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The white audiences thought I was white, my features being what they are, and at every performance I'd have to take off my gloves to prove I was a spade.

It was jarring to be berated for 'acting white' when I was placed in a predominantly black middle school in Southern California. I was also chubby, into boys who weren't into me, and tried too hard to fit into this 'blackness' I was supposed to be.

I was the only one at stage school who wasn't white.

I'm writing in English; I'm writing for a Western audience, but the people I'm surrounded by in my daily life are mostly non-white.

I see myself as a hip-hop artist, but I never wanted to make music for a specifically white audience. That's not what I grew up around.

I grew up in an all-white community.

Even if it's a white crowd, I tell my jokes for the four black people in the room, not the 100 whites.

We have been playing to a 70-30 black to white audience. And we are just doing what should come next, trying to attract a larger house, trying to reach an audience that's half black and white.

A lot of things that I can't get into the room for, even just to be seen, is because they're just saying 'No. they're not casting non-white.' You're lumped into a category with people who are just not white.