On Tuesday, Oprah Winfrey weighed in on the death of George Floyd and compared his death to the days of Jim Crow and racial segregation where African-Americans would often be lynched.
Oprah was hosting a virtual town hall with black activists and Hollywood figures, and argued that this could be a “tipping point” for race relations in America as violent protests, largely associated with the Black Lives Matter, continue to rock the country.
“Over the years of the Oprah show, I did over 100 shows about racism. In all of those experiences, though, I don’t recall a moment quite like this one. Because we find our nation on a precipice, a true tipping point, I believe,” Oprah said.
“And just like all of you for the past few weeks, I’ve been talking and Zooming with friends, and the same question keeps popping up over and over,” Winfrey added. “Is this the moment that will finally change our country, where people will recognize systemic racism for the problem and the evil that it is?”
While every american condemned the killing of Floyd and called for swift justice, most Americans do not believe our entire nation must be “transformed.” Neither do we believe in this concept of “systemic racism.”
The 66-year-old talk show queen was just getting warmed up.
“During the conversation, which included interviews with film director Ava DuVernay and Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams, the 66-year-old compared what happened to Floyd to the days of racial segregation and Jim Crow,” Breitbart reports.
“We can’t move forward without calling out that pain,” Oprah said. “Watching the life seep from George Floyd’s body caused a kind of universal shock and pain. For black people everywhere, we recognized that knee on the neck.”
“Isn’t it very much like in the days of Jim Crow when black men would be lynched and dragged through the town as an example for other people to see, watching black men be shot on camera and nothing happens is a triggering thing?” she continued. “There’s this memory that we have of everything that’s gone in the past, so when this keeps occurring, it is re-traumatizing.”
Social media users blasted Oprah soundly for claiming as a nation we still lynch blacks.
“BTW, Oprah … Those ‘Jim Crow’ laws, enforcing racial segregation in the south in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, WERE ENACTED BY WHITE DEMOCRAT-DOMINATED STATE LEGISLATURES to disenfranchise and remove political and economic gains made by blacks,” tweeted Antonia Noeske.
“The NYT writer who won the Pulitzer recently just said on the Oprah special that many blacks are afraid of being Lynched. As in modern-day. Wow, where? We should make the 10th Oscar-nominated movie of the last 3 years about it,” tweeted Eddie Scarry.
