In 1986, right before her Chicago talk show went national and made television history, Oprah Winfrey spoke with David Mills — and it’s abundantly clear how she got where she was, and how she kept on going:
Mills: I hope people don’t take it wrong when you say that race is not an issue to you. “Is she forgettin’ about us now that she’s making —”
Winfrey: Oh, that’s such a — You know, I have people call me up and say there are not enough black people on the show. You don’t do this for blacks, you don’t do that. You’re not black enough.
And I say: I look in the mirror every morning, just as my ancestors did, who came and worked in the factories for pennies-per-day labor, and they graced their mirrors every morning, and no one had to tell them they were black.
When I was 14 years old, I heard Rev. Jesse Jackson say that excellence is the best deterrent to racism. And it was a truth that resonated with me. And it is what I have always believed. Even before I heard him speak, it’s what I believed. It had not been articulated for me.
And the doctrine that I have followed has been: If you are the best at what you do — there’s nobody else better in the class than you are — then the teacher better have a damn good excuse for putting you back. I mean, there are no excuses when you’re the best. So my goal is always to be the absolute best, period.
If something goes wrong in my life, I don’t say it’s because I’m a woman, because I’m black. I say, well, first let me check out what I did or didn’t do.
I was taken off the air as an anchorwoman in Baltimore in 1977. I was taken off the 6 o’clock news. Friends of mine said, “It happened to you because you’re black. It wouldn’t have happened if you weren’t black.” I knew — this was what I knew — that if I had been the best, if I had been ready for it, they couldn’t have done it to me. They could not have done it.
I wasn’t ready. I was still very immature… and wasn’t seasoned enough for that market. And now I’m seasoned. Now I’m ready. Had nothing to do with race. So when I say it’s not an issue, I mean that I have never used my race to defend my ability or inability to do or not do something.
I certainly recognize that racism exists, and has to be fought. People have different ways of fighting it. Mine is to be the best that I am. …
Even during the whole Black Power movement when everybody was saying “Black is beautiful, black is beautiful,” trying to convince themselves, it had never occurred to me that it wasn’t beautiful. It never occurred to me that this was something I now had to tell myself, because I always thought I was.
It never occurred to me that I was less than any other white person because in every class, in every competition, I was always the No. 1 kid.