*Think Raven-Symoné is going to take back what she said about fired Univision host Rodner Figueroa’s comments on First Lady Michelle Obama?
Think again.
Apparently Symoné is standing by her comments, according to an interview she did Wednesday with The Daily Beast. The entertainer has generated criticism and headlines after weighing in on Figueroa’s dismissal after he said FLOTUS looked like she was from the cast of “Planet of the Apes.”
“I don’t think he was saying it racist,” said Symoné, who is serving as a guest host this week on “The View.” “Not Michelle Obama. Michelle, don’t fire me for this right now, but some people do look like animals…Is that rude? I look like a bird. So can I be mad at somebody that calls me Toucan Sam?”
When asked about the uproar over her comments about Figueroa, Symoné countered her critics, saying, “I did not defend the man.”
“I don’t think they heard what I said,” she told The Daily Beast. “I did not defend the man. I said that what he said was very distasteful. And I think that the organization is in the right to fire him. And I don’t believe that she looks like a racially charged animal that has been connected to the black community for years and years.”
“However, I do know people that look like animals!” Symoné added with a laugh.
Despite saying she didn’t defend Figueroa, Symoné didn’t back down from what she said on “The View. In her eyes, many people do the same thing Figueroa did, only on social media.
“I can’t—I’m not going to back down from what I believe in,” Symoné said. “We should bring up the fact that on Instagram people do that every day. They post one picture of a celebrity and an object or an animal right next to each other. ‘Doesn’t this look like that?’”
“He didn’t understand that that word is hurtful in some communities because of the connotation of it,” Symone continued regarding Figueroa’s remarks. “I understand that. But also I think that there’s some people that look like animals. I look like a bird. Everybody’s not racially angry. Calm down.”
For his part, Figueroa has since tried to make amends by stating his comments were directed to the makeup artists who transformed into Obama, not the first lady herself.
Symoné herself took to Twitter to defend her comments, tweeting, “Some comments are rude, some are disrespectful, and some are racist. Try to not exchange one for the other.”
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