*Five-time Grammy singer and recording artist Mariah Carey is one of the best-selling female solo recording artists of all-time, with a portfolio full of memorable hit songs since bursting onto the music scene in the late 1980s.
Yet, she also has vivid memories of the racism she endured growing up a bi-racial child in the 1970s and early ‘80s in Huntington, New York, about 32 miles from New York City. Carey is one of three children born to a white mother and an African American and Venezuelan father.
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In her new book, “The Meaning of Mariah Carey,” the 50-year-old writes about several incidents that opened her young eyes to bigotry and racism. One incident that stands out in her mind was when she was a young girl and one of her grade school friends came over to the house for a visit.
“The parents didn’t know I was Black. They didn’t know that she (their daughter) was going to go into a Black man’s house,” Carey writes. “They’d only met my mother. The girl burst into tears because she was so freaked out. Mind you, my father is this gorgeous, tall man that looked like a movie star to me and then to see that happen. It just changes your perspective on things, and it twists it. It was just heartbreaking.”
Source: Mariah Carey Opens Up About Racism During Childhood and More in New Memoir
