Yeah, well my name is Bai Ling. That means white spirit, and I really feel like sometimes I'm not existing.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Not everybody is comfortable with my ethnicity. When I first came along in the business, they didn't really like the idea of my name being Raquel.
If the Great Spirit had desired me to be a white man, he would have made me so in the first place.
When I was growing up, my white friends would call me: 'Hey, Chief!' Even when I go to work now, people call me 'Chief.'
I have been in rooms with people arguing over a character that's not really fleshed out: that, just because the surname is Latino, that automatically means you have an accent.
I obviously had my reggae, but I got quite into rockabilly when I was a kid, because I was trying to find something that represented me as a white person.
My identity is linked to my grandmother, who's pure Filipino, as pure as you can probably get. And that shaped my imagination. So that's how I identify.
What is your identity, and how do you know who you are if you don't have language?
I sometimes think I was born to live up to my name. How could I be anything else but what I am having been named Madonna? I would either have ended up a nun or this.
I am Charles Mingus. Half-black man. Yellow man. Half-yellow. Not even yellow, nor white enough to pass for nothing but black and not too light enough to be called white.
I'm like Madonna: I'm Ming-Na. Just my first and middle name. That's it. Pure and simple.