Raven-Symoné wants to set the record straight once and for all on her infamous 2014 comments that some took to mean that she didn’t consider herself Black.
The 38-year-old actress and producer addressed the decade-old controversy on the latest episode of the Tea Time with Raven and Miranda podcast that she does with her spouse, Miranda Maday. Stating that she’s bringing it up because the clip recently began making the rounds again after it was referenced in an episode of HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” during a discussion on race.
“He is commenting on something I said to Oprah back in 2014,” the Dr. Doolittle actress said before playing the Oprah interview clip on labels that started the controversy.
“So you don’t want to be labeled gay?” Winfrey asked at the time.
“I don’t want to be labeled gay,” Raven-Symoné replied sternly to Winfrey. “I want to be labeled a human who loves humans. I’m tired of being labeled — I’m an American, I’m not an African American. I’m an American.”
“Oh girl, don’t set off Twitter,” Winfrey playfully warned.
After the Oprah interview clip finished playing on the podcast, Raven-Symoné explained that the judgment and outrage were swift and unforgiving.
“Now, when that aired, I felt like the entire internet exploded and threw my name in the garbage,” she confessed. “There was so much backlash from my community and others that misunderstood slash didn’t hear the exact words that I said.”
“And the exact words that I said is that, ‘I’m an American, not an African American.’ A lot of people thought I said that I wasn’t Black. And I never said that.”
Maday then asked what she meant by the remark exactly before Raven-Symoné further explained her position in the ideology of labels.
“When I say that African American does not align with me — that label – it doesn’t mean that I’m negating my Blackness or I’m not Black,” she implored. “It means I am from this country. I was born here. My mom, my dad, my great-great-great-great-great — that’s what I’m saying. The pure logistics of it.”
“I also understand how much blood, sweat, and tears they soaked into this earth in order to create the America that I live in today — free, happy, tax-paying American citizen,” she added.
