ABC Responds to Petition Calling to Fire Raven Symoné from The View

Raven Symoné has been seeing a fair deal of backlash over the past few days ever since she seemed to partially excuse the actions of the South Carolina cop who physically confronted a student who wouldn’t obey his instructions. For this and other recent controversies, the host of The View has been the subject of an online petition for her to be removed from the show.

The petition emerged on Wednesday, shortly after Symoné said on the show that the Spring Valley student assaulted by Ben Fields bore at least part of the blame for disobeying orders to get off her phone while in the middle of class time.

“There’s no right or reason for him to be doing this type of harm, that’s ridiculous, but at the same time, you gotta follow the rules in school,” Symoné said. “You are in school, get off your phone.”

Afterwards, a petition appeared on Change.org, calling on show creator Barbara Walters to take Symone off. The petition currently has about 120,000 signed supporters.

“African Americans and black people around the diaspora need a voice representative of their views and not a voice representative of what white people want us to say,” the letter states. “We need strong black rolemodels in prominent positions on television an Raven Symone cannot provide that.”

Today, Hollywood Reporter reportedly received a statement from the network, where Symone was praised for her presence on the show, and didn’t indicate any firing in the foreseeable future.

“We love Raven. She is confident, genuine and opinionated, all qualities that make her a great addition to the panel,” the statement said.

[image via screengrab]