Oprah Hosts White Guilt Session: ‘Whiteness Gives You an Advantage No Matter What’

Billionaire media mogul Oprah Winfrey declared in an episode of her eponymous series, The Oprah Conversation that “whiteness” and “white privilege” afford unspecified benefits to white people in the “caste system” of America.

In an episode entitled “Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man: Part 1” — featuring former NFL linebacker Emmanuel Acho and drawing its name from Acho’s YouTube series of the same name — Oprah Winfrey invited several white people to discuss “racism,” “white privilege,” and “whiteness.” Oprah praised her white guests for accusing themselves of being “racist.”

Oprah said:

There are white people who are not as powerful as the system of white people — the caste system that’s been put in place — but they still, no matter where they are on the rung, or the ladder of success, they still have their whiteness.

…

[Whites have a] leg up. You still have your whiteness. That’s what the term “white privilege” is. It means that whiteness still gives you an advantage, no matter.

“It is the fundamental issue,” declared Oprah of racial assumptions.

The Oprah Conversation

 

The Wrinkle in Time star invited Seth, a self-described Jewish man from Manhattan, New York, to describe his “awakening” to his own “racist” self.

“You’ve become ‘woke’ during this period, and realized in that awakening that you are racist, right?” asked Oprah. “I just want to know how that happened.”

Seth replied, “I was born in the 70s. I was born and raised in Manhattan. I’ve always considered myself to be liberal. Now I’m not only a friend of people of color but also an advocate for [them], but this this movement over the last month has been powerful.”

Seth indicted himself as a “racist” who is aspiring to become an “anti-racist.”

“I realized that I couldn’t be not racist,” continued Seth. “I realized that I either was a racist or an anti-racist, and I wasn’t — I’m not — an anti-racist.”

Lisa, a Minnesotan-turned-Californian, attributed “biases” to all white people, warning of “unconscious biases that white people — that we as white people — have.”

Emmanuel Acho said whites living a “white” life become “part of the problem”:

Here’s what I told my friends  with their white children. I said, “Y’all live in a white cul-de-sac, in a white neighborhood, in a white city, in a white state. If you were not careful. your children will live their whole life white, and at [the ages of] 26, 27, they’ll end up being a part of the problem, because you just let them and allowed them to live a completely white, sheltered, and culture-less life.

America is “run” by whites, claimed Acho.

“As a black person, white people — the proverbial phrase of white people — they run America, CEOs, Fortune 500 companies, execs, ownership,” Acho stated. “They run America. Not an individual white person, but collective white people.”

Emmanuel Acho declared, “I firmly believe that if the white person is your problem, only the white person can be your solution.”

Follow Robert Kraychik on Twitter.