Oprah: Strung Out on the White Stuff

Will Alexander Aug 17, 2020

 When Oprah said that “whiteness” gave the poorest of the poor an advantage over blacks, strangely, it reminded me of Whitney Houston. Houston went from singing the most heart-stirring version of the national anthem I’d ever heard in 1991, to the reality show train wreck that tarnished all she ever did in life.

“Crack is whack!” she told a skeptical Diane Sawyer in a 2002 Primetime interview. “I partied a lot, trust me. [But] You get to a point where you know the party’s over.”  Sawyer tried to make her see the obvious, but Whitney wasn’t listening.  I remember wondering whether the highly edited TV version of Whitney Houston was ever real. Was the broken version of this global superstar who she really was the entire time?  ............. Oprah’s not on crack, but she’s under the influence of a different kind of drug: The dopey doctrine of white privilege.  .............We got an inkling that she was on the stuff when, in 2007, she endorsed Barack Obama over Hillary............... We also got a hint that Oprah was strung out on the white stuff in her moving endorsement of Stacey Abrams in 2018...........

Failing to practice the habits, disciplines, and rigors that upward mobility demands is the real problem that’s being ignored “in the basement,” especially in troubled black neighborhoods. The demands of upward mobility are universal, colorblind, and impartial to rich or poor. Ignore them at your peril..............Like Whitney, the current version of Oprah has become unrecognizable............To Read More.....