Richard Pryor’s Daughter Opens Up About The Racism Her Family Faced In Beverly HillsPosted in Articles, Arts, Autobiography, Media Archive, United States on 2016-08-19 00:34Z by Steven |
Richard Pryor’s Daughter Opens Up About The Racism Her Family Faced In Beverly Hills
The Huffington Post
2016-08-18
Lisa Capretto
The Oprah Winfrey Network
“I’m a product of this thing that everyone was against.”
When Rain Pryor was born in 1969, her father, Richard Pryor, had already begun transitioning from a relatively mild joke-telling comedian to a fearless, outspoken comic whose routines doubled as raw social commentary. As Pryor’s comedy was shifting, so was the country, moving toward more progressive values. But, as his daughter Rain points out, blatant racism still affected countless families, including her own.
Speaking with “Oprah: Where Are They Now?”, the 47-year-old actress opened up about her childhood, setting the scene for what her interracial family faced during that time in their Beverly Hills community.
“My dad’s Richard Pryor. My mother, Shelley, was a poor Jewish woman,” Rain says. “Imagine, if you will, Beverly Hills in the early ‘70s. Here I am, this mixed-race child [with] my golden skin, my big poufy hair ― because Mom knew nothing about a pressing comb ― [and] my mom’s blond-haired, blue-eyed, looking like Cher, wearing dashikis.”…
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