighter than tyra and have eyes that look green and trace their roots to the hottentots in kalahari desert and not to some white ancestor so light skin and green eyes is not evidence of someone being biracial it’s just evidence that black comes in so many shades and versions. my great great gran was as light as tyra and she was already a teen when the british first began arriving in what is now my country and i’m african. there is not a single drop of white blood inboth my family lines. i trace my roots to the luba kingdom in the congo and cameroun which is considered the cradle of the negroe race. my family is all african and yet i have cousins and a sister who could pass for biracial but hey some of us are light others are dark like me others are really light and others are really dark but that’s my family with no other blood but black. at the end of the day i couldn’t care less if there was one once 10 drops or a little drop of any other race in me im black and so is my perm hehe people should be free to be who they are without others deciding who they should bebecause of their skin color, hair etc
but why does it matter what color she is? isn’t it more important what she identifies as beacause that’s what makes her happy and makes her who she is. she can have a bunch of various blood in her but she says she’s black so hey that’s who she is period anyone who sees her will say she’s a black woman because she is
HAHA WERE ALL MIXED!!!! SOME HOW!!!!