{"id":9307,"date":"2013-08-18T14:40:20","date_gmt":"2013-08-18T14:40:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/praag.org\/?p=9307"},"modified":"2013-08-18T14:40:20","modified_gmt":"2013-08-18T14:40:20","slug":"even-if-you-dont-use-the-n-word-you-may-still-be-racist-oprah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=9307","title":{"rendered":"‘Even if you don’t use the N-word, you may still be racist’: Oprah"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Oprah<\/a>
Oprah Winfrey<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On Thursday, CNN\u2019s Anderson Cooper interviewed Oprah Winfrey and Forest Whitaker, stars of Oscar-bait\u00a0The Butler<\/em>. During the interview, in which Cooper thoughtfully nodded as Winfrey and Whitaker race-baited, Oprah suggested Emmitt Till and Trayvon Martin were equivalent symbols, and that Americans were racist even if they didn\u2019t have ill will toward black people.<\/p>\n

When Cooper cited polls showing that black Americans were upset about Trayvon Martin and whites thought too much had been made of the case, Oprah sighed, \u201cOh, I know, I know. That\u2019s why I love the film in light of this discussion is because it brings context to this discussion. I mean, look at the film, beginning with that lynching scene and ending with walking into Obama\u2019s office, look at what has happened in the span of one man\u2019s lifetime.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0Whitaker chimed in, \u201cThis movie reminds us of the circular motion of things still trying working themselves is going on, as in Emmitt Till, and we\u2019re looking at Trayvon, we\u2019re looking at Oscar Grant, we\u2019re looking at all these situations and recognizing we have to move ourselves forward with this change.\u201d Oprah said, \u201cEmmitt Till became a symbol for those times as Emmitt Till has become a symbol for this time. I mean, there are multiple Trayvon Martins whose names never make the newspapers or the headlines. The circumstances surrounding that allowed that to be. There were multiple Emmitt Tills, there were multiple lynchings, there were multiple young black boys whose names are not remembered and often not even recorded.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cooper asked, \u201cIt\u2019s amazing to me how people from different backgrounds see this.\u201d He then talked about a juror \u201cwho did not understand, did not feel linked to Trayvon Martin, felt connected to George Zimmerman in a way, but not Trayvon Martin, she felt race was not part of this case at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Oprah couldn\u2019t wait to jump in, blurting, \u201cPeople don\u2019t feel it\u2019s race because people don\u2019t call it race\u2026A lot of people think if they think they\u2019re not using the n-word themselves, they physically aren\u2019t using the n-word themselves, and do not harbor ill will towards black people that it\u2019s not racist. But to me it\u2019s ridiculous to look at that case and not to think that race was involved.\u201d – breitbart.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Thursday, CNN\u2019s Anderson Cooper interviewed Oprah Winfrey and Forest Whitaker, stars of Oscar-bait\u00a0The Butler. During the interview, in which Cooper thoughtfully nodded as Winfrey and Whitaker race-baited, Oprah suggested Emmitt Till and Trayvon Martin were equivalent symbols, and that Americans were racist even if they didn\u2019t have ill will toward black people. When Cooper … Continue reading “‘Even if you don’t use the N-word, you may still be racist’: Oprah”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":9308,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[422,3],"tags":[5252,325,3526,4590,157,4591,324],"class_list":["post-9307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-and-culture","category-news","tag-emmitt-till","tag-george-zimmerman","tag-n-word","tag-oprah-winfrey","tag-racism","tag-the-butler","tag-trayvon-martin"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/oprah_winfrey3.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9307"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9307\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9309,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9307\/revisions\/9309"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}