Raven Symoné defends telling Oprah in 2014 she's not African American: Label 'doesn't align with me'
Former Disney child star Raven Symoné recently defended the viral comments on race she made during a 2014 interview with Oprah Winfrey.
"That’s So Raven" star Raven Symoné revisited viral comments she made about her racial identity a decade ago, claiming she still stands by them and sees herself as simply "an American," and unattached to other labels.
Symoné brought up the subject during a recent episode of her podcast "Tea Time With Raven and Miranda," which she co-hosts along with her wife, Miranda Maday. The former Disney Channel star introduced the topic and claimed she’s "haunted" by it because of how people misunderstood her comments.
"A lot of people on the internet thought I said that I wasn’t Black, and I never said that," she declared on the podcast.
Symoné made the controversial remarks during a 2014 interview with Oprah Winfrey, in an attempt to explain that she doesn’t want to be viewed or identified with sexual or racial labels.
She told the legendary TV host at the time, "I’m tired of being labeled. I’m an American, not an African American."
Oprah predicted the backlash the actress would get, warning her as soon as she made the comments, "Oh girl, don’t go set Twitter on fire."
"I don’t know where my roots go," she said elsewhere in the Oprah interview, adding "I don’t know how far back [they go] and I don’t know what country in Africa I’m from, but I do know that my roots are in Louisiana. I’m an American. That’s a colorless person, because we are all people. I have lots of things running through my veins."
During the podcast, Symoné clarified that view to her audience, especially those who may have thought she was trashing her heritage and ethnicity. She said, "When I say that ‘African-American’ doesn’t align with me, that label, it doesn’t mean that I’m negating my Blackness or I’m not Black. It means I am from this country. I was born here."
She couched it as more of her simply being proud to see herself as a "free" and "happy" American.
"I understand my history. I understand where my ancestors come from. I also understand how much blood, sweat and tears they’ve soaked into this earth in order to create the America that I live in today: free, happy, tax-paying American citizen," she said.
She also pointed out how people in other countries don’t identify her race, saying, "I also know that when I visit another country, people don’t say like, ‘Hey, look at that African American over there!’ They say, ‘That’s an American.'"
Maday agreed, noting, "I don’t go around introducing myself as a Welsh American or as an Italian American. My mom was born here, so I’m an American, for all intents and purposes."