Raven-Symoné recently waxed poetically about labels on Oprah's "Where Are They Now?" special, and has (old) Black America in a tizzy.
Raven expressed her dislike of labels, stating that she would not like to be labeled "gay" or "African-American." She confirmed she is simply American, colorless, and human. Which are all labels, by the way.
Colorless, stood out to me, in particular. I have a feeling Roy G. Biv especially feels some type of way about her wanting to be colorless. A brotha just tryin' to pay his light spectrum bill, ya'll.
Anywho, in keeping with Raven's theme, I figured we should all apply non-labeled labels to things from now on. Let's be free with this shit!
For example:
1. Water is no longer wet. How constricting! I hereby declare water is now, "sopping."
2. I don't want "to be or not to be" to simply be a question anymore. That mofo should be a run-on sentence. "To be or not to be or nah, due to the fact that I can't make a choice so I'm going to get philosophical on that ass forthwith, heretoforth, and so on… also, I have a skull in my hand, so I'm deep, so answer me this: is you is or is you ain't my baby?"
Roll Call is a daily collection of interesting news stories, articles, blogs, and thinkpieces, curated by Tonja Stidhum and Natalie Degraffinried. They both have big hair, but they are not the same person.
DISCUSSION
My friend Drew just said this about Raven's…ummm…statements.
"Maybe it is a good idea to drop the the label "African" and force white people to call you American.
That would create a different dynamic.
All of the statistics they track by "race" would simply vanish.
All the racial stereotypes would be nullified on paper.
Not only that, when all the bad things they associate with black people are lumped into the title "American" then some action is going to be taken.
The moment you change the phrase "black women are more likely to to be single mothers" to "American women are more likely to be single mothers" then you have a problem that needs to be addressed that wasn't being addressed before.
IJS"
There's a little something to that line of thinking no? But too bad that's clearly not what Raven was thinking when she decided to be a human-lover and colorless….. *whistles and walks away*