Classmate spat on Mariah Carey

Singer Mariah Carey says a classmate had spat upon her in a racist attack during her childhood.

The 43-year-old, whose mother, Patricia, is Irish and late father, Alfred, was of African-American and Venezuelan descent, experienced abuse for her bi-racial background when she was growing up in Long Island. Carey says it helped her prepare for her role in the new movie "The Butler", reports femalefirst.co.uk.

Speaking about a scene in the movie where a white woman spits on a black college student, she said at a press conference for the film: "That actually happened to me."

"I know people would be in shock and not really want to believe or accept that, but it did. That right there... that was almost the deepest thing to me in the movie because I know what she went through - and it happened to be a bus as well. It was a school bus, in the face and in the same way," Carey added.

The "We belong together" singer had previously revealed during an interview with Oprah Winfrey that she was once told by a school teacher that she had given her father the "wrong colour" in a picture she drew of her family.

"I said, 'No that's the colour that he is.' They made me feel like something was wrong with me, that it was a bizarre freakish thing," Mariah said.