Hangin’ With Mr. Cooper. Then, a little over a decade later, Symoné burst onto the scene as Raven Baxter, a fashionable Black teenager with the gift of clairvoyance and the star of That’s So Raven.
As an adult, I’m mesmerized by the humanity she was afforded. She wasn’t traumatized and there were no painfully dramatic storylines for ratings.
Though the show touched on important topics, like body image and racism in fashion, it never felt like I was being fed excessively disturbing narratives about Black girlhood.
Raven Baxter could’ve easily been me, or any of my spiritual friends. I had visions of seeing myself considered in the pop culture offerings that were accessible to me, and I got then in Raven.
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