“The View” co-host Raven-Symone continues to make headlines over her refusal to be called African-American.
From her interview with Oprah Winfrey nine months ago, Symone has not changed her stance on the topic.
“I don’t like labels, but everyone needs them to understand what is going on. So, okay, I get it. Give me ‘American.’ There is nothing wrong with being an American, purely,” Symone told PEOPLE in their latest issue.
“I think that there are a lot of different races that fall under ‘American,’ so past that you really just are sub-categorizing me over and over again,” says the “That’s So Raven” veteran. “I’m not disowning my history in any way. My family has been here for almost 400 years. We’re American.
This is me and what I feel about myself. But if you identify as African-American, then you’re African-American,” she continued. “What right do I have to tell you what you are and what you’re not?”
In keeping with her theory on being labeled, the latest co-host on “The View” — who came out as gay last year, doesn’t want to be identified as gay either.
“I don’t want to be labeled gay,” she told Winfrey in a 2014 interview. “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.”
Raven-Symone is in a relationship with model-actress AzMarie Livingston.
“The Oregon law bars businesses from discriminating against sexual orientation, race, disability, age or religion,” Raven-Symoné argued after Candace Cameron Bure defended a bakery that refused to sell a lesbian couple a wedding cake. “And to me, it’s the same exact thing that they did back in the day saying that black people couldn’t do certain things because it’s my ‘religious belief.’”
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