Bruno Mars was born in Hawaii to a Puerto Rican father and a Filipino mother, so he is not African American.
He has been accused of appropriation of black culture, but he has always declared that what he feels is a lot of admiration for artists such as James Brown, Prince or Michael Jackson, being them a huge influence in his life. Mars said:
My music comes from love and if you can't hear that, I don't know what to tell you.