Who are we, the little people, to argue with somebody as smart as Oprah Winfrey?
During an interview with Anderson Cooper on CNN on which she promoted her new film The Butler,
Oprah uttered the quote to end all quotes: "A lot of people think if
they think they’re not using the n-word themselves.....and do
not harbor ill will towards black people that it’s not racist."
In
the fairness of context, Oprah was referring to the Trayvon Martin
case, and doesn't understand how people can't see that, no matter what
angle you approach it from, race was for sure a factor in the original
incident and the trial that followed.
Her attitude is
pure Barbara Streisand. I'm not going to rehash the whole Zimmerman
situation because the truth is out there, but to suggest that, within
White America, that there is an underlying current of racism is
absolutely misguided. But blacks, almost like some Jews, depend on the
"we are victims" storyline in order to get what they want, whatever that
may be, though I think, if pressed, they couldn't articulate what they
want. They have to rely on the transgressions of the past to construct
some kind of future, but because they continue to soak in the past, they
cannot form their future.
To suggest even at the slightest that whites are racist just because
is wrong, but you can't win with people like Oprah. Back in the '50s we
saw Commies under every bed; I suppose Oprah sees racists everywhere
she does, and especially in Switzerland. It must be tough living in her head.
What's
funny is that, at another point in the interview, Oprah, the smartest
woman in America, defeats her own argument. She says her movie shows a
lynching in the first scene, but ends with a black man walking into the
Oval Office of the first
black president.
America has come a long way, and one
has to really stretch to argue otherwise. And Oprah also forgets her own
journey which led her to the role in the film.
In other words, America is so racist, that we made Oprah a
billionaire who talks out of her ass, and made Obama the president who spends
all day covering his.
BRIAN DRAKE is a broadcaster in California and the author of The Rogue Gentleman, a thriller in the tradition of Vince Flynn and Brad Thor. Follow him on Twitter.
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