Oprah Winfrey is arguably the most powerful black woman in the world when it comes to her influence over people. She has in the past been labelled the most influential person in the world, period!

She speaks, people listen! Now, of course, her opinion on the contentious growing topic of reparations for the descendants of slaves in America is going to want to be heard.

Oprah clearly has a lot to say about slavery and has talked on the subject many times, acted in movies, and generally not shied away from the hard topic.

But in 1989, some of her comments on slavery and the relation to reparations may be a little suprising.

On an episode of her show titled “Three Generations of Underclass” Oprah talked about African Americans right to being owed anything and welfare amongst other topics. She said

“I think a lot of people still use the slavery experience as an excuse,” Winfrey said. “Some people are still walking around thinking that this system–now Mr. Bush owes them something because were were in slavery, is that fair?”

And talking to guests about Welfare:

“So, you know, we have all heard stories of how being on welfare takes a hold of some families, about two and three generations of mothers and daughters and sons that get stuck in a cycle of poverty that provides little inspiration to the next generation to to better. People who work and pay taxes have a lot of big gripes about those who spend decades and generations on welfare… Today we asked families–mothers who have raised their children on welfare and their daughters who are also raising their children on welfare–why the cycle gets repeated.”

As this is coming to light it would be interesting to see her weigh in on the subject today!

What do you think?

Read more on Breaking Brown: http://breakingbrown.com/2016/02/oprah-winfrey-1989-think-lot-people-still-use-slavery-experience-excuse/