I’ve been eagerly awaiting CBS’s daytime gabfest The Talk’s return, wondering how they are going to address the Sharon Osbourne debacle that took place live on-air on March 10. I turned on the TV yesterday (the day they were scheduled to return to new programming), and then again today only to continue to find reruns. So I hit up Google to see what was going on, and discovered that the show’s hiatus has been extended yet again, until at least, AT LEAST, March 29, 2021.
You see the thing is, this type of thing happens all the time to Black women, the only difference is it usually happens in a workplace, where there is no outside audience and it’s simply your word against theirs. And the person being the aggressor has some form of power be it they are popular, influential, friends with someone who is one of the former, a decision maker, or any combination thereof.
What’s more, you don’t even have to be a Black woman to understand this dynamic, because I’ve seen this happen to a variety of people, including White men. Though I must admit, it’s definitely exacerbated when the attack is coming from a person of privilege against a person from a protected class.
What I’m talking about here is workplace harassment and a toxic work environment. I won’t even get into whether or not Sharon is a racist, because I think everybody is a racist. I don’t care how mature, or open or progressive you think you may be, racism is so multifaceted that is impossible to live in the society that encompasses our planet and not pick up some racist characteristics.
The consequential question then becomes, not am I a racist, but in what ways am I a racist? why? and how do I decrease my racist tendencies? This is not just for White people, this is for all people, because we all have it in us. Another good question to ask would be how do I either benefit from or am hindered by racism. That’s the thing about racism, while it can be words, it’s not just words, it’s a system.
Yet controversial or not, popular or not, people have the right to their opinion. I went back and watch Piers Morgan’s initial comments, and while I can see how Black people, who can be sensitive to the subtleties of racism would view those comments as racists, I can also see how White people, who can be oblivious to the subtleties of racism could believe there’s nothing more there than an opinion.
However, the bigger problem, for me, wasn’t that she was defending her friend who made comments that could be perceived as racist. My problem was how she handled the opposing views. She didn’t simply disagree with her co-workers Sheryl and Elaine Welteroth, she went off on them. And not only did she go off on them, but she started accusing them of treating her badly while she was treating them badly. It was like someone yelling they’re getting beat up while they’re beating you up.
The irony of it all is while Sharon was defending her one friend’s, Piers Morgan, right to have an unpopular opinion, she was castigating her coworkers, one of whom, Sheryl, she also called her friend, for having an opinion that she found unfavorable. By the way, that my friend, is a tenet of racism.
It was Sharon’s attitude for me. She became so heated and unprofessional that her words had to be bleeped and the camera angle switched so viewers wouldn’t know what she was saying. In trying to get her point across, instead of being rational Sharon was belligerent, and disrespectful, and condescending. She repeatedly cut Elaine off, constantly lashed-out at an emotional Sheryl, at one point ordering her not to cry, and even seemed dismissive on Amanda Kloots’ input, who seemed to agree with her.
In the aftermath of her outrageous outburst, Sharon accompanied a lukewarm apology with a defense for her actions. This included maintaining that she was set up by network executives an undertaking to which she believed everyone was in on except her. However, whether she was actually set up or not, these weren’t trick questions. She’s on a show that devotes the first half of it’s programming to discussing the latest topics in the news. She’s on a show that’s on a network that just aired the most talked about and highly anticipated interview in years. She took to Twitter and defended her friend on his controversial views about that interview. Exactly how, she was blindsided, I don’t know.
What I do know, is that her cohosts Sheryl and Elaine, definitely not only looked blindsided by her reaction to the topic, but also scared. You could see it in Elaine’s eyes, hear in the measured way Sheryl spoke to her, almost instinctively taking on the job of calming down the angry White woman, when all they signed up to do was talk.
Leave a Reply