Robo-racism
For years, Oprah Winfrey’s campaign rally appearances and political endorsements have posed a difficult question for anyone who happens to be advocating for the candidate on the other side: How do you contend with the star power of a billionaire Queen of All Media who is also one of the world’s most influential people?
For one robo-call producer speaking into a microphone in what we can only assume is a dark basement, the answer is clear: an 11th-hour infusion of good old-fashioned racism.
“This is the magical Negro Oprah Winfrey asking you to make my fellow Negress Stacey Abrams the governor of Georgia,” the robo-call begins, before spewing nearly 60 seconds of racism coupled with a dash of anti-Semitism. Georgians began hearing the call last week, according to the Hill.
Free speech free speech.
The insidious tone of the poor-audio call was at odds with Winfrey’s words on the campaign trail.
She and Abrams are both black women from Mississippi, and the media titan spoke of the sacrifices their ancestors had to make to obtain the right to vote.
“Make your voice heard on Nov. 6. We have this incredible opportunity to make history. We have our inalienable right, because the one place that all people are equal is at the polls,” she told voters.
“And I’m here today because of the men and because of the women who were lynched, who were humiliated, who were discriminated against, who were suppressed, who were repressed and oppressed, for the right of the equality of the polls. And I want you to know that their blood has seeped into my DNA, and I refuse to let their sacrifices be in vain.”
And on the other hand, more racism.
If the voice and the overtly racist tone on the robo-call sound familiar, it’s because it’s from the same studio that stuffed a “We Negroes” robo-call down the throats of Florida voters, who are deciding whether they want Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum to be the state’s first black governor.
“Well, hello there,” that call begins, as the sounds of drums and monkeys can be heard in the background, according to the New York Times. “I is Andrew Gillum.”
“We Negroes . . . done made mud huts while white folk waste a bunch of time making their home out of wood an’ stone.”
Free speech.
I know that ‘free speech’ means that your government cannot stop people saying things – but I thought that there were laws against harassing people by telephone.
Hahaha nooooooooo. Freedom to harass is a sacred right here.
Actually, there are some laws about harrasing people by telephone, laws which I learned in my year and a half as a telemarketer (DON’T SHOOT, I was merely trying to feed my teenager so took the only job offered until a better one came along). The things is, those laws aren’t actually enforced, so they are meaningless.