Mariah Carey has opened up about a racist attack she
experienced as a child - when someone spat in her face on the school bus.
The singer and actress was discussing the portrayal of
racism in Lee Daniels' The Butler during a press conference at the Waldorf
Astoria Hotel, Yahoo Movies reported.
Mariah plays the mother of White House Cecil Gaines (Forest
Whitaker) in the film, which sees a plantation owner rape her character in
front of her son before shooting her husband. But Mariah revealed the scenes in
the film that she found most disturbing was the recreation of the 1960 Lunch
Counter sit-in in North Carolina when a white woman spits on a black college
student for asking to be served at the white-only counter.
The 43-year-old singer recalled: "That actually
happened to me. I know people would be in shock and not really want to believe
or accept that, but it did. That right there, that was almost the deepest thing
to me in the movie because I know what she went through - and it happened to be
a bus as well. It was a school bus."
Co-star Oprah Winfrey asked: "Where somebody spit on
you?" to which Mariah replied: "Yeah. In the face and in the same
way."
Mariah is the daughter of a white Irish American mother and
an African American/Venezuelan father and her mother's family disowned her
after she married in 1960.
The singer has spoken in the past about the racial prejudice
she experienced growing up and in her song Close My Eyes she sings: "I
left the worst unsaid; Let it all dissipate; And I try to forget."
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