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During a candid interview recently with BBC’s Will Gompertz, Oprah Winfrey discussed racism, saying that it still exists in the world today and that it’s the singular reason that Barack Obama has been so disrespected as president, the Daily News reports.
"There's a level of disrespect for the office that occurs in some cases and maybe even many cases because he's African American," she said, according to the Daily News. "There's no question about that. And it's the kind of thing no one ever says, but everybody's thinking it."
To illustrate her point, the 59-year-old Winfrey recalled when Republican Rep. Joe Wilson shouted out, "You lie!" during a 2009 speech by President Obama.
"Remember that?" she asked Gompertz, the News says.
The interview was part of a promotion of Lee Daniels’ The Butler, which debuted in theaters in the U.K. and Ireland Nov. 15. Oprah stars in the film as the wife of Cecil Gaines, who served eight presidents during his tenure as a butler at the White House during the civil rights movement. The interview touched on issues of slavery and racism.
"It would be foolish to not recognize that we have evolved and that we're not still facing the same kind of terrorism against black people en masse as was displayed with the Scottsboro boys," she said, the News reports. "It's gotten better."
Read more at the Daily News.