Oprah ‘Sorry’ Switzerland Racism Thing Was So Overblown

Oprah says that she’s sorry for all of the racism headlines following her recent experience in Switzerland.

“I think that incident in Switzerland was just an incident in Switzerland. I’m really sorry that it got blown up. I purposefully did not mention the name of the store. I’m sorry that I said it was Switzerland,” She said Monday night at the premiere of Lee Daniels’ The Butler.

Oprah recalled in a recent interview that a boutique in Zurich refused to show her a $38,000 handbag because the store clerk didn’t believe she could afford it. The media has primarily talked about the incident in racial terms, calling it an example of discrimination. But Oprah seemed to imply that it was an isolated incident.

“I was just referencing it as an example of being in a place where people don’t expect that you would be able to be there,” she said.

Her original comments seemed to indicate that she was discriminated against due to the color of her skin.

“I’m in a store and the person doesn’t obviously know that I carry the black card and so they make an assessment based upon the way I look and who I am,” she said.

Of course, Oprah can afford a $38,000 handbag. Forbes estimated that she earned $77 million over the past year.

On the red carpet, she said that she believes she was denied access to the handbag because she didn’t look like a person of stature.

“I didn’t have anything that said ‘I have money’: I wasn’t wearing a diamond stud. I didn’t have a pocketbook. I didn’t wear Louboutin shoes. I didn’t have anything,” she said.

Still:

“You should be able to go in a store looking like whatever you look like and say ‘I’d like to see this.’ That didn’t happen.”

But even though the store apologized to Oprah (as did the entire country), she says that there’s no need.

“It’s not an indictment against the country or even that store,” Oprah said.

“It was just one person who didn’t want to offer me the opportunity to see the bag. So no apologies necessary from the country of Switzerland. If somebody makes a mistake in the United States, do we apologize in front of the whole country? No!”

Do you think that Oprah’s Switzerland experience constituted racism?

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