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Last night, Oprah gave an incredible speech at the Golden Globes.
In case you’re living under a digital rock, set aside the next nine-ish minutes of your life to feel… well… no spoilers, I suppose.
I watched the speech in bed at around 11:00 PM. Then watched it again.
I listened to it a third time, confident, heartful background noise as I aimed my brain directly into the Jim Crow Era Wikipedia wormhole, reading up on Recy Taylor, Rosa Parks, and other historically significant miscellany I rightfully needed to be reminded about. Then, sleep.
I woke up this morning to a hailstorm of hashtags:
#OprahForPresident
#OprahForPrez
#Oprah2020
Lying in bed, looking at my low ceiling, I thought some thoughts. Thoughts like:
“Hm. Yeah.” And “I’m in.” And “Save us, Oprah. Save us all.”
In my semi-glazed state, it made sense.
Oprah is an American icon, a woman who commands respect, a woman who has become eponymous-synonymous with the modern push for self-actualization through compassion, kindness and giving.
More plainly put: She’s anthropomorphic antidote to the current political climate. To Trump.
I put on my clothes, got on my bike and rode through the 20 degree wind to work. Which sobered me the fuck up. Thanks, Bomb Cyclone.
If you take a second to strip away the layers, #Oprah2020 is some bullshit.
Some benevolently racist bullshit.
There’s a difference between being inspired and being intellectually lazy. Which is what we’re really doing here.
We take a woman who made a powerful speech about structural imbalance, about the roles women (and men) can play to change toxic elements of American society, about holding those accountable who need to be held accountable, and instead of taking her message to heart–that we can be agents of growth and healing–we just heap all the responsibility on her shoulders, throw up our hands, and demand that she drag us to the promised land.
It’s not up to Oprah to save us.
She isn’t our caregiver, the mystical, magical, kind-and-forgiving-black-earth-mother to a nation of bright-eyed, beautiful white children who want to be absolved of the sins of their fathers.
Oprah is a woman, and we owe her the respect of treating and listening to her as such. We can and should be inspired by her words, feel called to action, look to her as a leader. But not a savior. Not a warm and comforting hand on our collective back, assuring us everything will be fine. That she’s here to make it better.
Oprah is not the “Magical Negro.”
That trope is old. That trope is shitty. That trope dangerous. Especially for black women in America.
Let’s be better than that. Let’s kill the trope, once and for all. Get it a goddamn tombstone.
The Expectation that Black Women in the New World Raise Our Children, Fix and Maintain Our Lives, All Through Silent Suffering and Hard Work, Possibly While Humming
1547 – 2017
If Oprah wants to run, I’d consider voting for her. Policy dependent.
Her capability and suitability for politics is not in question. I believe she would bring the level of respectful, considerate comportment back to the Executive Office we all SHOULD expect from a President. On the grand scale, not the new, Post-Trump sliding scale of “can s/he put a fucking coherent thought together that isn’t limitlessly petty and/or self-interested.”
But she has to want to do it. Which is a part of this story that remains to be told.
In the meantime, let’s focus on what she was trying to tell us in her speech. To listen to her as she is, instead of as the symbol we want her to be. Which is what I’m trying to do here, as best as I can, one semi-culturally-literate, middle-class, gay, white man, primed with certain privileges and powers, stripped of others, sitting in a coffee shop on a cold Monday morning.
We can inspire others. We can use our lives and our platforms to speak to truth and power. We can take personal responsibility to change institutions and traditions. To challenge others to be better. To be better, ourselves. To hold ourselves accountable for holding others accountable.
To do the work.
To stop waiting for someone to save us.
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