Here is the list of people who I thought were White. As you will see, I am not good at that sort of thing, especially when it comes to Eurasians:
Maya Rudolph – she does not look super White to me, but I thought it was because she was Jewish.
Yasmeen Ghauri – I knew her father was Pakistani, but she passed my Street Test: If I saw her walking down the street (with fashion-model lighting and make-up), would I think she was White? Commenters schooled me that that was not enough. You had to be of pure European blood. Jewish, Lebanese and Armenian were grey cases at best. Meanwhile, other commenters were informing me that the One Drop Rule was dead, that I was living in the past.
The next four women, like Ghauri, were all on my list of the most beautiful White women (in their younger days) based on my Street Test, believe it or not:
Patricia Ford
Bipasha Basu
Ann Curry
Kim Kardashian – I still think of her as White, but I know not everyone agrees.
Jennifer Beals – she seemed part Black to me, but in “Flashdance” (1983) she seemed to be regarded as White, so I assumed that she was.
Malcolm Gladwell – he does not look quite White, but since he wrote for the New Yorker and since serious White people took what he said seriously, I assumed that he was White, somehow.
Mariah Carey – when she first came out, I thought of her as a White girl who sang like a Black girl, a White Whitney Houston. To be fair, the golden lighting in her first video, “Vision of Love” (1990), made it hard to know what her skin colour was.
Keanu Reeves
Slash
Eddie Van Halen
Rob Schneider
Freddie Mercury – aka Farrokh Bulsara.
Sir Ben Kingsley – aka Krishna Bhanji.
Michelle Branch
Dean Cain – aka Dean Tanaka.
Meg Tilly – aka Margaret Chan.
Phoebe Cates
Walter Francis White – leader of the NAACP.
BASED ONLY ON THEIR VOICE (many of these are from the days of AM radio when you could not see what singers looked like):
Dan Hill – in the song “Sometimes When We Touch” (1978).
Marilyn McCoo – in the song “Wedding Bell Blues” (1969). I was surprised it was her.
Michele Norris – on NPR.
Carl Carlton – in the song “Everlasting Love” (1974), but not in “She’s a Bad Mama Jama” (1981).
Shirley Bassey – in the song “Goldfinger” (1964).
Yvonne Elliman – in the songs “If I Can’t Have You” (1977) and “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” (1971).
Darius Rucker – as the lead singer of Hootie and the Blowfish.
Phil LaMarr – as the voice of Samurai Jack.
Jasmine Guy – as the voice of Sawyer in “Cats Don’t Dance” (1997). I was surprised it was her.
How I chose the pictures: I took the first colour picture of their face in Google Images that did not have messy copyright text. I did that so that I would not try to find their Whitest looking picture, consciously or subconsciously.
Thanks to Kiwi for inspiring this post.
– Abagond, 2015.
See also:
- The most beautiful White women
- posts on those listed:
- Half white, half Asian
- white father, black mother
- One Drop Rule
- passing for White
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I was shocked about Keanu Reeves. Found out he wasn’t all “European” in High School and completely forgot up until now.
Rob Schneider isn’t an Eurasian? Sure sounds + looks it.
Interesting!
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Shirley Bassey – Goldfinger
i really like that song
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I thought Mariah was white. Same goes for Jennifer Beals (I think). I still think Kim Kardashian is white – Armenians are considered white in my part of world (Balkans). She doesn’t look any less white than people from the Balkans. She does have big butt, though, which is not characteristic for EE women. Not sure about Armenia (and not sure if her butt is real). I am not sure if she identifies as white, though, so I don’t want to be offensive about it. If she doesn’t see herself as white, she’s not white.
But no Slash! I kind of always knew, even back in the day when I was 13 and had a celeb crush on him. For some reason, he is often assumed to be white (is it because he’s a rock musician?) His brother Ash looks black, though (or at least obviously “not white”), and they share both parents (I believe). I’ll try to find a pic of Ash and their parents. (Not that anyone should be interested in it but eh, I really like Slash).
BTW, I’ve been waiting for ages for a post on POC rock/metal musicians, Abagond! Remember, we talked about it in the past. I understand if it might not be of interest to you at the moment but I thought there was no harm in mentioning it.
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I can understand a few of these being mistaken for white, not so much Rudolph and Basu or Gladwell though.
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Abagond
LOL…. you don’t live in the Caribbean man!!!! (where most of those people would still be considered white)
how did you manage to not see the “black” in Maya? and you let Malcolm’s “jew-fro” fool you? that’s funny
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Back in the day, I thought Jennifer Beals and Phoebe Cates were white until I read their biographies several years later.
S.B.
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I had to be told Kim Kardashian was white. Armenia is only a hop, skip, and jump from the Middle East and “interracial” mixing is nothing new. Looking at her, her older sister, and younger brother, it’s obvious they have distant Middle Eastern ancestry.
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The thing is that races are understood differently in different parts of the world. A person can be seen as belonging to different races depending on who you ask. For this reason, I do think it’s important to take the person’s self-identification into account as well as the way they are perceived in their own culture.
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The Pragmatist, The older Kardashians are half- Armenian by their father, Robert Kardashian. Their mother look like she could pass for Middle Eastern but she is of Dutch, Scottish, and Native American ancestry.
Stephaniegirl
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This just goes to show how cultural race is. I mean, there are Southern Europeans who have black hair, dark eyes, and light brown skin. Yet generally they are considered “white”. Likewise, there are Middle Eastern people who have blond hair, light eyes, and pale skin. Yet, they are not usually considered white.
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Here’s Slash’s brother Ash:
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@ Mira – Phil Lyncot from Thin Lizzy & Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine and Martin Gore of Depeche Mode come to mind when talking about other Black rockers who some people didn’t know we’re Black.
When it comes to Black rockers the list goes on and on. From which types of rock were you thinking? Does Ska count? What about all those 80’s New Wave groups? Or are you just thinking about hard rock?
@ Abagond – IMOHO. The Eurasians would be some type of ‘exotic-white’ (their fame and fortune would help them cross over to ‘white-white’.)
But how can you not see the Black in those who are mixed? They all look like they could come from Southern Louisiana.
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Uglyblackjohn,
When it comes to Black rockers the list goes on and on. From which types of rock were you thinking? Does Ska count? What about all those 80’s New Wave groups? Or are you just thinking about hard rock?
Hmmm, I don’t know. I didn’t have a concrete plan. I just wanted a post to discuss “POC rock musicians”, since this type of music is considered “white” these days. I was thinking POC rather than black to include musicians of other races (there seem to be many of Asian descent, and in very famous bands – for example, Metallica’s Kirk Hammett) but a post about black rock musicians is a good one, too.
I am mainly familiar with hard rock (eh, however is that defined). (Does “metal” count?)
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Jaw drop on slash. Had no idea he was not white.
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Jaw drop on slash. Had no idea he was not white.
Yup, Slash has a black mom and a white dad. His mom is from the US and his dad is from the UK.
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@ Mira – Yeah. Metal counts but does Punk? There are so many types of Rock that Blacks would be well represented. If you were to expand that to all POC there would be very few bands that were/are 100% European blood only and even fewer that are 100% WASP.
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Abagond, you must be sleeping surprised you didn’t know Mya Rudolph the late Minnie Ripperton’s daughter and Malcolm Gladwell. Surely you must have know Marilyn McCoo was African American. LOL! Can’t believe you were stumped.
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I knew about Slash because he was playing for MJ in his shows.
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Uglyblackjohn,
Yeah. Metal counts but does Punk? There are so many types of Rock that Blacks would be well represented. If you were to expand that to all POC there would be very few bands that were/are 100% European blood only and even fewer that are 100% WASP.
Yeah, but that’s kind of a point. Rock (however defined) is NOT a white music genre. First of all, its origins are not white. Many artists are not white. Heck, many fans are not white.
I didn’t even know it was considered a “white” genre before coming to this board a few years ago.
(And yes, I agree: focusing on each and every POC rock musician would make for a very long post, so perhaps list the most famous/influential ones and mention others as “honorable mentions”? Not sure. I admit, I did not think about this properly. I just wanted a post to discuss the “rock is a white genre” stereotype and perhaps talk about some of my fav musicians).
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What about Wentworth Miller? I had no idea about him and my mom still can’t believe me when I say he’s not white. (Ok, she does believe but you get the idea). I think he was the most surprising celeb for me (to discover they were not white).
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How about Wentworth Miller? Initially, I thought he was white, but who cares? He’s damn fine!
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Freddy Mercury Farrokh Bulsana. Wentworth Miller of Prison Break was surprise. I wondered about Vin Diesel he is another racially ambiguous celebrity.
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Wentworth Miller is very handsome.
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In Jamaica, they would still be called “white” –
no one would look at Wentworth, Slash, Vin Diesel, Malcolm Gladwell, or Maya Rudolph, and call them “black”
Walter Francis White is the living embodiment that the “one drop rule” is a LIE
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@ Mira – There are lots of things thought of as ‘white’ that really aren’t. (I think that’s one of the points of Ab’s blog – expressed one post at a time.)
[While not Black, I always thought of the Red Hot Chili Peppers (and Rage Against the Machine and Jane’s Addiction – all LA bands influenced by their multicultural environment) as being funkier than a lot of R&B of their time. The Peppers went Fairfax High, hung out with Ice-T and Fishbone, tried to rap, and had that funky bass line in most of their songs.]
But yeah, I think an exhaustive list would be impossible.
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Count me in for Vin Diesel. I believe he’s mixed but I thought he was white for the longest time.
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Mira, you and I think alike. lol! 🙂
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Leigh,
Indeed! 🙂
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@ Mary
I knew Marilyn McCoo was Black, but I did not know she sang “Wedding Bell Blues” till the YouTube Era. Before then I thought a White woman had sung that song.
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I think I knew pretty much all the people in the post above were not full white from the beginning, except maybe for Rob Schneider and “maybe” Freddie Mercury (of whom I was not sure). Usually I do have EAdar (Eurasian radar) and pick most of them out 98% of the time.
The surprise one for me was Mark-Paul Gosselaar after he did Zach in Saved by the Bell and he only played white roles. That one I had no clue. But my brother’s son can pass for white, so I am not shocked by any of it.
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Abagond,
on the flip side, I thought these singers were black when I first heard these songs:
“Brandy” by Looking Glass
“What You Won’t Do For Love” by Bobby Caldwell
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@ Linda
LOL. Me too!
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I was thrown off by Carl Carlton’s Everlasting Love I thought it was some white guy too.
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@ Linda: That Bobby Caldwell was too soulful.
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Yasmeen Ghauri is ironic. Her surname (also spelt gauri/ gori) literally means “white woman” in Urdu, Bengali, Gujarati & most other south Asian languages! LOL
As for Kim K, I don’t give a raas what anyone says, she is ‘white’. I don’t buy the “pure European” hypothesis because ‘white’ people migrated to different parts of the world well before the concept of Europe existed.
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hi abagond
maybe you or somebody here can tell me.
is USA the only place where white phenotypes are considered black?
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@Abagond: found a rare spelling mistake- Goldfinger.
Shirley Bassey, white? Never! Grew up on her music. With my eyes closed, I used to be able to tell whether it was a Black female singer or not. There is just that something that Black songstresses possess that their white counterparts lack, no matter what talent they have. I think Amy Winehouse and Diana Kral are two exceptions.
On a side note. That photograph of Shirley Bassey is very whitened.
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here’s another guy i thought was white.
[J. Edgar] Hoover’s ancestry on his father’s side was shadowy. Gore Vidal, another Washington DC local boy, remarked: “It was always said of him—in my family and around the city—that he was mulatto. People said he came from a family that had ‘passed.’”
http://takimag.com/article/j_edgar_black_or_gay/print#ixzz1dt8m1DJX
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The first time that I saw Michele Norris I actually thought she was Asian-American. She probably been hit on by a lot Asian fetishists.
Norris can tell you a whole lot about residential racism (like redlining) that kept her people, Black people, marginalized.
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@ taotesan
Thanks for the correction!
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Not everyone in the US goes by the one drop rule. To me, you are what you look like. If you look 100% white, you’re white. If you look mostly black, you’re black.
Rashida Jones- white
Leona Lewis- mixed
Barack Obama- black
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I wonder, can you HEAR whether this singer is “white” or “black”?
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoS_2tAY7f8) (Dutch)
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=870A0Whyzqc) (English)
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Didn’t know that about Martin Gore of Depeche Mode. It seems it was a shock, as in 1974 when he would have found out, there was massive stigma against PoC in the Uk and towards ww who went with them. I see he has said it brings up family traumas…
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I had not idea about Gore.
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@Abagond
just dropping in to see if there is an answer to my question yet.
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@ nomad
It is the only place I know of (not counting those overly affected by US culture). In most places, like Brazil, South Africa and the Dominican Republic, there is no One Drop Rule.
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@ Uglyblackjohn
Speaking generally, I was not blind to the fact that they did not look completely White. But because they were presented in a White context (rock bands, the New Yorker, lead in a White Hollywood film, etc), I assumed that, despite their looks, they were White enough.
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In 1925, in U.S.v. Cartesian, a U.S. court designated Armenians as white.
http://thebea.st/1tRQoIr
Kanye has described Kim as white.
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@ The Alchemist
Thanks. They also count as White according to the US census since, like Jesus, they are not from the “Asian” part of Asia.
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Wake me up when the day comes when President Obama and all other half-Black/half-White “Black” people can call themselves WHITE in America. I will know then the country has arrived at racial “Nirvana”!
But until then. I don’t know about y’all. But I live in a country called AMERICA! In America, Black people don’t get to self describe. You are BLACK!!! White people don’t care what you think OR what you think you are. All they see is Black. As I tell my friends who are Black. You Black, so better watch your back!
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@ Uglyblackjohn
I think it heavily depends on the racial background of the observer as well. I can spot other Eurasians a mile away, whereas people who are one race (usually one or the other) will be convinced the Eurasian person is one race, whether that’s white, East Asian, Southeast Asian or anything else that comes to mind. I myself have been mistaken for every race except Black.
Half Black half white people also seem to be able to spot others like them much easier than anyone else. There are celebrities that Black/white people I’ve known said were `obviously mixed race’, but I could not see it until it was pointed out to me. Sometimes it was still tough for me to see how it was obvious.
I think they are a lot more focused on skin colour and hair texture when it comes to determining whether someone is white or mixed because they are looking for fellow Black/white mixed people. For Eurasians, it’s more in the skin tone and features, so of course they would think `white’ at first glance in most cases.
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