I came in to say Mariah Carey, I had no idea she was mixed race. If I had never been told I would have always assumed she was white.
Another notorious case is that of Madonna, when her first single ‘Everybody’ came out there was no picture on the sleeve and no video, and she was widely mistaken for a new black artist.
Wow. Until this very moment, I thought the same thing. In fact, I was so sure you must be wrong (or thinking of someone else doing a cover version), that I was going to post a link to Wikipedia to show you that Q Lazzarus was indeed a white man.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_Lazzarus
That was my education for the day. I think I can go home now.
Michael McDonald…white man
Why is the news of Norah Jones’ ancestry surprising? Just the fact that it’s famous Ravi Shankar?
She is easily within the range where she could pass for a north Indian native.
Though I kinda like this pic of her and (half) sister Anoushka, here looking like a couple chicas.
“And where’s his trumpet?!” 
Wrong Armstrong!
Wow, how could you mention “her mother” and not specify that it’s the gorgeous Peggy Lipton?? (probably best known for The Mod Squad and Twin Peaks. Her IMDB page)
The moon landing was long before I was born and as a child learning about the whole thing I only saw the pictures of men in space suits, never of their faces. I just decided as a child that obviously Neil Armstrong would be black. It made sense in my mind for some reason (not related to Louis Armstrong as I was about 5 and not familiar with Jazz…my dad was a big Rush fan and my mom listened to Billy Joel so I didn’t get a whole lot of other music exposure.) I don’t know if it was because the moon landing thing was around the same time as the civil rights movement or if it was because my teacher was black or what, but I totally thought that Neil Armstrong was black for the first 26 years of my life.
She is very beautiful…but why is the black father thing awkward? I’m not understanding that…
ETA: When I was a LOT younger I remember seeing a lot of black and white photos of Billy Joel and just assumed he was black.
Mark Lenard played a Japanese guy in one episode (“To Hell With Babe Ruth”).
Ridiculous, since everyone knows he’s a Vulcan.
I assumed Wentworth Miller (Michael Scofield from Prison Break) was white, but that’s not entirely true. According to his Wikipedia page, “his father is of African-American, Jamaican, English, German, Jewish and Cherokee descent, and his mother is of Russian, French, Dutch, and Lebanese/Syrian ancestry.”
For me, this almost always happens with athletes, whom I usually first hear about from a box score or a stat line from over at say Baseball Reference. The latest victim was the recently-released Pat Burrell-his last name just sounds black, doesn’t it? Noticed my error a few years ago when I casually tuned into a Phillies game and went, “Hey wait a minute…” when he came up to bat.
Another vote for Mariah Carey. I remember when he first album came out, a clerk at a CD store asked me what I thought about her. I told her the last thing the music industry needed was a white Whitney Houston.
Not sure about black but I thought it was a woman too. Also thought it was a woman singing on Led Zepplin II when I first heard it.
Because no thread on mistaken ethnicities is complete without this Family Guy quote about The Rock…
It’s “Holding Back The Years.”
He’s certainly not black, Mick’s red. Hence the name.
I’m still trying to decide about the great Mississippi blues musician Charlie Patton
Audio and visual accounts conflict.
This goes back a ways, but because of “Ahab The Arab” and “Harry The Hairy Ape” I assumed Ray Stevens was black. Couldn’t believe it when I found out he was white.
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Not a race so much as a nativity issue: I thought that Cesar Romero grew up in Cuba and Europe, but he was born and reared in NYC. Like Desi Arnaz he was from an extremely rich family that became penniless during the Depression due to the collapse of the sugar industry and destruction of family owned farms in Cuba (though they lived in NYC Cuba was still the source of their income) by revolutionaries and bandits.
I always think of Anthony Quinn as Meditteranean of some ilk, I suppose because he played Zorba and in any number of biblical movies. He was the son of an Irish father and a Mexican mother.
