Former Miss Teen USA Runner-Up Says Raven-Symoné Called Winner ‘The Black Girl’

The backlash over Raven-Symoné’s comments about Raven Baxter has now reached all the way back to 2001. Gloria Almonte, who finished second at that year’s Miss Teen USA pageant, claims the former child star approached her after the competition and said she had voted for Almonte instead of “the Black girl”—referring to the eventual winner of the pageant, Marissa Whitley.

“My Raven Symone story makes so much damn sense now 25 years later,” Almonte wrote on Threads. She said Raven, one of the pageant’s celebrity judges, found her during the coronation party and began praising her. “She was all over me saying how she didn’t vote for the Black girl (Miss Missouri the winner), she voted for me,” Almonte alleged. Raven’s younger brother was also excited to meet her and asked to take pictures, she added.

Some of Almonte’s account is independently supported. IMDb confirms that Raven-Symoné served on the celebrity judging panel when Miss Teen USA aired live from South Padre Island, Texas, on August 22, 2001.

It also confirms that Whitley competed as Miss Missouri Teen USA and won the crown; Almonte, representing New York, was named first runner-up. Raven was 15 at the time, but what she allegedly said to Almonte after the broadcast has not been independently verified.

Almonte said she did not process the comment amid the chaos of losing the title and being immediately pulled into interviews, photographers, and pageant officials.

A quarter-century later, however, its wording stood out. “WTF you mean Black girl? Her name is Marissa. Miss Missouri,” wrote Almonte, who is Puerto Rican.

She also questioned why Raven would describe Whitley by race when the judges had received contestant information before scoring the competition. “You had all of our information in front of you prior to the telecast,” she wrote. “What is wrong with this woman?”

The allegation landed while Raven-Symoné was already under fire for questioning why viewers considered Raven Baxter Black. During a resurfaced April episode of Tea Time with Raven & Miranda, guest Kalen Allen called the That’s So Raven character “Black as f*ck” and said she “felt Black as hell” to him.

“Was she Black?” Raven responded.

After Allen cited the Black family portrayed on the Disney Channel series, she challenged him to remove their appearance from the equation: “Make them green, and hear the words. What color are they?”

Allen later conceded that he should have pressed her harder but rejected claims that he shared her position. “Raven Baxter was Black AF,” he wrote on Threads.

Now, the podcast clip is pulling other moments from Raven’s history back into circulation. Fans have revived her 2014 Oprah Winfrey interview, when she said she was “not an African American” and described herself as “an American” and “a colorless person.”