Oprah Winfrey Says President Obama Is Victim of Racism [View all]

[big_dog]

Last edited Sat Nov 16, 2013, 02:22 PM - Edit history (1)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/oprah-winfrey

Oprah Winfrey says that President Barack Obama has been the victim of racism and that the ongoing issue of prejudice is a generational one. There is a level of disrespect for the office that occurs,” Winfrey said Friday in an interview with the BBC. "And that occurs in some cases and maybe even in many cases because he’s African American. There’s no question about that, and it’s the kind of thing that nobody ever says but everybody is thinking it.”

Winfrey pointed to Republican Congressman Joe Wilson yelling "liar" during a 2009 speech Obama was giving to Congress. The interview was part of a promotional tour for the film “The Butler,” which tells the story of Cecil Gaines, an African American man who served as a White House butler for eight different presidents.

Winfrey took her comments one step further, saying that the issue of racism is largely generational. Specifically, she said that cultural prejudice in the U.S. will largely recede after the last generation of individuals have died off. “I said this, you know, for apartheid South Africa, I said this for my own, you know, community in the South — there are still generations of people, older people, who were born and bred and marinated in it, in that prejudice and racism, and they just have to die," Winfrey said.

However, Winfrey also made a point to note that there has been progress in race relations.
"It would be foolish to not recognize that we have evolved in that we’re not still facing the same kind of terrorism against black people en masse as was displayed with the Scottsboro boys. It’s gotten better," she said. "… There are laws that have allowed us to progress beyond what we saw in the Scottsboro boys and beyond even the prejudice we see in 'The Butler.' "
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/oprah-winfrey-says-obama-victim-of-racism-205750495.html


Read more: Yahoo News/The BBC