Celebrities passing for a different race.

Merle Oberon

I don't know that Jennifer Beals actually tried to pass as white, but I know very few white people realized she was part-black until she did "Devil in a Blue Dress."

Mariah Carey

Did Mariah ever try to pass? I ask because I don't know much about her.

Ellen Holly

She passed.

I'm Rashida Jones.

Ava Gardner

[quote]whose racial mixedness was only revealed very late in life. Are there others?

Martin Gore of Depeche Mode (?)

He didn't make a conscious effort to pass, he didn't know. He was an adult when he learned his father was black.

[quote]I'm Rashida Jones.

Everyone knows who her father is.

R2 - no one knew Jennifer Beals was black except black people.

Wentworth Miller - I don't think many people knew.

And Raquel Welch - somehow nobody thought she was a Latina.

R3 Mariah has been honest about being biracial as far as I can remember. She has frankly talked about feeling like she was neither here nor there. Having said that, she's never made that the focus of her personality and career. Even the few songs she's written about her biracial identity have been the understated "last on the list " on her albums.

Pete Wentz.

It was never a secret that he's mixed but most people didn't know until last year.

R11 I thought everyone knew she was Latina. The one that surprised me was that Catherine Bach(Daisy Duke) is Latina.

R13 Most people thought he was Jewish, including a close friend who knows him from Highland Park. Another friend of ours (also Jewish) from Highwood thought we were lying when we told him about an article we had both read. It's an interesting case, but I chock it up to mistaken identity; Wentz never tried to "pass".

Mariah Carey is 1/4th black. Her mom is white and her dad is 1/2 black (1/2 Hispanic). I don't think she's every tried to pass as white (as a celebrity). If anything, I think her blackness was played up to more than it was, considering she's 1/4th black.

What a bunch of mulattoes!

I've heard younger people say Ariana Grande wants to look Asian lately, got the fox eye surgery and copies Korean makeup. Personally I think she's just had too much work done and looks noticably stretched back at this point.

Lynda Carter being Latina was not known.

John Gavin was half Mexican.

Joseph Cotten (great actor, Southern, significant homophobe) HAD to be part black, right?

R10 Funny thing about Rashida, I'm foreign born (sort of White and clueless) and hadn't a clue who her mother OR father were, but I thought she was beautiful and exotic.

It never really occured to me that she might be biracial. With her name, I thought later she might have some distant Desi or Arab ancestry, but not necessarily Black ancestry.

Carol Channing.

Rosanne Cash.

Mariah father is a black man, not half anything. Stop trying to diminish her blackness. Her dad being from Venezuela doesn't make him any less black than if he was born in America.

There’s a very obvious one no one has cited. (I’m a fan of this celeb and think it was a mix-up, not duplicity.)

Mariah is not a quarter Black. Her father is Afro-Venezuelan. Venezuela has a lot of pure Black people. Hispanic is not a race, so there's no such thing as being part Hispanic.

Part of the thing about being part latina, is that really until recently America basically followed the custom of Latin America themselves. White latinos were white, black latinos were black, those inbetween were referred to by their country of origin.

[quote] John Gavin was half Mexican.

Wasn't he also U.S. ambassador to Mexico?

[quote] There’s a very obvious one no one has cited.

Why don't you just simply cite this celebrity yourself?

Many Dominicans, Cubans and Puerto Ricans, who would identify as "mulatto" or "moreno", when they emigrated to the States were pressured into identifying as Black. But White Cubans and Puerto Ricans were not treated differently from other ethnic whites like Italians, Jews, Polish and Irish.

I'm going back a few decades with TV stars, but I think many wouldn't recognise Victoria Principal as a Latina. I understand Latino isn't a "race" per se, but I take the thread for meaning passing as "White" in the DL definition of the term, with all its inglorious "white adjacent" threads and posts.

Carly Simon

I think it's all proves the definition of "Whiteness" is more fluid and ever-evolving than people would want to admit.

Halsey. But that might just be me, cause I can’t keep up with these kids these days. And Carly Simon, who I just learned about around the time I learned Anderson Cooper was a Vanderbilt (within the last decade).

This is a stupid thread, filled with idiotic responses.

The thing is. A lot of mixed people who look more white, are not necessarily trying to pass. Rashida Jones, Jennifer Beals and Wentworth Miller never denied they were mixed. They got cast as white roles because Hollywood didn't care enough to understand many people identify as mixed and that not all mixed people come out looking non-white.

^^and I should say I don’t think either tried to “pass”. So maybe I’m doing this wrong. As Jerry Seinfeld would say, are we supposed to be talking about this??

Brilliant example R31. She has a very interesting background. I think she was quite surprised after her DNA study, just as Ty Burell was. There may have been some family lore, but the proof was the pudding in those tests. Most would take them as White by looks.

The only recent example I can think of is Vin Diesel. He does seem to try his hardest to downplay his African ancestry.

[quote] Vin Diesel. He does seem to try his hardest to downplay his African ancestry.

He double helixes in Europe.

R9 and Dave gahan found at around age 11 that his just deceased father was really his stepfather. He met his birth dad who was described as Anglo-Malay.

Martin gore got the curly hair but otherwise is really pasty white.

R16 Maria's Carey dad Alfred Carey is blackity black black. Majority of 12 million African slaves who came over ended up in latin American countries. The US only got a tiny amount of only 380 000 slaves..

A lot of Brits have curly hair. Martin Gore really can pass for just white. But I know many biracials with a Black parent that can pass for white.

Gabrielle Reece is part black too. Her father was a biracial Trinidadian

R21 How is Rashida not a black name?

Rashida is an Arabic name. But many Black people have Arabic names due to Islamic influence.

R43 As a Brit, I take Rashida to be an Arabic or Muslim name.

Cheers R44... I was typing as you posted your comment.

Daisy Fuentes

[quote] I'm not thinking of Rachel Dolezal (who became a celebrity only BECAUSE she passed)

OP, "passing" is a specific term meant for blacks who try to pass as white. The word is not used for the other way around.

Jesy Nelson (Little Mix) is plain old White. She is a professional Blackfisher. She makes Rachel Dolezal look like an amateur.

[quote] , "passing" is a specific term meant for blacks who try to pass as white. The word is not used for the other way around.

This entire thread is a said commentary on the insanity if American racial obsession. There is no such thing as "race".

R50 has spoken, let it henceforth be thus throughout the land.

How would anyone believe Ruth Negga was white?

[quote] OP, "passing" is a specific term meant for blacks who try to pass as white. The word is not used for the other way around.

I would disagree, while there is a distinct history of light skinned black people passing as white to evade discrimination others have also passed in history. Not to mention that there were also darker skinned black people who, unable to pass as white, would sometimes pass as natives. You also have natives, such as some of my ancestors who “passed” as white once their tribes were destroyed and they were on their own. There are also the Jewish and other immigrants who would change their names to pass, because at first none of them, even the Irish, were thought to be “white.” As someone upthread said, this issue just illustrates how fluid the concept of “whiteness” has been and continues to be, and ultimately why the concept of race is an outdated and constructed concept we need to abandon not reinforce.

[quote] OP, "passing" is a specific term meant for blacks who try to pass as white. The word is not used for the other way around.

Here's the wikipedia definition, which says (contra to your opinion) that it can indeed be used for members of any racial group passing as any other (although historically it did originate for black people passing as white):

[quote] Racial passing occurs when a person classified as a member of a racial group is accepted or perceived ("passes") as a member of another. Historically, the term has been used primarily in the United States to describe a person of color or of multiracial ancestry who assimilated into the white majority to escape the legal and social conventions of racial segregation and discrimination.

They later in the article do give Rachel Dolezal as an example of a white person passing for black.

No one mentions me?

Bruno (Colt Model)

Slash (Gun n Roses)

Slash doesn't look white. He looks like a light skinned Black guy. No different than Lenny Kravitz. Slash just wore sunglasses, a hat and was in a rock band that was mostly white and had a mostly white fanbase. The fans just assumed he was tanned or Italian and his hair was a perm. Slash always identified as Black and it was never a secret. When Axl Rose got in trouble of the use of the N word, magazines interviewed Slash about it because he was part Black.

[quote]I don't know that Jennifer Beals actually tried to pass as white,

[quote]Did Mariah ever try to pass? I ask because I don't know much about her.

Neither did, people just assumed until they corrected them in interviews.

Even news reports were saying Mariah was white without actually asking the question initially. When Oprah asked her about it she wondered aloud, "How many times can I say it? How many times could I discuss it?"

I put these two in the same category as Halsey. They never hid anything. People just made assumptions.

[quote]Slash doesn't look white. He looks like a light skinned Black guy. No different than Lenny Kravitz

Slash and Lenny Kravitz are not the same shade of brown. Lenny was always clearly black. Slash has always been on the lighter side of light skinned but everything else you said is correct. It's more of a shock to people who didn't know who his parents were that Lenny is biracial.

[quote] I don't know that Jennifer Beals actually tried to pass as white, but I know very few white people realized she was part-black until she did "Devil in a Blue Dress."

People were talking about that when FLASHDANCE came out. Way before DIABD

Carly Simon had ancestors who were slaves in Cuba. This was on Finding Your Roots. She wasn't "passing" because she didn't know about her ancestry until recently

On Who Do You Think You Are? Liv Tyler found out she had an ancestor who served in the Civil War and "passed" for white

Carly knew because she talked about it in a ROLLING STONE interview in the seventies.

Sydney Meyer

In Slasher: Flesh and Blood, I was curious why they would choose a white woman to play a mixed girl in this day and age. Then I learned she really is mixed.

Prince, the singer, even sang about his ambiguity. The lyrics were “Am I black or white; am I straight or gay.”

Troian Bellisario

Logic

Cameron Boyce (R.I.P.)

There were rumors about Ava Gardner.

Mariah Carey and her blackfishing.

Michael Jackson's children (though I know people say they aren't his) and perhaps Michael himself though he did have a skin condition.

Prince didn't pass for white though. He just looked biracial. Just like Steph Curry and Vanessa Williams.

R69, his kids are totally white

IMO, this seems to apply to actors with sub Saharan African descent. Everyone knows that famous people with Asian ancestry like Keanu Reeves, Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Kristen Kreuk, Olivia Wilde and others considered to be white.

How about all of the actors and famous celebs with significant Native American ancestry? What per cent of non-White blood must you have to be considered mixed?

At one time anyone not WASP was not considered to be White. That includes anyone who's Catholic or Jewish.

Prince was part black?

If anything this thread is pointing out that mixed race celebrities don't go about hiding their background these days as much as people are simply unaware of it.

Few people are running around looking like Eartha Kitt's daughter who had trouble convincing people she was black at all. (Eartha herself was, of course, biracial.)

Carly Simon knew she had black ancestry before taking any tests.

All she had to do was look at her mother. In her memoir, she addressed this.

R71 MJ is NOT the biogical father. He used sperm donors. Their identities are now known; do a bit of research.

I've seen people act shocked that Pete Davidson is fully white. Many seem to think he is half black.

Prince was just Black. Both his parents were Black. He's just from a family that married other light skinned people usually to maintain privilege over dark skinned Blacks. Just like Vanessa Williams and Steph Curry. Beyonce's mother comes from a similar line.

R78 Is that because of some rumours about the very large endowment he is said to possess? Just joshing; I don't mean to offend, as I know that's a stereotype.

I think he could pass for a Black Puerto Rican, or a mix of Arab and Black, even Afro-Cuban. His Jewish ancestry may be Sephardic.

Jewish and Sicilian Italian can amount to very "mosaic" genetic inheritances, so it's no great surprise when mixed together, as in Davidson's case, he will have such an appearance.

Halsey

I think Alex Wolff could pass for Middle Eastern.

Anita Bryant

I may be mistaken, yet I swear I've read something ages ago that Doris Day had a somewhat distant biracial ancestor who was believed to be part Black.

Pete Davidson must be Sicilian Italian, they are discriminated against within Italy for being ethnic.

I think most Italian Americans are Southern Italian or Sicilian descent. In The US, they were seen as "ethnic" but not anymore. Nobody sees Cuomo or Alyssa Milano as "people of color". In Latin America, they were always just considered white.

Carol Channing

There are some vague references online that Dinah Shore may have had some biracial ancestors, rather than her being unfaithful to her husband at the time. I have no clue as to the credibility of these sources, but it makes for interesting reading.

Dinah Shore was hiding the fact that she was Jewish, not mixed race

R89 I've never read she was a hidden Jew, quite the contrary actually.

[quote] Anita Bryant

She speaks jive.

I've seen people call Olivia Rodrigo, Zendaya, and Doja Cat "white passing" but I don't think they are at all. I've also seen people act surprised and say they didn't know Jennifer Tilly and Meg Tilly are part Asian and I wondered how they couldn't see it right away just by looking at them. I guess I just have a better eye for it than many people.

Suspects:

Dominic West

Theo James

Darren Criss

Jeanne Crain

There is an old DL thread on Dinah Shore for anyone interested.

Loni Anderson

R93, isn't Theo James Greek?

Does anyone remember back in 2015 the hullabaloo about Tom Jones taking a DNA test to finally answer his as well as others' suspicions that he may have Black ancestry? There's really an utter lack of follow-up online.

[quote]Pete Davidson must be Sicilian Italian, they are discriminated against within Italy for being ethnic.

He explained this, on Joe Rogan. He's not Italian at all.

He had an Ancestry DNA test and he's Irish on his mom's side and Jewish on his dad's side. He apparently didn't know he was Jewish until he had an ancestry test and found out he was 48% Jewish. He asked his mom and she confirmed his dad was Jewish. He said he had no clue before that point because he was also raised Catholic.

[quote]There's really an utter lack of follow-up online.

R99 he did respond to it and said

[quote]"A reporter said to me, 'Would you be opposed to a DNA test?' And I said, 'No, I wouldn't be opposed to it.' And that was it," he said. "So now in the paper, 'Tom Jones is getting a DNA test to find out whether he's black or not'. Well, I never said that."

I'd post a link but it's in the Independent which I think is one of those sites that gets that weird, they don't want us linking here, warning.

Gorgeous Dona Drake "passed" all through her career. "Although she was three-quarters African-American, she presented herself as Mexican and went by the names Una Novella and Rita Novella, typically being cast in "ethnic" roles including Hispanics and Middle Easterners, and occasionally taking the role of white characters. As Mexican "Rita Rio", she led a touring all-girl orchestra in the early 1940s, also known as "Dona Drake and her Girl Band", among other names for her musical and dance acts".

Many years ago, the late Hollywood memorabilia collector Lester Glassner was told by Harold Nicholas "We all knew about her. She wasn't; fooling any of us. "

While at Paramount, Drake's best friend was Dorothy Lamour whom I am convinced was multi-racial. Louisiana born, her Wiki entry says she was "of Spanish with some English, French and possibly also distant Irish descent", though she was also quick to point that her "exotic coloring" was due to her Spanish, French and WHITE creole roots. Sure, Dottie.

R101 I think it is safe to assume that anyone who claims creole ancestry will have some African, French, Spanish, English, Mexican, and Native mixed in like a gumbo.

Johnny Cash's first wife Vivian Liberto claimed to be Italian. Though she looked Black to the point that The KKK sent her threats. It was rumored Johnny dumped her for June to make his career more mainstream. I think DNA tests showed Vivian was really part black and obviously passing for survival especially being married to a white man. Cash himself has some African ancestry that his daughters discovered from an ancestry test.

Vivian was absolutely a beautiful woman

Rosanne Cash, Johnny Cash's daughter, was on Finding Your Roots. Her mom really did have some black heritage. She was descended from a plantation owner who had kids with ones of his slaves. Btw, the show also revealed that she had black heritage on her dad's side, too

Lenny Kravitz was never "clearly" any race other than HOT. My GOD that man is sexy.

He "presented" as a Black man with a Jewish last name playing White rock. Prince was rarely portrayed as a black artist in his career because he transcended all of that.

Charlie Pride was a mainstream artist. Hell, almost all pop acts from the 1960s that are Black aren't regarded by the mainstream as black artists, merely as "artists".

I think we've regressed as a society.

The Van Halen brothers are half Indonesian. I don’t think they tried to hide it, but I also don’t think people know about their mom being Indonesian.

Mae West was also rumored to be part black. It’s why she went blonde. And she seemed to get darker as she aged too. I’ve also heard that about Joseph Cotten. Look at his hair and nose!

Prince didn't transcend being Black. When he debuted as a disco artist, his music was only getting heat on R&B stations. His music was always rooted in rhythm and blues and a lot of his songs had social commentary on race . He later explored jazz and hip-hop. He had an album called Golden****r. He didn't have any issue with being Black nor saw it as a handicap. He was just aware that white audiences would not embrace him either if he didn't tone down his blackness. He saw what happened with Rick James who got regulated to only R&B stations. He did Purple Rain as a media promotion to suburban audiences. The film portrayed him as a biracial kid because he felt it would make him more marketable and get his songs airplay on pop and rock stations. It worked. After Purple Rain, he went back to his Afrocentric roots. I don't like the idea of someone transcending their roots. People are a product of their culture and environment and that informs the music they create.

R75

Eartha and Kitt. Her mother was still prettier at 70 than she ever was- but Kitt is a handsome woman.

Actress Victoria Rowell and her daughter Maya. Rowell herself is biracial and her daughter has a white father, her first husband. The little boy is her son with Wynton Marsalis. She gave an interview once where she said a flight attendant refused to believe she was Maya’s mother and thought that she was her nanny!

R105 thinks we've regressed from the Jim Crow era. LOL. And you are wrong that artists were never pigeonholed by race back then

[quote] And you are wrong that artists were never pigeonholed by race back then

Correct. I transcended my bland whiteness.

[quote] I don't like the idea of someone transcending their roots. People are a product of their culture and environment and that informs the music they create.

It isn't about forgetting their roots. When someone transcends their roots they are embracing everything and can be embraced by everyone. Dolly is a great example of a white artist that has transcended her roots. She is still country, still fully embraced by country fans, but she has transcended that to become an almost universally beloved figure, even among those who "hate" country music.

This is America, we are not controlled by our ethnic culture or environment. Everything is our shared culture.

R108

Thanks.

My first exposure to prince was as a kid, and in subsequent video appearances, his "blackness" wasn't forward, and although he was a black man, he seems to have put man first.

I didn't know Ella Fitzgerald or Diana Ross or Carly Simon had colors, I just knew my parents had good taste in music.

Why should art and music be segregated?

R113

Good example!

R113 thinks everyone in America has the same experience regardless of race or ethnicity. LOL. You have to have your head in the sand to believe that. Republicans love being racist while pretending racism doesn't exist

You would never know Martin Gore is half black from looking at him.

What is racist is to think that because a person is black they can only perform "black" music, if they are white they can only perform "white" music and so on.

I heard that's why Ava Gardner aborted her pregnancies. Can you imagine presenting Sinatra with a black baby?

Ava Gardner was born to poor white trash sharecroppers in the South, I wouldn't be surprised if she had some "other" ancestry. It was not at all uncommon.

Elvis had black ancestry too.

Gardner's family wasn't that poor

R72, did you mean Olivia Munn?

She was somebody but I just can't remember her name. I'll ask Tony. Oh, he won't remember.

[quote]Transcend being black? Or any other culture one was born into?

That wins the prize for Biggest Asshole Post of the Month for November 2021, no matter what else comes.

There have been some white singers who "passed for black", haven't there? I mean, everyone who heard them at first thought they were black and then were surprised to find out they weren't.

R126 My mother said she first heard Janis Joplin and Charley Pride around the same time and assumed they were the opposite of what they were.

Teena Marie

Alexander Hamilton

[quote] There have been some white singers who "passed for black", haven't there? I mean, everyone who heard them at first thought they were black and then were surprised to find out they weren't.

Rick Astley

Dr. John

Amy Winehouse

Jack Sheldon

Most white people whose family has been in the country for a long time and are from the south have some black ancestry.

While British actor Stephen Graham is mistaken as White by others, he openly acknowledges his racial ancestry. He is not "passing" for white, more so no one thinks to question his race.

Iron Eyes Cody, the Crying Indian in the "Keep America Beautiful" anti-pollution ads was the son of Sicilian immigrants but insisted he was Cherokee/Cree.

I love that Prince is recognized for his talent first and foremost. Just like with Bob Dylan, Whitney, Dolly, Jimi, Aretha, Joni, Cobain and others. He had god-given talent that spoke to so many. But his music was still deeply rooted in Black musical tradition. The rhythms, call-and-response, gospel chanting and pleading, the melodies, etc. I think he showed the beauty of it all. Just like how Dolly's music is rooted in working-class Appalachian culture. Nothing about rock music is "white" either. It originated as rhythm and blues, a musical genre that was developed by Black Southerners. Elvis was a Fats Dominos fanboy and covered Sister Rosetta Thorpe. The Beatles, Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd originated as blues cover bands and all named Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Robert Johnson as influences. Pink Floyd was named after Pink Anderson.. The West African musical influence is very understated but it's now become a course of study. I agree a lot of musicians are curious and open-minded people and take influence from various cultures all the time. Whether they are white, Black, Hispanic, Asian or other. They are not burdened by the same prejudices that regular people have because art is freedom of expression and exchange of culture.

[quote] Nothing about rock music is "white" either.

R134 I agree with 95% of what you are saying but you are wrong about rock. The majority of musical historians and musicologists will tell you that rock is the mixture of all the working class music of the South. It was a mixture of R&B and Country, with a gospel(black and Southern(white) seasoning. Many of the early rock record companies previously had operated separate "hillbilly" and "race" labels, that would often feature the same songs and sometimes the same backing musicians. While you rightly mention Elvis was a Fats Domino fan and covered Sister Rosetta Thorpe, he was also equally a huge fan of the Grand Ole Opry, covered Bill Monroe, and headlined at the Louisiana Hayride, which was like the minor leagues of the Opry.

Rock is not white nor is it black, that is what made it so revolutionary. Out of the South, the land of Jim Crow segregation came a music that blurred the lines between black and white, birthed by both, and showed it to be the imaginary line it is. If anything, rock is mulatto or mixed.

Some black artists have also talked about their love of the Opry and how that music shaped their music such as Ray Charles and James Brown. We think society, especially in the South, was completely separate. But that wasn't true for the lower classes, there was a lot more mixing going on than the middle class history books would have you believe.

R134 thinks musicians are free from prejudice. As if!!!

[quote]Lenny Kravitz was never "clearly" any race other than HOT.

[quote]My first exposure to prince was as a kid, and in subsequent video appearances, his "blackness" wasn't forward, and although he was a black man, he seems to have put man first.

[quote]I didn't know Ella Fitzgerald or Diana Ross or Carly Simon had colors, I just knew my parents had good taste in music.

[quote]When someone transcends their roots they are embracing everything and can be embraced by everyone

[quote]This is America, we are not controlled by our ethnic culture or environment. Everything is our shared culture.

Let's make something crystal clear: erasing someone's race is just as bad as knowing it and hating them for it.

Not a single artist here wanted you or anyone else to do that. They wanted to be acknowledged and accepted. They wanted to be treated as equals without having a piece of themselves erased.

Instead of "I don't see color" what they wanted was for you to say, "I see your 'color' AND I like your music/acting/etc" or "I see your color and you see mine and it's okay. We can still work together and live together even if our ancestors had different experiences."

Every person mentioned in this thread told the world exactly who they were and where they came from even when people were confused, when articles were written saying the opposite, even when it might hurt their career because it was important to them. Race isn't everything a person is but it is a part of us all. It should be okay to say, "I came from this" and it informs some of who I am.

Also while, Dolly Parton is a great example of someone who is "universally loved" she acknowledged that Whitney Houston was black. She acknowledged it and invested some of the royalties she got from "I Will Always Love You" in a black neighborhood in Nashville. Did that make her a bad person for not thinking, "Well, I don't see their color. They don't need anything!" She said, "I want to do my part to help everyone be on the same page." We can't all be on the same page until we acknowledge that there are differences and we're okay with that.

R137 OMG no one is saying that someone isn't black if they transcend their racial roots it is just acknowledging that your "race" is not all that a person is. It isn't denying a person is black to say they have transcended that, it is just an acknowledgement that they weren't limited, artistically, by their race. This is the problem with "cultural appropriation," by placing things in silos it becomes static and doesn't grow or evolve. If you followed that line of thought Marian Anderson, Jessie Norman, etc... would not have had the careers they had because they sang "white" music. Also, Whitney is a strange example because for much of her career she was attacked by black music fans for not being black enough.

When people say they want to look past race, they aren't saying race doesn't matter or isn't important, only that we should get away from the thinking that it is the MOST important thing about a person, it is only one ingredient in what makes a person. Education, class, sexuality, looks, intelligence, morality, etc... are often much more important aspects of a person than the color of their skin.

Kris Humphries

People were saying Pete Davidson (who was mentioned above) was the first white guy Kim Kardashian was with. I thought "What about Kris Humphries?" (the basketball player she was married to for 72 days). It turns out he is actually half Black. Looking at pictures of him now, I don't know how I missed it before because he definitely does look mixed, just rather light skinned. But somehow I didn't know.

"Education, class, sexuality, looks, intelligence, morality, etc... are often much more important aspects of a person than the color of their skin."

This tends to overlook the fact that our interests, jobs, hobbies, etc. are heavily influenced by race. White people tend to like "white" shows, music, movies, etc. Black people like black stuff, Asian people like Asian stuff etc.

[quote] Education, class, sexuality, looks, intelligence, morality, etc... are often much more important aspects of a person than the color of their skin." This tends to overlook the fact that our interests, jobs, hobbies, etc. are heavily influenced by race. White people tend to like "white" shows, music, movies, etc. Black people like black stuff, Asian people like Asian stuff etc.

Like most of this thread your comment and the linked article are nonsense.

r141 didn't read the article

I can't believe no one has mentioned Markle. She deliberately passed as white for years -- her old CVs are out there online -- until she realized being mixed race was more advantageous for her.

Oh, no, the Klan Grannies are back!

I once saw Prince described as a "black man with white skin."

[quote] Prince was rarely portrayed as a black artist in his career because he transcended all of that.

One of the dumbest posts I have seen on DL. I, a white fan of Prince, didn’t need him to “transcend” being black to “embrace” him. And he would have smacked anyone who tried to suggest that. He was proud of being black and celebrated that in his music his entire career. There’s no segregating rock and country from r&b and rap, it all came out of american roots music which was a crazy mixture of southern sound from Appalachia to the Delta, full of the black, white, native, and mixed people who lived there. Begone Klan Granny!

Prince was a black man. He wasn’t any less black because he was light skinned (because race is a social construct) and he wasn’t any less a man because he was sensual. I guess some people here weren’t around in the 80s.

Back to the music - what blows my mind about American music is, the banjo came from Africa, the fiddle from Ireland/England, and the zither ... from Sweden (I think) and these people all came together to create Country Music as we know it today.

I'm not a huge fan of country. But I appreciate a good origin story.

r130, Lisa Stansfield

Taylor Dayne

[quote] Back to the music

Back to discussing race, the subject of this thread which is never contentious or divisive on DL.

r143, I call this bs. There isn't much casting for mixed raced actress. Megan Markle would not get casts as black receptionist or black background singer #3 in any show. She has to the way she presents.

Rebecca Hall didn't get cast as black girlfriend in Woody Allen's movie did she. People aren't trying to pass nowadays they are trying to work and people get casted on how they present.

Don’t worry about R143, there’s a Klan Granny poster whose trademark is insisting that Meghan Markle wanted to be / pretended to be / mostly was white and not black. I don’t know what that obsession is about.

[quote] Megan Markle would not get casts

Casted.

R152, I'm going to try not to but there is an important point here.

The Catherine Zeta Jones problem.

[quote]People aren't trying to pass nowadays they are trying to work and people get casted on how they present.

Not quite.

The old thinking was, you get cast as you present. The new thinking is, you get cast as you are. All of that is linked to progress.

Keanu Reeves, once described himself as a "white boy." He's not. The thing is, he did that decades ago when it would have been much harder for him to be cast as an Asian/White teenager. These days he doesn't do that. He embraces who he is. Things are different now.

Catherine Zeta Jones is Welsh but got away with playing latinas. Back then, it was easy for her to do that. She presents in a few different ways. She didn't, however, lie about it. She couldn't do that today.

If you cast a biracial teen actress, she'll probably have one parent who is white and one who is black. Zendaya's "Mary Jane" character in Spiderman has Michael Keaton as one of her parents.

Rachel's parents on Suits were a mixed race couple which relates to who the actress is. (Please do not turn this into one of THOSE threads.)

Rashida Jones on the other hand in both The Office (Karen Filippelli) and Parks & Rec (Ann Perkins) was classified as "racially ambiguous" and jokes were often made about that fact. At one point they joke about her possibly being Italian on The Office. On Parks & Rec Leslie tells Ann that her "ambiguous ethnic blend perfectly represents the dream of the American melting pot." At no point, on either series, do Rashida's character say she's biracial. That probably wouldn't happen today.

With Paris Jackson acting more and more it will be interesting to see who they inevitably cast as her parents. (I'm undecided if Michael is her father but I do think she is biracial.)

“Cast”, R153.

Slash doesn’t look like a light-skinned black guy to me.

In her early years, Rita Morena played whatever she could get cast as. For example in The King and I she was cast as Asian (Thai) but in West Side Story she was cast as Latina, or whatever the correct word is this month (Puerto Rican).

^ Moreno, not Morena. Duh. It's getting late and I'm tired.

I'm still amazed that after all these years that white people still don't seem to understand that not all black people look alike. There are many black people with fair complexions and naturally straight hair and this can vary within the same families. Those people tend to have a lot of European DNA, but they're still black.

I love watching old movies, trying to clock the actors who were passing, Because I think there were more than a handful.

R154 Mad respect to those wanting to believe MJ is the father, as he always maintained he had used his own sperm cells with each child. However, I believe Mark Lester or Dr. Arnold Klein to be her bio father.

Forgive me for the delectably trashy source below, but I've read similiar about her DNA test results being in the high 80-90% as Caucasian. I've read similiar in [italic] HELLO! [/italic] magazine.

Lester is convinced she resembles his family, and Dr. Klein purportedly told her mum Debbie Rowe he had used his sperm, so who knows. Whomever the bio parents, Paris is quite a beautiful young lady.

Phoebe Cates is half Filipino.

I guess she really knew which one of those pictures was her mother

Markle trying to pass for black.

Pictures?

r154, Michael Keaton did not play Zendaya's MJs father in Spiderman. That was the other black girl.

R164, Garcelle Beauvais and Michael Keaton's characters had a daughter played by Laura Ruth Harrier who is biracial. The point still stands.

And Zendaya doesn't play Mary Jane, she plays "Michelle Jones." During the week I have a life so I don't know all of this shit. I'll leave that to you.

I knew someone fuckwads would stink up the joint by bringing MM into the thread. Fucking losers.

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One person who qualifies who hasn’t been mentioned is Elizabeth Warren. I don’t think her passing was an internal lie, more bad judgment to rely on a family fable for something so serious, but it counts.

[quote] The local Washington, DC news anchcor Barbara Harrison

Love her.

The thing about Warren and others whose family lore includes 'part Indian' is that they may be part Native American. DNA tests are totally unreliable for Native American DNA because the sample size is so small. Tribes in the US don't allow DNA to be considered as a criterion for tribal enrollment in part because of that. It's quite possible that Warren and many other people who show no American Indian ancestry in their DNA do have some distant native ancestors.

I do think Meghan did try to pass for white at first when she got with Harry . She clearly was wearing foundation, contouring, choosing hairstyles and other tricks to hide her Black features. I don't think it was self loathing more just opportunism and realizing how the public would want her to look a certain way. Now she looks clearly biracial now and closer to how she actually always looked when young.

Interestingly Meghan grew up in South LA in a predominantly Black area. I don't think she's disconnected from her heritage. She embraces both. She called herself a "proud mixed woman" which is valid. A lot of mixed race people don't like putting themselves into a box. Many are proud of both sides of their family

[quote]I do think Meghan did try to pass for white at first when she got with Harry .

Of FFS. 🙄🤦‍♂️

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I know DL abhors rules like this, but i don’t think white people are able to offer even a barely-informed opinion about whether black or mixed women are or aren’t trying to pass, we just have zero clue on this or ability to mindread about it. Not to mention it’s impossible to tease that apart from a woman trying to fit a beauty standard that’s still mostly based on white women.

R173 This thread could have been OK if it had been called 'celebs mistaken for' instead of 'celebs passing for.'

Jeanine Pirro

R168 Elizabeth Warren is from Oklahoma and I think that since Oklahoma has such a large number of Native American tribes someone in her family was just told of something ages ago which wasn't perhaps entirely correct. It's all innocent and Trump is a piece of shit for what he put Native Americans as well as Elizabeth Warren through.

[quote]i don’t think white people are able to offer even a barely-informed opinion about whether black or mixed women are or aren’t trying to pass

Because white people never know. You put a black person with light skin and non kinky hair in front of a white person and they get all confused. "Where are you from?" "What is your background?" "Don't you look exotic"

Not to mention, there’s a difference between passing all the time and passing temporarily to just get through a social situation you feel out of place in (code-switching).

OP, I always thought "passing" meant how others perceive your race, not an intent to deceive others. Right?

Half the people think I'm white.

The first time I went to Florida, I was 18 and I worked in retail at a customer service desk. "Karens" were the typical customers who returned things for refunds. A woman marched up to me and said in a way that sounded like an accusation, "WHERE does someone get a tan like THAT in March?"

It was so weird. I didn't know how to react behaviorally but I just said "Florida."

As soon as I saw that Rashida Jones red carpet exchange, I thought of that woman's comment from 25 years ago. What if I had been half black and she had said something like that to me as an 18 year old? It would have been really alienating.

And I still can't figure out what the woman's problem was. She seemed really offended that I had a tan.

I think passing was different in different eras. During slavery and Jim Crow, passing was an intentional act for reasons of safety, escaping persecution, being able to make a prosperous and socially accepted life. People cut off all ties with their families, moved to a new place, often changed their name, and passed as white intentionally (which created many oddities in genealogical records).

Post-Jim Crow or in specific professions that depended on marketing yourself (like performance), people passed less for safety and more to appeal to the widest possible market/audience. For many years this was still 90% people of color or Jewish people passing as white, but there were exceptions, and some people just passed for specific jobs, or just in terms of their career, rather than changing their whole lives around.

We’re in an interesting period now where there’s a lot more passing from white to something else (hi Hilaria), a sign that we’ve actually made some racial/ethnic/religious progress in this country and that there are some benefits or perceptions you can gain from passing as non-white or leaving yourself ambiguous. I see the Rachel Doleazeals of the world as symptom of good change.

The Rock (Dwayne Johnson)

[quote] Interestingly Meghan grew up in South LA in a predominantly Black area. I don't think she's disconnected from her heritage. She embraces both. She called herself a "proud mixed woman" which is valid.

Disagree. Completely.

Markle rarely acknowledged her African American heritage UNTIL she married into the BRF and could use that side of her history as a hammer to slam that family with accusations of racism.

Anyone who is perceptive or has knowledge of her history knows that she played the “ethnically ambiguous” card to the hilt prior to her 2nd (or is it 3rd?) marriage.

In actress interviews, she crowed about the ability to play a Latina by wearing red. She earmarked herself as Caucasian in her resume, and in her classic default mode of dishonesty claimed she was of Maltese heritage as a result of relatives who lived there....when in fact the historical relatives were born in other Anglo places and moved to Malta later. (A bit like saying I’m English because I moved to England to study at Oxford.)

In her most recent appearance, she revealed to Ellen that she wished to copy Andi McDowell’s hair from a film. Markle then lamented that the haircut did not work on her because “nobody told her” she had “ethnic” hair.

She’s been siding with the Caucasian aspect of her persona (dating exclusively white, surrounded by almost all white friends, co-workers, and now even hires as well as blowing out and suppressing any aspect of her “ethnic” - read African American - hair since she was in high school).

If this isn’t disconnected from her black heritage, don’t know what is.

There was a documentary about a black couple who moved north and passed as white. Their kids didn't find out until they were adults and the reunion with their black relatives was incredibly awkward.

[quote]which created many oddities in genealogical records

Which is why those ancestry services tell you up front. If you do this, you may find out something that you don't want to know.

Here is a picture of 3 slave children from New Orleans.

R184 is the Klan Granny obsessed with saying Meghan wanted to be white.

R184 either needs Jesus or some kind of psychiatric help.

With people like Rashida Jones, I think it's "damned if you do, damned if you don't." If she accepts roles playing an African American woman in a show like Black-ish, they say "What is she doing on a show called Black-ish when she isn't Black? She has no right to portray herself as the face of Blackness when she gets white privilege and doesn't go through any of the struggles of a Black woman." Then if she doesn't play any African American characters, it means she's trying to hide her ethnicity and is trying to go through life as a white woman.

[quote] R173 This thread could have been OK if it had been called 'celebs mistaken for' instead of 'celebs passing for.'

R174, here's that thread.

No mention of Hilarious Baldwin?

My autocorrect put it there and I didn’t change it….

Rob Schneider is half Filipino. There was even an episode on SNL where the cast brought out their mothers and he brought out his mother and basically said (paraphrase here) "Yeah bitches, I'm Filipino."

Keanu Reeves is an odd one. Mixed Asian and white (partially indigenous Hawaiian if that is counted as Asian and then other Asian.) The photo of his supposed Chinese grandmother on the Internet has been debunked and he never claimed it was his grandmother. (It was a random old Chinese lady.) I have read he played more white when younger. Now he clearly presents as mixed race.

Pete Wentz is Colin Powell's cousin. Both light skinned Jamaican dudes.

Mixed race myself but pass, not on purpose. Almost all my close friends are mixed, not by conscious choice but clearly unconscious selection on my part. Just feel more comfortable. Dominican friend was mulatto in the DR but told me he was told he was Black when he arrived in the States as a teenager.

I think Rashida Jones is one of a kind, because she’s also a celebrity child, and one of her parents is a HUGE black cultural figure (major influence on music and involvement in civil rights). I always figured the jokes about Karen Fillipelli’s identity were in-jokes about this in a way (that no one in the know thinks Quincy’s daughter is Italian).

[quote]Michael Jackson's children (though I know people say they aren't his)

How dare you! I am a black woman!

Meghan seems opportunistic. It's not racist to call that out. She's no different than anyone else who wants fame and wealth. She's clever and knew what marrying into the Royal Family entailed. She downplayed her Black ancestry in order to get ahead. It was the mainstream media actually that kept bringing up her Black mother and people on social media kept criticizing her. She wasn't advertising it. People kept calling her out. I don't care if she even identified as white as she's mixed and it's her choice to choose. But she did look more like a light-skinned Black girl when younger. She had a nose job and wore makeup to de-emphasize that. But so did many other Black actresses trying to get into Hollywood.

Boris Karloff’s father was Anglo-Indian. Boris was born dark-complexioned, and his skin grew darker as he got older.

[quote] Boris Karloff’s father was Anglo-Indian.

What's "Anglo-Indian"?

[quote]I think it's "damned if you do, damned if you don't." If she accepts roles playing an African American woman in a show like Black-ish, they say "What is she doing on a show called Black-ish when she isn't Black? She has no right to portray herself as the face of Blackness when she gets white privilege and doesn't go through any of the struggles of a Black woman."

Or Rashida Jones could play a biracial character and none of that applies. That is an option these days.

They did have the spinoff show "Mixed-ish" for a short period with Mark Paul Gosselaar.

On "Mixed-ish" did Mark-Paul Gosselaar play a mixed-race character?

White passing=white. If society sees you as a white person and treats you as one, you benefit from white privilege and therefore you're white. There is no such thing as "passing." Race and ethnicity are not the same. So called "white passing" mixed people are just white people with African ancestry.

R199, That's a great question.

The character he played was Gary Cole's son and as an adult on Blackish, his character was played by Beau Bridges. Mark-Paul was brought on to replace Anders Holm at the last minute. I didn't watch it but I also can't figure out if his character's mother was discussed. Doubt it since it was a recast.

Has Mark-Paul Gosselaar ever played someone who was half Asian? His character on Saved by the Bell had white parents but that was decades ago.

However, this is another case where the actor didn't hide his background. His mom was his manager. They were always hugged up on each other at premieres and parties. He did, however, spend years just playing white characters but that's pretty much what was out there back then.

[quote]R189: With people like Rashida Jones, I think it's "damned if you do, damned if you don't." If she accepts roles playing an African American woman in a show like Black-ish, they say "What is she doing on a show called Black-ish when she isn't Black? She has no right to portray herself as the face of Blackness when she gets white privilege and doesn't go through any of the struggles of a Black woman." Then if she doesn't play any African American characters, it means she's trying to hide her ethnicity and is trying to go through life as a white woman.

[quote]R198: Or Rashida Jones could play a biracial character and none of that applies. That is an option these days.

R189 and R198, her character is biracial in the movie On the Rocks. Her long divorced parents are played by Bill Murray and biracial model Alva Chinn and her husband is played by Marlon Wayans.

30s singing cowboy star Herb Jeffries passed for Italian-American AND African-American, depending on the situation.

Dorothy Lamour and Linda Darnell look like they have some African DNA in them.

Olivia Wilde R72?

Wilde's ancestry includes English, German, Irish, Manx, and Scottish; she is also of 1/64th Sephardic Jewish descent through her great-great-great-great grandfather.

TV's Wonder Woman, Lynda Jean Carter's mom Juanita was of Mexican, Spanish, and French descent. Her father was of English and Scots-Irish ancestry. Which doesn't make Linda 100% Latin.

[quote]What's "Anglo-Indian"?

It means exactly what it implies, white British and South Asian, in Karloff's case, Indian.

"Karloff was born William Henry Pratt on 23 November 1887, at 36 Forest Hill Road, Dulwich, Surrey (now London), England.

His parents were Edward John Pratt, Jr. and Eliza Sarah Millard. His brother, Sir John Thomas Pratt, was a British diplomat. Edward John Pratt, Jr. was an Anglo-Indian, from a British father and Indian mother, while Karloff's mother also had some Indian ancestry, thus Karloff had a relatively dark complexion that differed from his peers at the time.

His mother's maternal aunt was Anna Leonowens, whose tales about life in the royal court of Siam (now Thailand) were the basis of the musical The King and I."

OJ Simpson has been known to pass for a different race -

The human race.

R195 = Klan granny. You think only black actresses have nose jobs? LOL, probably 60% of actors in Hollywood have had one

Hilaria Baldwin wasn't claiming to be non-white. She claimed she was Spanish

Olivia Wilde, that's not even her real last name and boy does she have some backstory, she comes from wealth and privilege.

"Wilde was born Olivia Jane Cockburn in New York City on March 10, 1984. She grew up in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. while spending summers at Ardmore in Ireland. She attended private school at Georgetown Day School in Washington, D.C. and boarding school at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, graduating in 2002. Wilde derived her current name from Irish author Oscar Wilde, and changed her surname while in high school to honor the writers in her family, many of whom used pen names. She was accepted to Bard College, but deferred her enrollment three times in order to pursue acting. She then studied at the Gaiety School of Acting in Dublin.

Some of Wilde's paternal Scottish ancestors were upper-class and lived in many locations at the height of the British Empire, including Peking (where her paternal grandfather was born), Calcutta, Bombay, Cairo, and Tasmania.

The Cockburns descend from the lawyer, judge, and literary figure Henry Cockburn, Lord Cockburn. One of Wilde's great-great-grandfathers, Henry Arthur Blake, was governor of Hong Kong. Through her father's family Wilde is related to George Cockburn, who was responsible for burning down Washington, D.C. during the War of 1812.

Wilde's ancestry includes English, German, Irish, Manx, and Scottish; she is also of 1/64th Sephardic Jewish descent through her great-great-great-great grandfather, Ralph Bernal (1783–1854), a British Whig politician and actor."

James Angleton’s mother was Latina, but I doubt he tried to “ pass.”

R210 I can't say that I blame her for changing her name; I wouldn't want to be known as a Cockburn either! I always found her very pretty. I really enjoyed her on House, and think she's a fine actress

Hailey Bieber's mom, Kennya Deodato, is Brazilian born of Italian and Portuguese descent. A friend attended art college in NYC with Kennya.

Hailey's maternal grandfather is the Brazilian musician Eumir Deodato, famous for his rendition of 2001: Also Sprach Zarathustra, which he won the 1974 Grammy Award for Best Pop Instrumental Performance.

Here's Eumir in 1970, Hailey has the same eyes.

Speaking of nose jobs, and plastic surgery in general, Hailey Bieber seems to have had her entire face reconstructed. This doesn't even look like her.

Marc-Paul and his fake blond hair tryin' to pass, SMH.

Naomi Campbell, is part Asian, she is part Chinese.

"Campbell was born in Streatham, South London to Jamaican-born dancer Valerie Morris. In accordance with her mother's wishes, Campbell has never met her father, who abandoned her mother when she was four months pregnant and went unnamed on her birth certificate. She took the surname "Campbell" from her mother's second marriage.

Campbell is of Afro-Jamaican descent, as well as of Chinese-Jamaican ancestry through her paternal grandmother, whose surname was Ming."

J. Edgar Hoover was not only a cross dressing closet case, but his family was well known in Baltimore to be "passing".

Bob Marley's father , a man named Norval Marley, was white and British, he was born in East Essex, he claimed to be a a captain in the Royal Marines.

Marley's father also claimed to be part Syrian Jewish.

Most celebrities are mixed, either of mixed race or many nationalities.

Keegan-Michael Key is of African-Amercian, Polish, and Belgian/Flemish heritage. He was adopted by a biracial couple.

Bruno Mars is of Flipino, Spanish, Puerto Rican, and Ashkenazi Jewish heritage.

Halsey is of African-Amercan, Italian, Hungarian, and Irish heritage.

Taika David Cohen better know as Taika Waititi is of Māori (Te Whānau-ā-Apanui), Russian Jewish, French Canadian and Irish heritage. He jokes he's a "Polynesian Jew".

Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson is of African-American and Samoan heritage.

H.E.R. (Gabriella Sarmiento Wilson ) is of African-American and Filipino heritage.

Shakira is of Colombian and Lebanese heritage. Shakira's mother's family is actually from Catalan, they migrated to Columbia. Her Lebanese father was born in NYC.

Zendaya is of African-American, German, Irish, English, and Scottish heritage.

Maya Rudolph is of African-American and Ashkenazi Jewish heritage.

Devon Aoki is of Japanese, German, and English heritage.

Chrissy Teigen is of Thai and Norwegian heritage.

K.J. Apa is of Samoan, Scottish, English, and Irish heritage.

[quote] There is no such thing as "passing."

There [italic]isn't?[/italic]

Well, NOW what are we gonna do?

Model Helena Christensen is of Danish, Flemish and Peruvian descent.

Benjamin Bratt is of Peruvian, German and British ancestry.

Lenny Kravitz is of African-American, Bahamian, Ukranian-Jewish, and Native American descent. Through his mother, Lenny is a second cousin of television weather presenter Al Roker, their grandfathers were brothers.

Jason Momoa is of Native Hawaiian, German, Irish, and Native American heritage.

Kimora Lee Simmons is of African-American, Korean, and Japanese heritage.

Olivia Munn is of German, Irish, English, and Chinese heritage.

Halle Berry is of Black, English, German, Irish, and Dutch heritage.

Zazie Beetz is of German and African-American descent, she speaks fluent German.

Nicole Scherzinger is of Filipino, Native Hawaiian, and Ukrainian heritage.

Aubrey Plaza is of Puerto Rican, English, and Irish heritage.

Amandla Stenberg is of African-Amercan and Danish heritage.

Martin Sheen is Spanish and Irish American.

Aubrey Graham, the Canadian actor who played Jimmy Brooks on Degrassi TNG has a black American father and Jewish Canadian mother.

[quote]R9/R10, R13 & R133... are we really just listing mixed race people now? Bye

You MUST be NEW here, most DL threads veer off-topic. Stop being a fucking hall monitor, it's predictable and tedious.

Get with the program, don't try to fight it!

[quote] Get with the program, don't try to fight it!

Should I date outside my program or major?

W&W, R225, thanks for the laugh. WHET John?

Apparently people on Twitter think Zayn Malik is white passing? I on't see it at all.

[quote]R223, DLer since 2006

You think that's something? Some people have been here since DL's inception.

[quote] Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson is of African-American and Samoan heritage.

Afro-Canadian, actually.

Clooney?

More like trying to pass off as a straight man.

[quote]If AMERICAN society sees you as a white person and treats you as one, you benefit from white privilege and therefore you're white.

Rest of the world existing and all that.

[quote]And I still can't figure out what the woman's problem was. She seemed really offended that I had a tan.

She was questioning your identity, R181 snd, in doing so, accusing you of passing.

Historically, passing is a lifelong commitment in which a Black person with White physical traits chooses to disavow family and friends to live as a White. That isolation and insecurity is at the heart of the myth of "the tragic mulatto." It is a far more complicated lifestyle than depicted on this thread, but our resident race obsessive know-it-alls have a long history here in distorting the truth for their personal comfort. As a matter fact, I don't know what the fuck most of this thread is about.

These trolls are ever-fearful of being outed as "other;" as I wrote on an earlier thread this year, after 40 years they remain in shock and denial having learned the secret of grandmother's ability to maintain a year-round tan.

This is why at times I hate us.

What are red bone and yellow bone? I’ve seen those terms on DL.

George Clooney is of Irish, German and English ancestry.

His maternal great-great-great-great-grandmother, Mary Ann Sparrow, was the half-sister of Nancy Lincoln, mother of President Abraham Lincoln.

Cabaret singer and actress Rosemary Clooney was an aunt. Through Rosemary, his cousins include actors the late Miguel Ferrer, Rafael Ferrer, and Gabriel Ferrer, who is married to singer Debby Boone.

Jennifer Beals definitely tried to hide the fact that she was black. Ebony magazine outed her around the time Flashdance came out and made a big deal of it in the 80s. Mariah didn't want any of that nonsense and revealed her ethnicity despite Tommy's protestations.

[quote]Jennifer Beals definitely tried to hide the fact that she was black. Ebony magazine outed her around the time Flashdance came out and made a big deal of it in the 80s.

This is one of myths that gets spoken about over and over again with no one really trying to sort it out. Everyone trusts their memory but they shouldn't.

She didn't hide anything as much as people didn't go looking for instances where she'd said it (she gave a speech where she talked about her black father way back then in Chicago) and the studio went through lengths obscure it when Flash came out but the magazines didn't care.

Keep in mind, this is 38 years ago.

- She'd done one project prior to Flashdance so it wasn't like anyone was really checking for her prior to the movie.

- She was on the cover of Jet Magazine in 1983. That's what people usually mean when they say she was "outed" but it was really the first time anyone had started writing about the woman? She wasn't some huge star that had "hidden" it for years. It was a profile of a newcomer.

- However, People also said she was biracial and it wasn't a big deal. They weren't the only ones either. The New York Times on the other hand referred to her as white.

- She was nominated for an NAACP Image award in 1983.

- The Ebony Magazine article with the picture of her parents happened years later. She caught flack because in it because people remember her quote about going to Yale differently. What she said was:

[quote] "I thought they only took geniuses. But I was lucky, because I'm a minority. I'm not Black, and I'm not White, so I could mark 'other' on my application, and I guess it's hard for them to fill that quota."

People only remember her saying, "SHE SAID SHE WASN'T BLACK!" No, her point was, there was no "biracial" option. She saw herself as neither specifically one or the other. She wouldn't be the first biracial person to do that.

- Jennifer herself said it wasn't really her fault that people didn't identify her publicly as biracial, instead it was the studio because they were

-- Angry at her when they found out she was biracial.

-- Didn't want articles written about it or for her to talk about it.

-- Threatened to not even release the movie because of it.

-- Were worried when people found out that it would hurt sales.

She did one project then went back to school at Yale because she wanted to take a break from acting. The woman turned down St. Elmo's Fire and Purple Rain! There are people saying she denied it when she was promoting Devil With a Blue Dress when the movie was ABOUT a biracial woman who passes for white.

Helen Lawson successfully hid her mixed race ancestry from the public for years. The title of her 1940s film musical "Lady Godiva's Chocolate Box" was an in-joke.

I thought Alessia Cara was a light skinned Black girl, but no. She is Italian.

Is Helen working at all now that she's stated she won't get valued?

won't get vaxxed ^

[quote] OP, I always thought "passing" meant how others perceive your race, not an intent to deceive others. Right?

You will note that I did not specify either way.

As a biracial, this thread is interesting!

One thing I’ve always been curious about was Sally Hemings. Some of the children were black, some of them were passing and disappeared into white society.

But she wasn’t that mixed, she was mostly white. She had a white father and a biracial mother.

Also, I remember watching Zoe Kravitz on Big Little Lies where she plays a biracial girl with a black Mom and white Dad but it’s interesting because she’s biracial but she’s 50/50 because she has 2 biracial parents.

Also, Grady Sizemore and Derek Jeter.

R234

Redbone is dark skin. I’ve never heard of yellow bone, it’s called high yellow, which is light skin.

I can pass for all races.

I'm so brilliant.

R245 is incorrect, perhaps well meaning, but wrong.

R247 oooooooh I just looked it up. Redbone is light skin too.

I never knew! I never knew yellow bone either.

I only knew high yellow. But I thought Redbone was dark skinned.

30 Helens agree.

I heard Elvis had some Injun blood.

[quote]One thing I’ve always been curious about was Sally Hemings. Some of the children were black, some of them were passing and disappeared into white society. But she wasn’t that mixed, she was mostly white. She had a white father and a biracial mother.

Sally Hemmings was a slave her entire life. She was described, by people who met her in France, to be almost "white" in appearance with "straight hair," a blacksmith at Monticello described "mighty near white" with hair that went down to her waist. She was said to be beautiful. That didn't matter much because she still had inherited her mother's status as a slave. (Add to that the fact that she was Jefferson's late wife's half sister.)

The only time she wasn't "technically" a slave is when Jefferson was the American minister to France. He had summoned Sally to bring his legitimate daughter with his late wife named Polly. Sally and her brother weren't considered slaves there. They were free. Because of that, Jefferson decided to pay her a small wage but when he decided to return to Monticello with her brother James who was also in France, she put her foot down and said she wasn't going to go back as his slave unless she got more privileges and any children they had wouldn't inherit her slave status.

Jefferson agreed and she returned from France to Monticello with her brother. She had 4 children who lived past their youths and were free. Sally herself remained a slave until she died.

Also people shouldn't think of it as a love story, as it was speculated THAT was why she decided to return from France (where she was free) to Monticello. Jefferson started raping her at 14 and continued to have sex and children with her until his death.

And yes, some of her children did pass into white society. However, we don't have any actual photos of her children or her. We do have them of her grandchildren. The one below is their grandson on the left. Those are his three children on the right.

Tilda Swinton is of Scottish, English, Northern Irish and Marcian ancestry.

Roxane Gay

IT's interesting how Elvis and Ava Gardner have come up, yet no one mentioned the term Melungeon. It's more technically been described as a Tri-racial isolate. Very interesting group of people who can be thought of as their own special ethnicity.

Many of these old families are deeply intertwined going back before the US became its own country. This group is or was more or less endogamous, due to restrictions on mixed-race marriage. It's a fascinating part of American history really.

I have a little black in me, and it feels good! 😏

Hervé Villechaize

Jefferson really was an asshole.

R251 Oh interesting photo, thank you!

I know she may have looked just like his wife because they had the same father.

R258, yeah, it's a terribly sad story overall because since she was a slave we really only have a couple of descriptions of her and no photos or paintings.

There's a photo floating around the internet that people keep saying is her. Even some minor historical websites do, but it's actually another one of her grandchildren. Some of her other grandchildren clearly could have passed.

One of the interesting things I found out (that relates to this thread) is that while some of her grandchildren "passed into the white world," not all of them (while able to) wanted to. One of her great grandsons, George Pettiford, had white friends. Although he couldn't eat with them after they'd play basketball together because he still considered himself black. When he joined the military he wanted to join a black unit. The military on the other hand kept pushing him to join the white one. He refused. He saw himself as a black man and that's what he wanted to be.

There are so many people in this thread that have been discussed that absolutely wanted people to know who they were and where they came from. There's a real drive to do that for many people. While the OP asked for, "people whose passing was only revealed after they had become famous." It turns out that there really aren't that many at all, especially in the past few decades.

For every person whose true race is revealed (through self-disclosure, blackmail or other manner of outing), there are thousands of others (including their progeny) who remain in the shadows.

A human tragedy spanning time, geography and social mores.

"We're all Africans, really."

Speaking of Meryl, anyone mention Merle Oberon and her mom who traveled with her as her maid?

[quote] Speaking of Meryl, anyone mention Merle Oberon and her mom who traveled with her as her maid?

R1 mentioned Merle but not her mother.

I knew a girl who was white and had a kid by a guy that was black as midnight . You would have never guessed that little boy was half black. The daddy insisted on a dna test because he just couldnt believe that such a white baby was his. He was . I wondered if 2 generations down the line a coal black kid will pop out and cause quite the uproar.

R262 Merle was the mentioned in the first reply to the post.

[quote]I thought Alessia Cara was a light skinned Black girl, but no. She is Italian.

I always assumed Alessia was Hispanic. Cara is usually an Hispanic last name.

[quote]Tilda Swinton is of Scottish, English, Northern Irish and Marcian ancestry.

Now if you said Tilda was part Martian, that I'd believe! 👽

I have always suspected that Pernell Roberts was biracial. He came from Waycross, Georgia. To me, between his curly black hair and some of his features, it's easy to imagine that somewhere in his family tree there was a black person. Interestingly, he was very socially active, marched for black rights in Selma, and advocated for TV to hire people who were ethnic minorities to play that minority when it was being portrayed in a show, instead of using white actors.

I deserve an "Oh, dear!" R267!

😁

Mariah Carey and Halle Berry pretending to be black has always pissed me off. Carey has had a lot of black in her but none of it her race.

[quote]As Mexican "Rita Rio", she led a touring all-girl orchestra in the early 1940s, also known as "Dona Drake and her Girl Band", among other names for her musical and dance acts".

A miinor correction R101. Rita was named Dona Drake by Paramount when signed with the studio in 1941, long after she'd stopped touring with a band. Drake married costume designer William Travilla in 1944 and she gave birth to her daughter Nia in 1951. In 1956, the couple separated after Travilla began a long-term relationship with his business partner, William Sarris.

R270, What nonsense are you babbling?

R270 Mariah Carey is debatable. She doesn't exactly look white but she doesn't really look black either. I would call her "racially ambiguous." But Halle Berry for sure looks black to me.

Naya Rivera was:

50% Puerto Rican

25% African-American

25% German

R273 Mariah is whiter than white. Her claims of being black are just marketing. Same with Halle Berry.

Phil Donahue show about people passing for white.

I never knew the Tilly sisters were half Asian (Meg and Jennifer)

did anyone say that yet? I didn't read the thread.

R203 I always thought that about these two women too. Linda especially. Also Dorothy lamour helped her friend Dona drake secure roles too and I always wondered if it’s because she saw something of herself in Dona. Farley granger to me looks rather mixed.

The lovely Dona Drake as "Rita Rio" in an early 'Soundie'. Her (light-skinned) African-American ancestry is quite evident.

So glad PBS hasn’t deleted this page…

Mae West looks like she’s mixed here…

There were always rumors Mae was a man.

DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS (95): Everybody in the movie, even all the Black men, are amazed that Jennifer Beals is actually (gasp!) . . . not White! ("My mother was 'Creole' . . . and my father was White!") of

R278

“Farley granger to me looks rather mixed.”

I expected him to have some Italian ancestry but I don’t believe he did.

Vivien Leigh had Armenian ancestry.

Lana Turner favors Beyoncé.

How is Hailey Bieber biracial ou passing?

R286, how could Lana Turner have been part of the Beyhive?

Some people think Jayne Mansfield was part black.

Clark Gable apparently had African and Native American ancestry.

[quote] Some people think Jayne Mansfield was part black.

It’s a pity some would consider that especially heinous.

R291 ?

Farley Granger actually looks Hispanic in that photo linked at R284, he also resembles actor Hamish Linklater.

[quote] Vivien Leigh had Armenian ancestry.

If so that only taints her because of remote association with the Kardashians.

Bump.

Bruno Mars isn't black. He's been passing for years. Katy Perry said he owns and uses a tanning bed! Black people don't need those! All a tanning bed would do is dry out their skin so bad that they'll be utterly miserable.

I knew Wentworth Miller was part black because he played the young version of Anthony Hopkins' character in Human Stain. The film got attacked massively for Hopkins' playing a white passing black man. He turned in a great performance though. And I can't think of an older black actor who could have passed for white. Philip Roth based the story on Anatole Broyard.

I don't think he intentionally 'passed' but Mark-Paul Gosselaar certainly was presented as a blond California beauty...

...he never hid his roots from the public eye, though.

R296, Bruno Mars has never claimed to be Black. He clearly loves and is influenced by Black music but that's true of just about every popular musical artist in history from Bing Crosby to Elvis to the British Invasion to Elton to Bowie to Madonna to Justin Bieber. He's part Puerto Rican so he probably has some African ancestry though.

I always thought Brittany Murphy was an Irish -Puerto Roxanne combination like Mariah.

Regardless, her plastic surgery was reflective of extensive attempts to look as Anglo/White as possible (not succeeding though).

R160 There is no way Michael Jackson’s kids are biologically his. Jackson genes are strong. They all look like each other. You can’t even tell some of them apart. And his kids look nothing like them.

R264 Genetics.

A lot of people who are mixed and come out whiter is most likely due to the fact that they are more white than black. A lot of black Americans have European DNA and it’s going to be noticeable when you have a mixed race kid.

Genetically I’m 60% white so I think that’s why I obviously came out more white.

Gosselaar‘s mom is really beautiful.

I find genetics really interesting. My friend (black woman) has two daughters by the same man, and one is lighter skinned and the other is very dark.

On the Real Housewives of Potomac, Robyn and Gizelle were accused by some of their cast mates as being biracial because of their light skin and green eyes, and they both took offense. Both said they had two black parents, and neither identify as biracial. Robyn’s mother has been on the show a few times, and I never would have clocked her as a black woman.

R302 how racist was it that Jackson used some white man's sperm to father his kids via surrogate. Talk about self-loathing.

MPG was gorgeous.

Half-Chinese Rosie O'Donnell. But she gives it away when she speaks Mandarin.

Alam Wernik. I saw a video of him visiting his family. They are dark mamelucos.

[quote] Alam Wernik. I saw a video of him visiting his family. They are dark mamelucos.

How did he end up looking like he did?

Anni-Frid Lyngstad of ABBA is Lebensborn.

R309 - skin bleaching, hair bleach, plastic surgery.

Gay porn actor Daniel Hauser has done the same, but less successfully.

[quote] plastic surgery.

Did he perform the surgery himself? He went to doctor school you know.

Apparently Beyoncé is from a brown skinned African American family. I thought she was French-Arab mix.

I always thought Alicia Keys was a Boston Marathon kind of gal. Imagine my surprise to find out that she actually ran the NYC Marathon!

Jussie Smollett is half white and jewish.

Lil Kim is not a Korean Lady.

Johnny Cash's first wife; but not entirely sure she knew. The press said she was black and then she came forward with documentation that she was Italian. But Roseanne Cash had her DNA done and she was in fact part black.

For the first half of light skinned DL fave Lena Horne's career she whitened herself up with plastic surgery. Her race was "okay" because she wasn't *that* black. Then she tried to pass for 100% black when it was in style in later - dark make-up, afro-like hairstyle. Actually the "natural" afro hair only lasted a couple of years, other wise it was straighteners or straight wigs.

Bottom line, Lena was a multi racial woman who could pass for a few races - whatever was convenient.

Afro lite below in 1972:

Alan Dershowitz thought he was 100% Jewish until HL Gates outed him as having subSaharan ancestry.

I’m half drunk.