I never really had to put much thought into my race, and neither did anybody else. I knew I was black. I knew there was a history that accompanied my skin color, and my parents taught me to be proud of it. End of story.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I knew exactly what I was, and there was no hang-up with me. None whatsoever. The fact that the pigment of my skin maybe being lighter brown than other people of my race, maybe some of them, but you know our race has all colors.
There's always a lot of talk about motivation to race, but nobody really knows what I do or what I think apart from myself, so I don't really care what people think.
I never felt that I was supposed to be white. Or black, either. My parents just wanted to let me be who I needed to be.
Overall my race hasn't been a problem. I'm a Black artist with White skin. At the end of the day you have to sing what's in your own soul.
There are so many people who have this idea of who I am because I'm black.
I was one of the only people of color at my grade school and also my high school. It's weird recollecting on my childhood, I think, because my brothers are all white. We all share the same father but different mothers. I guess I kind of associated white, but I was occasionally reminded in a really negative way that I wasn't.
I feel like I'm able to relate to all races of people because when you learn to tap into the raw emotion of a person, that goes past color.
When I was a kid, my parents never let me use race as an excuse. They'd say, 'When you walk into a room and it's all white, those kids have to work to stand out, not you.'
My parents raised me to not ever look at race or color, so it doesn't have a big part in my self-identity.
You know, I don't play the race card a lot. I'm half-black, half-white, and I'm proud of - my skin is brown. The world sees me as a black man, but my mother didn't raise me as a black man. She didn't raise me as a white guy.