Oprah Winfrey is out of touch and elitist, say organizers of protests against police treatment of African Americans, following complaints she made to People Magazine that their movement is leaderless.
“I think it’s wonderful to march and to protest and it’s wonderful to see all across the country, people doing it,” the media star said in a video interview posted Thursday on the magazine's website, as part of her promotions for the movie "Selma," which she produced.
“But what I’m looking for is some kind of leadership to come out of this to say, ‘This is what we want. This is what we want. This is what has to change, and these are the steps that we need to take to make these changes, and this is what we’re willing to do to get it,’ ” Winfrey continued.
Story continues below video.
The mostly-young black activists who have been protesting since the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and Eric Garner in New York City, though, took to Twitter to complain that Winfrey's comments show that she and other older African American trailblazers are out of touch and are no longer serving as real leaders, reports
The Washington Post.
Still others accused her of only commenting to promote her movie, which is about the 1965 protests in Alabama over voting rights for African Americans.
This has not been the first argument between the younger protesters and older activists, reports The Post. In December, protesters took over a stage at an event in Washington, sponsored by the Rev. Al Sharpton, to complain that the civil rights leader was trying to take credit for their protest movement.
There is also a radical difference in how the protests are being waged. Older activists are emphasizing peaceful protests, in the mode of the Rev. Martin Luther King, while younger activists call for more extreme actions, such as "die-ins" in public places and through blocking public highways.
But Winfrey in her interview commented that today's protesters can learn a lesson from her movie and the techniques used in the 1960s Civil Rights fight, The Post reports.
“I think that what can be gleaned from our film, ‘Selma,’ is to really take note of the strategic intention required when you want real change,” she said. “Those marches [in Selma] just didn’t happen, and they weren’t happening haphazardly. They were happening out of an order and a design for change.”
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