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Taye Diggs On 6-Year-Old Son: ‘I Don’t Want People To Think He’s Ashamed Of His White Mother’ [Videos]

By Paula Mooney
Published on: 06:25 PST, Nov 18, 2015

Taye Diggs certainly knows how to keep folks talking. Diggs has been on the radar ever since the actor’s naked butt popped up in a shower in the movie How Stella Got Her Groove Back and caused women in movie theaters across the nation to literally scream out loud. Recently, Taye made the news, as reported by the Inquisitr, due to a woman on Instagram posting a video of Diggs saying “That’s my s***” regarding something that Taye viewed on his phone.

Now Diggs is back, with Taye’s name trending on Twitter — and not because Diggs’ social media team brilliantly has Taye following more than 568,000 people on Twitter. Taye is getting the business from folks this time because he’s talking about race. Diggs is being asked about race, as seen on the Grio, and Taye honestly answers that he doesn’t want his 6-year-old son to feel forced to choose that he’s “black” or “white,” because Taye’s son is mixed.

Growing up, Taye said that everyone paid attention to the lighter-skinned black people and those with wavy hair. He doesn’t want to perpetuate certain stereotypes and myths that lighter is better down to his son. However, Diggs is getting backlash from some folks on Twitter who claim he’s doing exactly that.

For his part, Taye says that if his son, Walker, is forced to say he’s black, Diggs believes folks will assume both of Walker’s parents are black, and, therefore, deny his white mother. Idina Menzel, as reported by TMZ, is Walker’s famous mom — she of the “Let It Go” fame — a woman who had to “let it go” when John Travolta famously butchered her name.

Taye spoke about President Obama being called the first black president, with Diggs noting that Mr. Obama is actually bi-racial or mixed, or multi-racial, as it were.

“As African-Americans we were so quick to say okay he’s black he’s black, and then there were the white people who were afraid to say he was biracial because who knows. Everybody refers to him as the first black president, I’m not saying it’s wrong, I’m just saying that it’s interesting. It would be great if it didn’t matter and that people could call him mixed. We’re still choosing to make that decision, and that’s when I think you get into some dangerous waters.”

Either way, Taye’s comments are making the news, as reported by BET, which has a video clip of Taye on The Wendy Williams Show. Diggs discussed the fact that he wore nail polish to the interview, a hold-over from his stint on Broadway. Diggs took the lead role in the musical titled Hedwig and the Angry Inch and brought along elaborate nail designs to his talk with Wendy.

Again in that interview, Diggs spoke of his “amazing little dude” Walker and the fact that Mixed Me is Taye’s second book. The first one, Chocolate Me, was about Taye’s growing up as a darker-skinned boy in a predominately white neighborhood and how that affected him.

Taye also showed off a photo of Diggs with his new girlfriend, a woman he met after being newly separated, Taye told Wendy. He only met his new woman when a girlfriend of his dragged Diggs to the club so he wouldn’t sulk around over his divorce.

However, it’s Taye’s views on his son, whom he calls the “product of a blended relationship,” that seem to have set black Twitter off into a rage, with some understanding Diggs’ point of view in wanting to value all races within his son. Others feel that Taye is dismissing the black race somehow by not making his son choose between black or white.

Like Halle Berry once noted, her white mother told her that Halle was a black woman, even if she was the product of a white mom and black dad because that’s how the world would see Halle.

Nevertheless, Taye’s interview didn’t solely focus on race. Diggs jokingly called the handkerchief he had his “Whitney rag,” because he used it to dab away sweat, and Whitney Houston was known for sweating profusely.

[Photo by Omar Vega/Invision/AP]

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