Observer Woman Magazine chose Mariah Carey to cover their latest issue where she speaks on her role in Precious, insecurity, being white (Irish) & black (Venezuelan), and racism she experiences.

On insecurity:
 
“I am very insecure about my looks, and I always have been because of being mixed race [Carey's mother is Irish-American and her father was an African-American of Venezuelan descent]. It’s not so weird now, and everyone’s accepting it in a big way, but as a child I felt very, um, out of place and didn’t feel pretty. So taking on that character and having Lee make me older in the way he did, I guess it was freeing because I didn’t have to try in any way to look pretty, and you know, when you grow up with that type of insecurity you don’t always feel pretty.”
 
On still experiencing racism:
 
“Yes. It’ll be a mild thing that I’ll get over, but a friend said to me the other day: ‘Oh yeah, you’ll like her –she’s like you, she’s got a black husband’ [Carey married the 28-year-old actor Nick Cannon last year]. And I’m like: ‘How many times do I have to tell you – my father was black. My mother’s white. In this country that makes you black, do you understand? I know I’m very light-skinned, but stop doing that!’ It’s one of those things that the world doesn’t quite understand. When I first came to Europe, everybody was asking me: ‘Why do you always have black people in your music videos?’ And I was like, errm, how do I answer this one?”

 
Thanks CL.