Every odd year or so, some Hmong children are born with blond hair.  Casual observers will wrongly assume these children have albinism.  Though Hmong children can also be born with albinism, in general, Hmong people who are born light-haired are not necessarily albino.

The blond hair of Hmong children will generally fade into a light honey brown as they grow older. However, there are exceptions to the rule, some Hmong children remain blond their entire lives. In this case, some will choose to dye their blond hair black in order to conform to the norm. Unlike people raised in Western culture where blond hair is the highest achievement of beauty and glamour, traditionally, Hmong people prefer black hair and fair skin and do not care much for blond hair.

According to geneticists, there is a particular Hmong blond gene that is a very specific gene only found in the Hmong. This Hmong blond gene has very little to do with the Caucasian blond gene.  It’s completely different from the Caucasian one, thus contrary to assumptions, blond Hmong children are not the result of the mixing of the two groups of people. 

In ancient wars between the Han-Chinese and Hmong people, the blond haired Hmong fighters were easily spotted and picked off to attack. Meanwhile, in Southeast Asia, blond haired Hmong children are coveted by other ethnic groups and often targeted for kidnappings.

In other Asian ethnicities, there are no blond genes, so it is a very unique gene among the Hmong group. If a Hmong individual married a person of Chinese, Vietnamese or Korean ancestry, there is no chance their child would be born with fair hair because throughout history, none of those other Asian groups have ever developed blond genes. However, even if a Hmong individual, let’s say, married a blond Caucasian person, they would not automatically have a child born with blond hair because, as mentioned, the Hmong blond gene and the Caucasian blond gene are utterly different.  Only marriage between two Hmong individuals who both carry the Hmong blond trait would result in a blond haired Hmong child.

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