January 9, 2018
Americans have a well-deserved reputation for laziness and impatience. We seek instant gratification and, in our eternal optimism, disdain the work required to ensure our continued prosperity. Nowhere has our national character been more on display than in the reaction to Oprah’s speech at Sunday’s Golden Globes.
Oprah’s speech was magnificent. She spoke movingly of the power of representation as she recounted being a little girl watching Sidney Poitier win the Academy Award for “Lilies of the Field,” in 1964. Oprah said that she hoped little Black girls watching at home on Sunday night find similar inspiration in seeing her be the first Black woman to win the Cecil B. DeMille Award. Most impactfully, she thundered, “A new day is on the horizon! And when that new day finally dawns, it will be because of a lot of magnificent women, many of whom are in this room tonight, and some pretty phenomenal men, fighting hard to make sure that they become the leaders who take us to the time when nobody ever has to say, ‘Me Too’.” The camera panned an enraptured crowd in the ballroom of the Beverly Hills Hilton, on their feet applauding, many with tears streaming down their faces. Within minutes, #Oprah2020 was trending on Twitter. By the next day, Politico had assembled a panel of operatives to assess Oprah’s political odds . Bill Kristol, (Bill Kristol!!!) was tweeting “I’m with her.”The frenzy is because we listened to how Oprah made us feel and not to what she said. Among Oprah’s singular gifts has been her radical empathy. As we listened to her speech we felt seen. Many of us saw ourselves in the little Black girl sitting on the floor watching Sidney Poitier lauded with awards, or in the unheard battling sexual harassment “in academia and engineering and medicine and science; tech and politics and business.” It was a stirring call to arms. What it was not, was a promise of messianic deliverance. There is a risk in listening to how Oprah made us feel and ignoring what she said. The new day dawning, she told us, would be because of women and men working to become leaders who do not tolerate the abuse and debasement of any person; who look at people and see their humanity, not their difference.
When Oprah spoke of the leaders in the room, she did not mean Laura Dern and Nicole Kidman, wonderful though they may be. She was referencing the activists in the room, not the celebrities. Women like Ai-Jen Poo of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, who spearheaded the campaign to gain decent working conditions for the hundreds of Caribbean, Latina and Asian domestic workers who labored without basic protections like overtime pay and sick days. Women like Tarana Burke, who founded the Me Too movement over a decade ago to mobilize survivors to stop blaming themselves for sexual assault. What we should all take away from Oprah’s speech is an understanding of the work we need to do to bring on that new day. We should not presume that Oprah was offering herself up as the Magical Black Woman who will miraculously solve all of our problems. Oprah is a role model. She is a beacon, but she is not our savior. Oprah told us. We have to do the work.
#GoldenGlobes
#Oprah2020