Mariah Carey identifies these days as being Black and is viewed by most Americans as such. Outside the U.S. that's not the case because they haven't got the ******** legacy of "one drop rule" designations (as well as other historical factors that continue to otherize those who have any racially mixed ancestry). Here I am viewed as a Black woman (but as soon as they hear my last name the story changes), but when I'm in Europe I'm just viewed as "exotic."
In the end self-identification boils down to whatever the individual wants. Several decades ago we had people who engaged in the practice of "passing" in order to challenge a system that is stupid and based on biological misinformation.
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Originally posted by cloudinthesky
Americans believe in the one-drop rule so if you have even any semblance of black in you, you're part of that group. But it's a bit more complicated than that because you have tons of white-passing people (like Halsey) who are mixed with black but you would never know unless they told you. Those people are considered white by the general populous.
So basically in the US, if you're lighter than a certain shade you're white. If you are darker, you're an other.
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This sums it up fairly well. And, to complicate matters even more, if a person of a certain complexity happens to be of Latino descent they may be regarded as being neither Black nor white. If Mariah's last name was Gomez or Chavez no one would even remotely think of her as being African-American (a great number of Americans, both white and Black, would refer to her as "Mexican", irrespective of the fact that she is of Venezuelan and Irish descent).
Another example is that of 70s singer Phoebe Snow, who many people believed was of African descent, but happened to be Jewish with nothing but European ancestry. It goes to show that the ways in which we view issues such as race are merely part of a cultural construct.