Shemar Moore Recalls Struggling with Being Mixed-Race as a Kid: 'Where Do I Fit In?' (Exclusive)

Mar. 15, 2025

Shemar Moore.Photo:Weiss Eubanks/NBCUniversal via Getty

Weiss Eubanks/NBCUniversal via Getty

An only child born in Oakland, Calif., tomother Marilyn Wilson-Moore, who was White, and father Sherrod Moore, who was Black, theS.W.A.T.star, 54, recalls pondering as kid, “‘Am I Brown enough? Am I Black enough? Do I walk the walk? I’ll never be White because I’m too Brown. How should I talk? How should I move? How should I dress? Where do I fit in?’ "

Moore continues, “He was a very dark-skinned Black man and he caught a lot of heat for that. He got called the N-word a lot. And then he got with this White woman with this big ol' butt. But she also had a big ol' brain,” he says of his mom.

Shemar Moore and Mother Marilyn.Shemar Moore/Instagram

Shemar Moore/Instagram

Back when his parents met in the ’60s, “Interracial relationships were trendy but they weren’t accepted,” he says. “There was a lot of racial tension and my mother didn’t want to raise me in that. She got a job in Denmark and we left.”

Though his father made visits the first few years, “he showed out a little too much for my mother’s liking and she said, ‘Enough is enough.’ He came back to the States, got in trouble, and spent four years in San Quentin prison.”

Moore and his mom bounced around the globe, from Denmark to Bahrain, Ghana to Greece. “Nothing about my life was ordinary,” he says. But when they returned to the U.S. when he was a little older, he felt the pressure to conform.

Shemar Moore on “;The Young and The Restless”.Monty Brinton/CBS/Getty

When he’d tell his mother about struggling with his racial identity she offered perspective. “She said, ‘Shemar, understand both families’ backgrounds, your Black side, your White side. Respect it all, but just be yourself.”

He credits another adult for helping shape his outlook. “My high school baseball coach Melvin Harrison. He was the closest thing to a father that I ever knew,” says Moore. “He mentored me, taught me baseball, pushed me to be the best I could be, and pushed me to be a proud Black man and an even prouder human being.”

Though being mixed “was an insecurity as a kid,” Moore says that’s not the case anymore. “I don’t apologize for being mixed. I’m a Black man. That’s the way society treats you. But I’m also half White.”

Shemar Moore.shemarmoore/X

shemarmoore/X

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Throughout Moore’sLos Angeles dream home, custom art depicting notable Black figures like Malcolm X, Mohammad Ali and evenSteph Currydeck the walls. “The art depicts my heart,” he says, “I am very much an African-American, but I’m also White and very proud of what comes with that. I honor African-American culture, the code, the cadence, the language, but I also stay in my lane and I don’t try to be something I’m not.”

source: people.com