WATCH: Tiffany Cross Delivers BLISTERING Commentary on Sharon Osbourne and Her ‘Complicity to White Supremacy’
MSNBC host Tiffany Cross delivered a blistering rebuke to Sharon Osbourne over her on-air meltdown and its subsequent fallout.
Last week, Osbourne lashed out at her co-hosts on the CBS chat show The Talk as she tried to defend her defense of Piers Morgan, eventually demanding that co-host Sheryl Underwood not cry, and screaming at her to “Educate me!” on the accusations of racism that Morgan faces from the public.
On Saturday morning’s edition of The Cross Connection, Ms. Cross devoted a few minutes to a different sort of “education” than Osbourne asked for, unloading with a lacerating three minutes:
As we commemorate Women’s History Month I thought it might be a great time to talk about sisterhood.
Not long ago I was speaking at a conference about the need for more Black women to be decision-makers. A white woman offered a retort, saying that we cannot bring people along before they are ready. And went on to suggest that we women, all women, no matter what color, unite against these men who are trying to quote control our bodies. But diversity, that takes time, she said.
“Girl, bye,” that’s what I said. I just don’t always have the energy to break out my PhD in white supremacy and educate the woefully ignorant.
And that’s essentially what Karen Sharon Osbourne demanded on a recent episode of The Talk when she was defending, of all people, Piers Morgan and his racist remarks about Meghan Markle.
It was the “don’t cry” part for me.
I read your apology Sharon, but your words are indicative of a bigger problem.
The notion that in the moment, we have to maintain our composure and sympathize and empathize with your anger, masked by white tears, while people like you summarily dismiss our pain. It’s a recurring fault line in the intersection of race and gender, and begs the question, “Ain’t I a woman?”
Even when Sojourner Truth posed this question more than a century ago at the 1851 Women’s Rights Convention, she was not met with welcoming arms from her white counterparts among the suffragettes. Far from it in fact.
They only wanted her to advocate for their freedom as women to vote currently, not for the general liberty of all black people. In fact, suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the daughter of end slavery, was a vocal adversary to the 15th amendment to the Constitution, which bars the states from denying Black men the right to vote. For all intents and purposes, 1920 is when white women got the right to vote. Not us.
So isn’t it funny how history is repetitive? Here we sit today debating voting rights for people of color and enduring violent attacks rooted in racism and navigating the precarious space of one white woman’s complicity to white supremacy. If only we had tried to warn you about this a million times before.
And this is clearly not an isolated incident, since CBS has put The Talk on hiatus amid other accusations of racism against the talk show host, which she of course has denied.
So a message to the biggity Brit Sharon Osbourne. After this read, maybe you should go read, because there are numerous books which greatly detail how some of your ancestors colonized, raped, and pillaged many parts of the globe. And like you told Sheryl, don’t cry. We toast those tears and continue to do the work that benefits all people in this country, even those who don’t always deserve it.
So, cheerio, chap, and you’re welcome.
Watch the clip above via MSNBC.