Oprah Winfrey Believes Older Racists ‘Just Have To Die’ [Video]
Oprah Winfrey firmly believes that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.
When it comes to changing people’s opinions regarding race, the former queen of daytime TV said it’s almost impossible to make them see the error of their ways. Since there’s probably no way to make a difference in their lives, these people will just have to die off.
The sure-to-be controversial comments arrived during an interview with the BBC. Oprah Winfrey recently took a trip to the UK to promote the motion picture The Butler. When asked what can be done to stamp out racism, Winfrey’s response was direct and to-the-point.
“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,” she told interviewer Will Gompertz.
When the conversation turned to President Obama’s struggle with racism, Oprah Winfrey said she’s spent quite a bit of time pondering that question herself. In fact, Winfrey said she’s probably thought about this more than most people on the planet.
“I think that there is a level of disrespect for the office that occurs. And that occurs in some cases and maybe even many cases because he is African American. There’s no question about that and it’s the kind of thing nobody ever says but everybody’s thinking it,” she recently explained.
Although Winfrey believes that racism is still very much a problem, she admitted that things have improved over the past few decades. However, The Color Purple star admitted there’s plenty of work left to do. She added that racism is a problem across the globe.
Oprah explained during her interview:
“It would be foolish to not recognize that we have evolved and 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. If I’d been born five years earlier, none, not any of the benefits that I’ve been blessed to be successful with would have occurred.”
Oprah Winfrey told Entertainment Tonight earlier this year that she doesn’t think anyone would ever use the N-word to her face. In short: She’s not going to tolerate any disrespect.
“Nobody in their right mind is going to call me the N-word. You know, you see those fools on Twitter sometime say ridiculous things. But nobody in their right mind is going to do that to my face, because true racism is being able to have power over somebody else. So that doesn’t happen to me that way,” she explained.
What do you think about Oprah Winfrey’s comments regarding older racists?
[Image via Helga Esteb / Shutterstock.com]
