I recorded yesterday's
Oprah because
Denzel (no last name required) was going to be on promoting his soon to be released film
The Great Debaters. So I sat down to watch what turned out to be a very interesting show. They talked about the movie and showed clips from the film. Also some of the cast was on the show including
Forrest Whitaker and
Jurnee Smollett (remember her from Eve's Bayou?).
I WAS looking forward to seeing this film. It's about a group of African American students who enter into a debate against White students in the pre-civil rights era. Read more about it
here.
What bothered me happened at the very end of the show. The film is being produced by Oprah's production company
Harpo Productions. And Oprah decided at the end of the show to introduce the president of Harpo Productions who turned out to be a White woman. And according to Oprah this woman has been running Harpo for about the last 10 years.
That really bothered me on a few different levels. The first being that even when an African American person owns a company, they seem to want to be so magnanimous in their hiring practices. It seems that we are the only group that does this. I remember when Martha Stewart was released from prison they televised her speech to her employees. I noticed that I didn't see a Black face in the room.
Another reason this bothers me is that Oprah just recently did a show in which she and Bill Cosby sat around bashing Black Americans for not taking responsibility. So it seems to be kind of hypocritical to bash African Americans if you are not even going to make opportunities available to them if you can. And Oprah could.
I won't even talk about Oprah building a school for South African girls when millions of African American girls could have benefited from a 40 million dollar school.
I've seen this same sort of thing time and time again. If you have ever seen the
MTV show
Cribs you may have seen it too. All sorts of African American celebs and athletes have so many Whites on their payrolls. The flip side is that you rarely see African Americans working for White celebs. So the result, we are just out in the cold.
Does the fact that Harpo Productions is headed by a White woman bother you, especially since most of the films they make are "Black" films? Am I making too much of this? What do you think?
Update: I really have to say I have come away from this conversation on this issue feeling refreshed. I want to thank eveyone who commented today. Your comments were really thoughtful and insightful. After reading the comments throughout the day and having 24 hours between me and the Oprah show yesterday, here is what I'm thinking. I think that "long money is better than short money". To look at the President of Harpo Studios and to be upset that she is not a Black women may be the "short money" perspective. In other words it is the total picture that counts. And in the long run it's the success of Harpo Productions that really matters. Sure I would like to be proud of an African American woman running things, but an African American women is running things, Oprah. And that is the "long money". So all in all, in the long run Oprah's overall success is a good thing, for me and for Black women in general. And as I was reminded, we, African Americans have lead the way when it comes to doing the right thing on race relations. So maybe Oprah was just doing the right thing and hiring the right person for the job.
Thanks!
Denzel in Training Day
