Oprah Winfrey is still catching flak for accusing a store clerk in Switzerland of racism for refusing to show her a $38,000 handbag.
On Fox News Tuesday afternoon, host Martha MacCallum and GOP strategist Dee Dee Benkie dismissed Winfrey’s claim that that the clerk’s action was racist, and speculated that the media mogul was pushing the story as a promotional tool for her new movie, The Butler.
“Maybe Oprah Winfrey was miffed because [the store clerk] didn’t know who she was,” Benkie said. “And here’s the other thing: you know Oprah’s got a movie out about the butler. It would be really terrible if she was using this story to promote the movie. I’m not saying that. But I gotta say, it’s not fair to call anyone a racist whenever there’s no proof of it. There’s absolutely zero proof. Rude, yes. Racist, no.”
“When we call something like this racist,” MacCallum said, “it perpetuates this discussion, it makes people think, ‘People are still racist. It happens all the time.’ That’s damaging.’”
“We have to come to grips in this country that we have unconscious bias,” Democratic Fox analyst Jehmu Greene countered. “We, in our hearts, want to be as equal as possible, but because of the way our brains process all of the messages that come to us through our visual culture—this how our bodies work, this is how our brains categorize things.”
Watch the full segment below, via Fox News.
