The Oprah-endorsed, former mommy blogger is an unlikely resistance warrior of the Trump era. Can she inspire others like her?
Last April, with the 2016 election results still stinging, I found myself in an auditorium in Los Angeles for Oprah’s SuperSoul Sessions. The daylong event was like a self-helpier, more woman-centric TED conference, where more than 1,500 people, most of them white women like me, had gathered to hear eight Oprah-curated speakers.
I snapped to attention. There was a smattering of nervous laughter. The woman sitting next to me sucked in a breath through her teeth. Finally, someone on stage was acknowledging the white elephant in the room: Most of us were members of a demographic that had voted for Trump. But Doyle was not addressing the much-lamented 53 percent. Here, among Oprah fans in decidedly left-leaning Southern California, she was calling the 47 percent to task.
In 2015, when Doyle was already a best-selling author with a huge following, she sat down with her three children to help them process the news of the Charleston church shooting. They were looking at pictures of civil-rights protests of the 1960s when her youngest asked her, “Mom, if we had been alive back then, would we have been marching?” Her older daughter answered before Doyle could: “No.” They weren’t marching now, she pointed out. Doyle realized her daughter was right.
Doyle makes this type of education seem achievable on a broader scale. But the brief history of the Women’s March shows how difficult it can be to meaningfully engage the 47 percent without pushing other women to the margins. In its earliest days, before several veteran organizers who are women of color stepped in, the event was called the Million-Woman March, an unacknowledged ripoff of both a 1997 march by black women and a 1995 march by black men.
Doyle has also embraced this approach. She believes that she can turn a low-key anti-Trump Christian woman into an intersectional resistance warrior with the power of charismatic storytelling. Last year at Together Live, a ten-date tour that was sort of her own version of SuperSoul Sessions, half of the speakers were women of color.
South Africa Latest News, South Africa Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Most White Women Are Very Happy With White SupremacyWe talked to Chloë Sevigny about being a scream queen in DeadDontDie, her love of actresses, and always picking the right movie to star in
Read more »
Most White Women Are Very Happy With White SupremacyDirector JimJarmusch on how his bonkers zombie movie DeadDontDie starring Chloë Sevigny and Tilda Swinton came to be: 'Tilda kept teasing me, calling me, saying, 'When do we do the zombies? When are we doing the zombies?''
Read more »
YouTube Star Dan Howell Comes Out as Gay: ‘It Gets So Much Better’It’s Pride Month, and popular YouTube vlogger Dan Howell had a message for fans that he’d been working on for a year: “Basically, I’m Gay,” he shared in a video Thursd…
Read more »
'Spoiled Husband' Shirt Meant to Scare Off Other Women Is Getting Wives HeatedPeople are having some major opinions about a graphic tee made for 'spoiled husbands' has started to go viral.
Read more »
White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders Is Leaving The White HouseThe president said he hopes she now decides to run for governor of Arkansas.
Read more »
Women’s Soccer Criticized For 13-0 Win: Why Can’t Women Dominate?With leadership comes opposition. How to lead despite critics.
Read more »