Joey Diaz

Diaz attends the premiere of “Grudge Match” at the Ziegfeld Theatre on December 16, 2013 in New York City. Debby Wong/bigstock.com

Birth Name: José Antonio Díaz

Place of Birth: Havana, Cuba

Date of Birth: February 19, 1963

Ethnicity: Cuban [Spanish, small amounts of African and Taíno, possibly other]

Joey Diaz is a Cuban-American stand-up comedian, actor, author, and podcaster. He is also known as Joey “CoCo” Diaz. He has appeared on the show My Name Is Earl and in the films The Longest Yard (2015), Grudge Match, and The Many Saints of Newark. He has hosted the podcasts The Church of What’s Happening and Uncle Joey’s Joint.

He was born in Havana, and moved with his family to the U.S. at a young age, settling in North Bergen, New Jersey. His mother ran a bar and a numbers operation. Joey was raised Catholic.

On The Church of What’s Happening Now, he stated that he took a 23andMe DNA test, which listed most of his genetic ancestry as coming from “the Fort” in Spain, likely referring to Andalusia, with smaller traces of African, Chinese, Russian Jewish, and Indigenous American.

Joey is married to Terrie Clark. He has two children, including a daughter with Terrie.

13 Responses

  1. Lorenzo Spitaleri says:

    A good greek example is Nicholaos Michaloliakos, the founder of the Golden Dawn party.

  2. Lorenzo Spitaleri says:

    I was surprised when I first found out he’s not Southern Italian at all. He looks a lot like Vincent Pastore and Guillermo Vecchio.

    • andrew says:

      Well, this man has clearly some minor non European ancestry. Pastore (unless he is truly Italian) is not exactly the most common man from the South either.

      I do not see much resemblance between those two and Vecchio though.

    • andrew says:

      5 times Hispanic(s), why only 2 times Arab(s)? Pretty shocking by you.

    • Lorenzo Spitaleri says:

      Arabians don’t look like that. It’s a more “Iberian-Sardinian-South Italian” look, some greeks have it aswell.

      • andrew says:

        @Lorenzo

        Pastore (assuming he is fully Italian) is phenotipically a Berid type, found in parts of S. Europe as you said.

        I showed Muricans the Sardinian sheperds portrayed as Berid examples by Lundman or Coon, and she told me they are “Arabs”, not real Berids. Her knowledge of antropology is inferior to my dog.

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