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In reply to the discussion: I love handbags [View all]tblue37
(65,342 posts)Her hair and makeup were done, but she did not have her false eyelashes on.
I can believe that language issues might have been at least part of the problem, but I also suspect that an intelligent black woman of a certain age has enough experience with racist snubs to recognize one when she experiences it.
Denying outright, as so many do, that it could have been racism is too much like whitesplaining. You aren't denying it outright, of course, but many are, and even those who aren't doing so seem to be overinvested in coming up with other explanations.
Here's my reaction to Oprah's take on the incident.
1. I trust her intelligence and experience--plus the fact that since she was there and I was not, I assume she picked up on nuances that a stark recital of the incident and the words spoken cannot convey.
2. When I see a movie or read a book in which a child or an animal is abused, I react with almost the same degree of horror as I do when I learn of real life events of that sort. Yes, I know fiction is not real, but I also know that what I am reading or seeing in a movie is a representation of something that DOES go on all the time all over the world, so for me the fictional representation stands as a painful reminder of that horrifying reality, and I cannot bear to think of it, so my reaction is almost as strong as it is when I hear of such things in real life.
Similarly, even if Oprah was mistaken in her interpretation of the incident (mind you, I rather doubt that she was--for the reasons I explain earlier in this post), what she says she experienced happens ALL THE TIME to black women and to all other people who are not members of the dominant race. If in fact she was being hypersensitive--which, again, I rather doubt--she would have gotten that way after a lifetime of endless racist snubs and insults, day after day, year after year, no matter what she did, no matter what she accomplished.
Therefore, regardless of how one interprets the incident, we should take it as a reminder of what DOES go one all the time, using it as a spur to fight against such discrimination in any way we can, instead of dismissing her sense of what she experienced and trying to whitesplain it into nothing.