A resurfaced clip from Raven-Symoné’s Tea Time with Raven & Miranda podcast has reignited debate over the cultural legacy of That’s So Raven. During an April conversation with Kalen Allen, Raven questioned Raven Baxter’s Black identity, argued that the character’s appeal transcended race and asked viewers to imagine the family as green instead.

The remarks have frustrated many Black viewers who grew up seeing Raven Baxter as one of Disney Channel’s most important representations of Black girlhood. The series centred a Black family, addressed racism directly and gave a Black teenage girl the kind of comic, fashionable and joyful leading role that children’s television rarely offered at the time.  

Raven’s previous comments about race have also returned to the conversation. She married Miranda Pearman-Maday in 2020 after the pair began dating around 2015, and Miranda later revealed that Raven once ended their relationship because she was not ready to date a white woman. None of that makes Raven’s marriage the issue here. Her comments have prompted viewers to re-examine her views on race and identity and question how she understands That’s So Raven’s significance to Black audiences.

Raven-Symoné’s argument frustrates because That’s So Raven proved that a show could centre Black identity while still appealing to everyone. It was both.

Raven Baxter was a Black girl in a Black family. The show reflected that through her hair, fashion, humour, family dynamics and cultural references. More importantly, it sometimes made race part of the actual story. One episode had Raven lose a retail opportunity because a white manager refused to hire Black employees. Another explored Black history through the Baxter family. You cannot write those stories and then pretend race was simply a colour palette that could be swapped for green.

And that representation mattered far beyond Black audiences. Some white viewers have said episodes of That’s So Raven gave them their first real understanding that racism could cause two equally capable people to receive completely different treatment. That is precisely what good representation can do. Black characters do not need to become racially neutral before everybody else can relate to them.

What I find particularly disappointing is Raven’s apparent discomfort with acknowledging that legacy. She has pushed back against racial labels before, including famously telling Oprah that she considered herself American rather than African-American. So I am not comfortable blaming Miranda for Raven’s views simply because she is white. Raven has been pushing back against racial labels for years, although she has also stressed that she never denied being Black.

Her marriage is also irrelevant to whether Raven Baxter was Black. Dating or marrying someone of another race does not erase a Black person’s identity, just as white viewers connecting with That’s So Raven never made the Baxters any less Black.

The irony is that Raven helped create something genuinely significant. Black girls could turn on Disney Channel and see someone who looked like them being funny, fashionable, ambitious, flawed and completely central to the story.

There is nothing limiting about calling that a Black show. The strange part is that Raven seems to erase the show’s Blackness before allowing audiences to celebrate its universal appeal.

Discover more from Feminegra

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.