Reflections on Oprah for president | Think Piece

Please, let’s stop setting our people up for more individual and collective trauma.

Running for the presidency would be a traumatic experience for Oprah. No amount of breathing with Deepak Chopra would be enough to keep her from being deeply negatively affected by the torrent of criticism, scrutiny, and plain pettiness that would hit her like a typhoon.

Remember what President Barack Obama went through the first time he ran? Trust, it would be 100 times worse for Oprah. She is a Black woman. Money and fame will not protect her from the violence of white supremacy. Serena Williams just told you. She has fortune, fame, a non-Black husband, and she was still treated like a slave, trying to get proper medical care when she was giving birth to her daughter.

White supremacy and patriarchy have a way of getting together and terrorizing Black women who challenge the hierarchy of the Big House.  Y’all claim you love Oprah — no you don’t. Not if you’re asking her to run for President.

And, it seems you don’t have too much love for those of us most vulnerable in this country and on the planet either. We have real issues to address that require solutions that will not be resolved with the individual-focused solutions of positive thinking, spiritual upliftment and surface-level reforms that emit from the world of Oprah. That all has its place, and that place is not the White House.

In fact, based on the one time it’s happened, I hope we don’t have another Black US President, maybe ever.  We must never have another Black president of the United States who is by virtue of the office, required to head the Empire and engage in repression and oppression, mayhem and murder, and torture and terror throughout the world.

What I know for sure is that if this country ever has another Black President, it should only be as part of the process of dismantling, demolishing, and destroying this system of white supremacy, capitalism, patriarchy, hetero-normativity, and environmental destruction. Oprah definitely ain’t doin’ that, and you know it.

So, please.  Knock it off.