10 Black Celebs Who Successfully Pass For White

 Posted by A Moore

Tagged With: Black celebrity, black celebrity gossip, black celebs, Carol Channing, Cash Warren, Jennifer Beals, Maya Rudolf, Meghan Markle, Melissa Gorga, passing for white, Rashida Jones, Soledad o'brien, Token Black Celebrity, Troian Bellisario, Wentworth Miller

Actor Wentworth Miller is an easy candidate for this list. Why? Because he busted onto the scene after debuting in the film The Human Stain, where he played a black man passing for a white man. His notoriety was further increased when he played Mariah Carey’s love interest in her music video for “We Belong Together.” The Prison Break star was born in England to a black father and white mother.

Because of her freckled face, actress and fashion model Rachel Meghan Markle could easily be mistaken for being lilly white. But the star, who currently plays Rachel Zane on the USA legal drama Suits, is the offspring of an African-American mother and a Dutch and Irish father.

Rashida Jones is best known for blending in with the rest of the white cast of NBC’s Parks and Recreation. However, as the daughter of well-known music mogul, Quincy Jones, she can’t hide from her black side. Actress Peggy Lipton is her mother.

Real Housewives of New Jersey star Melissa Gorga says she is 100 percent Italian- American and denies having any black blood in her. Here’s a before-going-under-the- knife photo of her. You be the judge.

Actress Maya Rudolf is the daughter of soul singer singer Minnie Riperton and songwriter-producer Richard Rudolph. Because her mother was black and her father is an Ashkanzi Jew, she has played a range of characters from a white woman in movies like Bridesmaids to spoofing Beyonce while on her stint at Saturday Night Live.

Cash Warren is often mistaken for being Caucasian or Latino, but being the son of Hill Street Blues actor Michael Warren actually makes him half black. Cash, who is more movie producer than movie star, met his actress wife Jessica Alba while working on the set of The Fantastic Four.

Actress Jennifer Beals is best known for her roles in Flashdance and the Showtime series The L Word. Born to an African-American father and an Irish-American mother, Beals also played a biracial woman passing for white in the 1995 period film Devil in a Blue Dress, starring Denzel Washington.

Troian Pratt-Bellisario is well known for her main role as Spencer Hastings in Pretty Little Liars, but it is not well known that her mother is Deborah Pratt, a celebrated African-American actress, novelist and award-winning television producer.

It may have taken a number of CNN “Black in America” specials to reveal that Soledad O’Brien did indeed have black ancestry. Her mother is black Cuban and her father is Australian.

Carol Channing is a legendary Broadway performer who had always been celebrated as another glamourous white star. However in her autobiography released in 2002, she shocked the world when she revealed that her father was actually a biracial black man. Channing did not know this until she attended college and her mother revealed it.  The actress never said anything about it until she was in her 80s, so it wouldn’t harm her career.