Oprah Gets Apology From Swiss Tourism Office After Racist Incident
Oprah Winfrey addressed the issue of racism many times on her daytime talk show and most recently with the Trayvon Martin verdict. But as an African-American, she’s unfortunately no stranger to experiencing it in her own life.
Swiss tourism officials have officially apologized to the OWN mogul after Winfrey gave an interview to Entertainment Tonight in which she revealed she encountered racism while shopping in Zurich when a store clerk refused to show her a handbag, claiming it was “too expensive” for her.
The flap reminds us of that classic scene with Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. Only unlike the hooker with a heart of gold in that movie, as one of the world’s richest entertainers—earning an estimated $77 million from June 2012 to June 2013 alone, according to Forbes—Oprah can afford pretty much whatever she wants.
The magazine also named her its most powerful celebrity of 2013, by the way, and Winfrey wielded that power in order to shed light on the offense while making the publicity rounds for her new movie, Lee Daniels’ The Butler.
Winfrey, who was in Zurich last month to attend Tina Turner’s wedding and decided to go shopping by herself, told ET that instead of raising a ruckus about how she was treated, she left the shop without buying the bag because she didn’t want to give the employee a commission.
“There’s two different ways to handle it,” Oprah said. “I could’ve had the whole blow-up thing…but [racism] still exists, of course it does.”
Daniela Baer, a rep for the Swiss tourism office, was quoted by The Huffington Post expressing regret over the incident saying, “We are very sorry for what happened to her.”
The tourism office also issued a mea culpa to Winfrey on Twitter, stating that “We are fuming - this person acted terribly wrong. We are sorry this happened to @oprah.”
Officials also retweeted a comment which read, “One very stupid saleswomen is not representative for a whole country,” adding “absolutely true” in reply.
The shop, however, called the whole thing “a “200 percent misunderstanding.”
(Photo by Ida Mae Astute/ABC via Getty Images)
