Leave it to Oprah Winfrey to lecture white people on having a “leg up”. The talk show mogul, seen planting one on the cheek of a certain Harvey Weinstein in days of yore, basically said so on one of her latest Oprah Conversations series entitled, Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man: Part 1, which featured former NFL player Emmanuel Acho.

Oprah has her conversations from within the confines of her gated communities, of course. Her conversations include chatting with other successful African Americans. Not once have we seen Oprah Winfrey out on the streets of her hometown of Chicago chatting up small business owners of black communities who have lost their livelihoods due to excessive rioting and crime. Instead, she chats with an NFL player who tells her, and anybody who is listening, that America is “run by whites” and that he has warned his white friends about allowing their children to live a “white” life.

Here’s what I told my friends with their white children. 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. As a black person, white people — the proverbial phrase of white people — they run America, CEOs, Fortune 500 companies, execs, ownership. They run America. Not an individual white person, but collective white people.”-Emmanuel Acho

Says the man whose father became a doctor and is a senior pastor of a large and successful ministry outside of Dallas, Texas. Says the man who went to an all-boys college preparatory school that charges roughly $30 thousand (give or take) a year for secondary education. This man knows the struggle and the struggle is real, y’all. No leg-up here.

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.”-Oprah Winfrey

No one is disputing Oprah in having a difficult childhood. I would say, one that Emmanuel Acho could not identify with which is why he has to bring up all of the white people in the cul-de-sac. Oprah, whose net worth is $2.6 billion dollars, is the only Black woman who is a billionaire in the United States. She splits her time between her many vacation homes (one in VERY WHITE Orcas Island, Washington) and resides at a sprawling, $28.9 million dollar estate in Montecito, California (if you’re a pilot, don’t dare do a fly over..Oprah does NOT like jet noise). Speaking of jets, Oprah bought her own after an encounter she did not like in an airport in 1991. She’s upgraded since then to a a Bombardier Global Express XRS, with an estimated worth of $42 million so she doesn’t have to fly with the “peasants” and their cul-de-sac politics.

So, here are some views from my cul-de-sac. I’m white. My husband (a red-head) is VERY white. My kid is white. I live in a cul-de-sac in a white city, white state run by a very liberal white governor who is as clueless as they come (but a “woke” liberal) but live in a pretty diverse little neighborhood. We have Black neighbors, Hispanic neighbors, Pacific Islander neighbors, Korean neighbors…you get the drift. There are no class wars or race wars among us. The kids Winfrey and Acho are talking about are the kids who end up being a part of the problem-the ones in Portland and Seattle right now who are causing all of this division and destruction. They come from “good”, socially liberal families who think sign-waving and “protesting” actually helps marginalized communities. They are bankrolled by their doting, loving parents well into their 40s and beyond. They are the protestors that are cheering on the destruction of our cities. So, yes, Acho and Winfrey do have a point in all of this when they say “some white kids don’t have a clue”. The problem is, they are saying the color of skin is a problem. All white people are a problem, whether they realize it or not.

I had a conversation with my son the other day about his academic and future career pursuits. He wants to be an Emergency Room doctor. Being a white boy, he is a dime a dozen when it comes to candidates for prestigious pre-med programs. Between white kids who get into these programs because their parents are wealthy donors and universities checking the diversity boxes, he will have to work that much harder to get into any of these programs. Doesn’t sound like much of a leg up to me but I guess it’s the price her has to pay for his white privilege. He’s the white kid in a cul-de-sac. Oprah and the NFL player said so. This is the privileged, elite view that could only come from a woman who has the colossal privilege and ego to match her seeing the need to put herself on every single magazine cover.

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