(Photo by Tommaso Boddi/WireImage)Raven-Symoné is a live and let live kind of lady, but she's made one thing quite clear over the past few years: She doesn't like labels!
Last year, the View co-host told Oprah Winfrey she didn't want to be labeled as gay or African American. Instead, she told the media mogul she wanted "to be labeled 'a human who loves humans.'"
There's another label the 29-year-old is OK with, too: American!
"I don't like labels, but everyone needs them to understand what is going on," she explained to People magazine. "So, okay, I get it. Give me 'American.' There is nothing wrong with being an American, purely."
"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," she continued. "I'm not disowning my history in any way. My family has been here for almost 400 years. We're American."
But if you don't agree with Raven, she's OK with that, too. As she told People, "This is me and what I feel about myself. But if you identify as African-American, then you're African-American...What right do I have to tell you what you are and what you're not?"
Raven demonstrated this viewpoint earlier this year when she came to the defense of Rachel Dolezal, the former NAACP chapter president accused of lying about her race. "Everybody has some type of African blood inside them," she said during the "Hot Topics" portion of The View. "And what makes a black person, just your skin?"
Her co-host Whoopi Goldberg agreed. "Look, just like people say ‘I feel like I'm a man, I feel like I'm a woman, I feel like I'm this.' She wants to be a black woman, fine," she said. "Everything that comes with that, she is prepared for. Okay."