Oprah Claims American ‘Caste System’ Provided ‘Template for Nazi Germany’

Due to the tragic deaths of Americans like George Floyd and Breonna Taylor this year, our nation is in a state of radical racial revolution.

Floyd and Taylor, (and countless others), were people of color killed by police under extremely worrisome circumstances.  Taylor was unarmed when she was shot several times by police executing a late-night warrant, using a battering ram to enter her apartment.  Floyd was asphyxiated by Minneapolis police officers for nearly 9 minutes in a moment captured forever in horrifying detail by onlookers.

This is a very serious moment of reflection for our country, and one that would do well to avoid hyperbole and to exclude sensationalism along the way.

Unfortunately, it is difficult to explain this sort of hubris to celebrities, who often make a living by dropping salacious soundbites.

Billionaire multimedia mogul Oprah Winfrey described America’s “caste system” as “the template for Nazi Germany” in an interview with Isabel Wilkerson, author of Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, for the latest episode of her Apple TV series, Oprah’s Book Club.

Wilkerson, an alumnus of the New York Times, characterized Caste as an analysis of what she describes as a race-based American “caste system.”

“How did you decide to focus the book on three cast systems, India, Nazi Germany, and the United States? I think a lot of people get riled up and offended that you’re comparing the caste system here to Nazi Germany, yet we discover that we were the template for Nazi Germany,” Winfrey said.

Adolf Hitler drew inspiration from American eugenicists in formulating the Nuremberg laws, noted Wilkerson and Winfrey. Neither acknowledged Margaret Sanger’s prominence in America’s eugenicist movement.

America’s racial “caste system,” Winfrey alleged, includes “systemic racism” and “microaggressions.”

Winfrey had been considered a possible 2020 presidential candidate early in the race, but declined run for office.