LisaRaye explains defense of toaster comments, says she’s not a ‘colorist’
‘My grandbaby is brown-skinned,’ she told TMZ, ‘so by no means would I want my grandbaby to think her grandmother is a colorist.’
Actress and Cocktails with Queens co-host LisaRaye McCoy is clarifying comments she made last week in which she appeared to support the colorist comments made by a white New York radio host.
McCoy said she thought Rob Lederman was just sharing “an opinion” when he compared Black women to levels of toasted bread on his radio show. His opinion got him suspended from his job.
“You don’t got a preference?” McCoy asked her co-hosts Claudia Jordan and Syleena Johnson. “How [do] you say it? ‘I like mocha chocolate opposed to cappuccino?’”
Despite attempts from her fellow-sister co-hosts to enlighten her, McCoy stuck to her position.
“I don’t know. I’m not there with it. I just think that we’re so sensitive now,” McCoy said. “Everybody gonna get caught up now because I think everybody is gon’ be so sensitive and ain’t gon’ know what to say and how to say it, and it’s going to take the fun out of everything, and everybody gon’ get slapped with lawsuits and defamation, and it’s gon’ to be tedious, and ain’t nobody gonna be able to talk about nothin.”
McCoy was recently stopped by TMZ while out and about in Los Angeles, and she took the opportunity to clarify her remarks, pointing out that her granddaughter is darker than her.
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“I was commenting on his preference to Black women, that’s what I was talking about,” McCoy told the gossip site. “You know, my grandbaby is brown-skinned, so by no means would I want my grandbaby to think her grandmother is a colorist. I know what my preference is. And I can’t stand by someone that doesn’t — that’s a racist — and I don’t know that about them. I can’t even comment on that, I don’t even know.”
McCoy was accused of “light-skin privilege” for the second time after defending rapper/model DaniLeigh for her song, “Yellow Bone (That’s What He Want).” She compared the track to the India.Arie classic, “Brown Skin.”
In his comments late last month, Lederman noted that he was “very comfortable at a Halle Berry level. I need a little bit of mulatto still coming through.” The Academy Award winner tweeted the radio clip and called Lederman’s comments “disgusting.”
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