Oprah’s Golden Globes speech inspires, motivates

On Jan. 7, 2018, Oprah Winfrey became the first African American woman to win the Cecil B. DeMille award at the Golden Globes.

Winfrey commenced her speech by talking about Sidney Poitier, a Bahamian American actor, film director, author, and the first black man to win best actor at the Academy Awards. Poitier also won the Cecil B. DeMille award. Winfrey uses this to shift focus to her childhood, and how her mother was “bone tired from cleaning other people’s houses.”
“They’re the women whose names we’ll never know. They are domestic workers and farm workers. They are working in factories and they work in restaurants and they’re in academia, engineering, medicine, and science. They’re part of the world of tech and politics and business. They’re our athletes in the Olympics and they’re our soldiers in the military,” Winfrey stated.

Oprah addressed all the women in this country that are working not for themselves, but for their family: for the food to be put on the table and for the dreams that are meant to be pursued.
ISP junior Nathaly Portillo said that Winfrey “was one of the first women in a position of empowerment to make me feel a connection to the words she says and the values she believes.”
Winfrey spieled about Recy Taylor, an African American woman who lived in a broken society and was oppressed for the color of her skin, which is a trend that Winfrey wants to break. Recy Taylor was a focal point in Winfrey’s speech for being an African American woman who was raped by six white men who were never prosecuted for their actions.

Winfrey capped off her speech with discussing the “Time’s Up’ campaign, a campaign that addresses the inequality and injustice in the workplace that keeps underrepresented groups from thriving.
Andrea Johnson, a Global senior, says “the Time’s Up campaign is so important because the people fueling it are so powerful and are using their voices to stand up for something that was so often ignored and dismissed.”
Oprah and many others joined in unison and wore black to symbolize the campaign. Oprah exclaimed that young girls should know that the day where no one has to suffer the injustice of the society will come, and it’s because of those who made that day happen.