Oprah Goes to India
So Oprah trooped into one of our vintage slums to meet a family – parents and three children – who live in a 10×10 feet room. Now I’m not surprised that Oprah was surprised to see an entire family living in such tiny quarters. Although I’m sure she could find cramped ghettos in the States. What surprised me was the amazing lack of sensitivity to the children’s feelings or the feelings of the parents who’d opened up their home to her. All the children go to school, and were extremely well-mannered and seemed happy and quite carefree like children their age are meant to be. They didn’t seem to realise that their home was smaller than the homes of others. Or that their father didn’t earn as much as he could.
But not for long. Once Oprah got through with them, they must have committed seppuku.
She asked the children how they could live in such a “tiny” room and actually wanted to know, “Don’t you feel it’s too cramped?” She also asked the six-year-olds whether they were happy. Which must have made them wonder why they shouldn’t be. She then interrogated the father about whether he was happy and satisfied. He got teary-eyed and said that he wished he could earn more and provide for a more comfortable life for his children. After making him weep in front of his family, Oprah said that she knows how awful it is for children to see their father weep.
Here’s a “rich person goes to a poor region, and doesn’t understand how poor people live the way they do” piece on the Indian news site Firstpost that makes me a bit confused on my idea of who Oprah actually is. Is she really as ignorant as this article makes her out to be?
I was always under the impression that as a rich person who grew up as a poor black woman who made a name for herself by creating a good talk show that discussed social and geopolitical issues, she’d be able to go to a country and talk about race and class without infuriating everyone.
I also think that Oprah knows that she is good at pulling on people’s heartstrings, so she intentionally made a father cry in front of his family in an effort to make viewers feel something. That’s TV for you. I mean, the lady should know that it sucks to have poverty rubbed in your face:
She began going to Lincoln High School; but after early success in the Upward Bound program, was transferred to the affluent suburban Nicolet High School, where she says her poverty was constantly rubbed in her face as she rode the bus to school with fellow African-Americans, some of whom were servants of her classmates’ families.
That’s from Wikipedia, sourced from a book about Oprah’s life. Anyway, I expect more from you, Oprah!
To be fair to Oprah, whenever I go out for dinner with one of my Indian friends and they eat everything with their hands, it also grosses me out a bit. But I just bite my lip and don’t say anything because I don’t want to seem judgmental or snobby. I just complain about it anonymously on the internet afterwards, that’s how you keep friendships intact. ;)
@Nick Are you serious with this??
@Jake Reinhardt Please tell me he was being sarcastic. Unless Nick eats his sandwiches with a fork and spoon…
I read this article earlier today, and the fact that she obviously knows better and is simply behaving this way for ‘good’ tv makes it even more appalling. But I was also struck by the author’s notice of the family’s television, which she says goes unmentioned because it would ‘kill the sob story’. Is she implying that the family is poor, but not , you know, poor poor? Because this makes her seem hugely ignorant of not only the realities of global poverty, but how most people in the world actually live.
This article grossed me out on many levels, is what I am saying.
@rbrtposteschild What jerks. They should sell that tv for the whole $50 they’ll get for it and start living like kings. Some people!
Look, why are we surprised about Oprah? She could have used her power to change MANY MANY horrible things, and she did not. She never really challenged corporate America at anything, and when she did, and was held accountable by would-be advertisers, she caved. Remember Howard Lymon on Oprah, the former beef farmer who went veg and exposed the awful reality of agro-business? And how Oprah got in trouble for saying she never wanted to eat beef again?
Yeah, two years later I tuned in to Oprah on a sick day-there was Gayle, touring the best hamburgers in the country. Hmm.
Name one actual issue she addressed by pointing the finger at the real source of the problem, not just telling us which benign, conservative-friendly charity to support. One.
@Jake Reinhardt As much as I respect her for what she’s done for herself, she certainly had a materialistic bent with her shows. Lots of magical thinking, too (e.g. The Secret, which is a non-conservative version of “pull yourself up by the bootstraps”).
@CubeRootOfPi Yeah, I have no doubt that she has worked her ass off for what she’s earned over the years, but promoting The Secret? All that fluffy woo stuff is annoying, but the flipside – if you are poor or your business fails or you get cancer it’s your own fault for being negative or being around negative people? That is just disgusting, top to bottom, and does fall completely in line with a lot of conservative ideas about the poor.
I’ve spent several weeks on two different trips to India in the last couple of years, and wouldn’t dream of humiliating a family like that. I have randomly met some of the most kind, astoundingly generous, and crushingly impoverished people there. The poverty is hard to see, but the generosity keeps me in love with the place and going back every chance I get.
I’ll continue to be appalled and assume that she stayed in one of the swank western hotels instead of an Indian one, or with wealthy friends, and managed to not spend as much money as she could to help the local economy.
As someone who’s lived in India for a year, I was not surprised by anything in Oprah’s biased portrayal. Its very easy for Westerners to assume that the way Indians live is wrong, backwards or because they “don’t know any better”. In fact, it is us who don’t know any better. The way Indians live involves complex socio-cultural choices that have to do with values and priorities as well as money. For example, the family with the mega-tv in the slum might not be able to afford to buy property in a better neighborhood, but they are improving their living space to be more comfortable for them. By implying their home was over-crowded, Oprah was judging them according to our western values of personal space. Until Americans are able to ask questions without judgement or stereotyping,we will never learn anything about the way the rest of the world works.
Oprah ignored an opportunity to learn about the amazing entrepreneurs that work in the slums of India, small business owners and hard workers overcoming incredible obstacles for a better life. Instead of portraying families for what they are (normal people living at a different income level), she chose to victimize them. By “othering” the entire subcontinent, Oprah ignored the real issues of social justice plaguing India (like gender discrimination, female foeticide, and rural poverty). I would have liked to see an accurate portrayal of Indians for who they really are – people as full of life, promise and energy as the rest of us.