Insecure of her looks

The Hero hitmaker, whose mother is Irish-American and father, an African-American of Venezuelan descent, admits she felt ugly in school because of her heritage. “I am very insecure about my looks, and I always have been because of being mixed race. It’s not so weird now, and everyone is accepting it in a big way, but as a child, I felt very out of place and didn’t feel pretty. When you grow up with that type of insecurity, you don’t always feel pretty,” Carey said.

The 39-year-old singer realised the significance of her mixed background when she took her white best friend on one of the weekly visits to see her father. “She got out of the car and went up the stairs to his house and he was over six-feet tall and very handsome, but to her, he must have really been scary because I didn’t know if she’d ever seen a black man before. And she looked at him, her mouth went open and she started screaming and crying,” Carey said.

“I think he was trying to make me feel better and calm her down, but it didn’t work. You never know what people say in their houses about different races. So my mother took her home and I went up the stairs with my father,” she added.