Oprah opening a school is huge. As a matter of fact if I were a billionaire, I would be opening schools too. However, despite the fact Oprah opened a school, the idiot twat had to go and effed it up by saying the following:

Quote:
"I became so frustrated with visiting inner-city schools that I just stopped going. The sense that you need to learn just isn't there. If you ask the kids what they want or need, they will say an iPod or some sneakers. In South Africa, they don't ask for money or toys. They ask for uniforms so they can go to school."


Let's do the womanese translation of that completely moronic statement: Those n*gga children are lost and the furthest thing from their mind is getting education and being productive citizens. They're more concerned with iPods, $150 Jordans, and looking cute. For me to spend my time and money on those ghetto b*stards would be the greatest excerise in futility in history of man. F*ck 'em.

Yall have to understand something about the Black community's thoughts on Miss Winfrey. At best we're ambivalent towards her. Though lots of Blacks admire Oprah and the accomplishments she's made and the barriers she's broken down. A lot of us (myself excluded,) feel as if she could've done more. Personally I don't think it's Oprah's responsbility to give Blacks hope and motivation. If she decided she wanted to be Scoorge and horde her wealth, then that's her decision and we should respect it. After all, she's the one who put in the hours and and made the sacrifices neccessary to become a billionairess.

We'll Rex, why do you have a problem with Oprah building a school in South Africa? Acutally I don't have a problem with her building a school in South Africa, however I have a problem with her building a 40 million Oprah school in South Africa, FIRST!!!!

You don't think that the citizens of Chicago or Bum-f*ck-nowhere, Mississippi, where Miss Winfrey is from could use and appreciate a $40 million Oprah school? Sure she would indoctrinate the girls with that "Oprah think b.s.," but the good far out weighs the bad. The girls would be exposed to a different way of life. They would come to appreciate and take of advantage of being in America. They wouldn't start dating "Tryee Thugged Out" get pregnant at 16 thus giving birth to one of the future "carjackers of America."

You wouldn't understand that Miss Winfrey, because despite the fact you think your doing something good and your making the world a better place. You my dear GROSSLY OUT OF TOUCH!!! Yeah kids here want iPods and sneakers. Mainly because they're basic needs are meet. Despite the fact they're poor, they still have food, running water, electricity, heat, and clothes to wear. From my understanding, if your poor in South Africa, you might be living a one room house with no indoor plumbing, no heat, no electricity, and you have very few clothes. So yeah, you'd want a school uniform. Your priorities are different because your circumstances are different.

Like I said, I'd love to open a school and my school would be as plush and lavish as the Oprah school, if not more so. With that being said, depsite the problems of the youth of America, I haven't given up on them. With the proper mentoring, guidence, and instruction the youth of America are capable of amazing things. Sure I'll build a school in Africa, but I'll gurantee you that if I'm building a school in Africa there's going to be one in or around Richmond, California and there's going being to be one in around New York City. Unlike Miss Winfrey, I understand that if I don't look out for and try to help Black people, nobody else will.

That should be cut, posted and sent to every e mail in America. Very well put my friend.

LMFAO!

quote:

"I became so frustrated with visiting inner-city schools that I just stopped going. The sense that you need to learn just isn't there. If you ask the kids what they want or need, they will say an iPod or some sneakers. In South Africa, they don't ask for money or toys. They ask for uniforms so they can go to school."

She's absolutely right. Your "translation" is your own and has nothing to do with what she said.

How do you even presume to speak for black people and how they feel about Oprah?

Are you a teacher? Do you work with inner-city schools? On what basis or experience do you make your judgments?

My thoughts are based on my personal experience. I've spoken to enough Black people in person and via internet to come to the conclusion that they feel she doesn't do enough. Ask any Black person and they'll tell you that she doesn't have on enough issues that effect the Black community.

Though I feel there might be some some element of truth in what she said, that doesn't excuse her from giving on the youth, especially the Black youth of America. Like I said, if Black people can't count on other successful, prosperous Blacks for inspiration and motivation, then who can we count on?

Someone should send her fat ass to Africa, post haste.

Tab

quote:

Originally posted by Omnipotens Maximus Rex:
My thoughts are based on my personal experience. I've spoken to enough Black people in person and via internet to come to the conclusion that they feel she doesn't do enough. Ask any Black person and they'll tell you that she doesn't have on enough issues that effect the Black community.

Though I feel there might be some some element of truth in what she said, that doesn't excuse her from giving on the youth, especially the Black youth of America. Like I said, if Black people can't count on other successful, prosperous Blacks for inspiration and motivation, then who can we count on?

As of July 2006, she had given $151 million to charities and various organizations (not sure if this number includes her SA school). I do not have a full record of where that money went, but I am confident that much of it was domestic.

Why don't you take Michael Jordan to task? He makes more money than she does, and what has he done of late for the black community?

I don't much like Oprah, so it is weird for me to defend her. My wife and mom LOVE Oprah.

Bill Cosby has made similar remarks in recent years and been met with a ton of hostility. Ron Suskind wrote a book a few years back called A Hope in the Unseen, and it is a great exploration of the way many black youth view education. It's a grim portrait.

My take is she can spend her $ any GD way she wants. And, I enjoyed a R&J maduro today in my truck. Also had a Carlos Ex 1916 that seemed harsh and the outer wrapper developed a slight tear.

I read the same thing and was greatly annoyed. She's comparing apples to oranges. Schooling in this country is approached as an education in shopping. Bombard your typical South African student with the same glut of consumer pap and discover just how interested they are in learning for learning's sake.

I wonder how many of those children are reading editions of the world's great literature with Oprah's logo feces smeared all over the cover? Or if renovations to their athletic facilities are underwritten by Coke, Pepsi, or Nike? Talk about how children like this remain unspoiled by consumer culture--by one of our culture's greatest despoilers, no less (is there any product Oprah won't endorse?)--gives me a pain I can't dull with Oprah-approved drugs.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: pintoirish,

quote:

Schooling in this country is approached as an education in shopping.

Ha, depends on the school, the teacher, etc. I could hardly make that case for all of American education. Besides, I am of the belief that my children should learn far more at home than in school. That said, if a parent is a superficial, anti-intellectual consumer, guess what type of kids he or she will have.

It's funny to me that despite the fact that we are in a continual educational crisis, America still makes an enormous global impact in terms of economic development, science, the arts, the humanities, etc.

As for her mark on books, I guess I do not ultimately care what makes people pick up books as long as they actually read them. Perhaps you should direct your ire at those who think seeing the movie version is the same as reading the book.

At the bottom of all of this, it's really no business of anyone else as to what causes Oprah chooses to spend her money on.

quote:

originally posted by Coriolanus:
Ha, depends on the school, the teacher, etc.

So children raised in the suburbs of Connecticut (substitute anyplace here) are really less concerned with iPods and the latest fashions than kids raised in the inner cities? You know that isn't true, and why would they be? Shake a new textbook and business reply cards offering credit cards, magazine subscriptions, etc. fall out. Educational progamming, where available, is loaded with commercials. So you shape your children's values, not their school? A fine notion, but how many parents, in these painfully structured, multi-tasked days, can honestly say that they have as much access to their children in a given week as their child's school?

Oprah's mark on books, like her mark on nearly everything else, is a mixed blessing (most have been pretty safe choices--To Kill a Mockingbird! Wooooow!). And no one claims that Oprah needs to justify her philanthropy. But I do question the seemliness of a sermon on crass consumer culture, delivered as it was by a woman who herself is now a brand.

quote:

So children raised in the suburbs of Connecticut (substitute anyplace here) are really less concerned with iPods and the latest fashions than kids raised in the inner cities?

You're not making the connection between the school and consumerism. I have never taught at or attended a school that promoted certain brands of anything. Kids promote things to each other, but I fail to see how this is a school's fault.

Oprah's talking about a cultural problem, namely the idea that many in the black community don't give a **** about education.

OMR,
You are so predictable, it is laughable. Oprah spends $40 million (after U.S. taxes) of her own money in a manner that she chooses and all you can do is complain and try to judge.....

BTW,
My wife is a teacher in a Title I public elementary school. Not once in all of the lengthy discussions we had had about what the public schools need to help the children has she said the schools need more money.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: TSF,

quote:

originally posted by Coriolanus:
I have never taught at or attended a school that promoted certain brands of anything.

Really? Who owns the pouring rights at your current school? At your alma matter? You've never taught at or attended a school district that granted an exclusive contract to any of the major soft drink manufacturers? That's increasingly rare: since 1998, over 300 school districts in 32 states have entered into these kinds of agreements, most for terms that were longer than the terms of most school board members. So in what way is granting exclusive rights to this one company on school property not "promotion" of its products?

Oprah is ignoring the fact that this sort of brand loyalty is hardly unique to inner-city kids--a fact that would be obvious to anyone who spent more than a couple minutes with any group of young men and women. She reminds me of the "local color writers" who swamped Appalachia in the early 20th century. Filled with notions of what Appalachia should look like, they weren't about to be persuaded by anything as trivial as fact. And so Oprah, herself long-removed from life in these conditions (slumming is hardly the same thing), decides to ennoble her South African students by dumping on slum kids in America. Those poor African kids, who don't even have access to basic cable and the many after-the-show looks at the Oprah empire!

But I do understand that some people love this sort of melodrama--even if it's delivered by someone who, by their own admission, is hardly an authority on anything of real importance.

F Oprah