The Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy: Black Feminism, Surrogate Motherhood, or Colonialist Fantasy?

I admit to being conflicted about Oprah Winfrey's new project: the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy. I watched her program "Building a Dream" when it aired on ABC last week - both last Monday night (Feb. 26) and Saturday evening (Mar. 3) to see if I could determine my feelings about this truly inspiring story of Oprah Winfrey keeping her promise to Nelson Mandela to build a school in South Africa for disadvantaged young girls with leadership potential. I wept at the girls' stories, I felt their glee and joyous expectations when they left their impoverished one-room shacks and moved into their luxurious dorm rooms at Oprah's $40 million academy. Surely, this could only be a positive story however you spin it, right?

So, why was I bothered, not only at what was shown, but also what Oprah revealed later when she appeared on Ellen's talk show to tell us behind-the-scenes stories, like what had transpired after the lavish Christmas party that she hosted for the first 154 pupils at her exclusive new girls academy? Apparently, the students, who were unused to eating so much food, had eaten until they vomited. Worse, many more stuffed their pockets and their bras with the leftover food so they could bring it back to their families who were still deprived of such luxuries, subsequently spoiling their school uniforms so early in the game.

Sigh. Oprah, Oprah, I love ya, but I have to ask: should we really be encouraging South African youth to indulge in the worst forms of American material culture: including binge eating and self-absorption, for why were these young girls not even given containers for leftovers? Did you really think that young girls, who are raised in an African culture that often puts communities first over self, would just eat to their heart's content without also thinking about how they could provide their families with the same food they're eating? After all, these are girls with "leadership potential," and from what your program showed, they were also responsible daughters and granddaughters who have already assumed the role of caregiver and provider. Of course they were going to stuff their bras and pockets with food to take back home: they were not simply going to eat just to fill their stomachs and their stomachs alone! They couldn't think of themselves, they had to think of their family as well. But, that's just one minor incident that I could tear apart ad nausea (no pun intended).

But, there's something else going on here. What does it mean for Oprah to present herself as a benevolent matriarch, even "fairy godmother," for the program was designed so that we would appreciate Oprah's gifts of luxuries bestowed on her new "daughters" (more on this later). We were expected, as American viewers, to look at these young girls' lives, who were eking out a living in impoverished townships, with no electricity or running water, and violent gangs of scary black men who might rape and infect these innocent young girls with HIV. I had a chuckle looking at Oprah so far removed from her own Mississippi roots when she couldn't even lift up a bucket of water to balance on her head, like the young girl she was with (here's a clue, Oprah: it's called a bandanna, you wrap it around like a turban, place it on your head, and if positioned correctly, the bucket should balance itself on this apparatus - I'm sure your rural, impoverished grandmother knew something about this, if you had listened to her various instructions instead of daydreaming that you would never do what she was doing; you might have spared yourself the embarrassment of not being able to do what most women of African descent in this world know how to do - but I digress). Even as I watched that scene, I thought: hmmm, no running water, I wonder what Oprah could do in terms of philanthropy or international policy to address this kind of poverty, for wouldn't it be useful to raise money to provide such developments in Africa, so that young girls weren't forced to leave their homes for the better life that their newfound "mother" in Oprah can offer them?

From the beginning of this program, we were presented with the camera panning the landscape. I could not help but think of the early European explorers who surveyed the African land before claiming it. Oprah just claimed a piece of it and built a school decorated to all of her Oprahlicious tastes. Great, I don't begrudge her fulfilling her own dreams like this, and I would love to send my daughter to such a comfortable, padded school replete with beauty salon and yoga loft. I wished she had spent more time describing the curriculum, the library (I'm an educator, so I'm very curious about how these girls are being educated), and state-of-the-art computer labs and classrooms (if there were any - I hope so).

Why did the program focus on all the nice clothes, shower stalls, and lovely dorm rooms and living room areas and art decor when I want to know how and what the girls will be learning?Who are their teachers? What credentials do they have? I'm sure they're all qualified, but why would the program not focus on the "education" these young girls so value but instead focused on the material comforts that they'll be experience in direct contrast to their impoverished upbringing?). How ironic, considering that Oprah answered her critics - who wanted to know why she didn't build a similar school, say in the south side of Chicago, her present city of residence - by saying that American kids only want material possessions, whereas South Africans prefer to get an education. Gee, I wonder where our kids picked up that attitude, Oprah, especially when you love to give away cars and treat some of your audiences to makeovers and the like.

I cannot help but think that, with this program, Oprah seems to be filling a far too familiar role of benevolent colonialist, colonizing Africa, reclaiming the "motherland" (as many affluent African Americans are wont to do), and at the same time perhaps fulfilling a wish to have children - incidentally quite a number of the students featured in the program are without mothers, just as Oprah herself is without "daughters," until now.

I commend Oprah for paying attention to the plight of young girls and encouraging Americans (especially African Americans) to consider the youth of the continent, but is this really an expression of black feminism or an attempt to colonize Africa (and, no, just because we have African blood, African Americans are not exempt from recreating similar power dynamics) for the sole purpose of living out our own dreams of motherhood and philanthropy? Wouldn't you know that Oprah is building a home right next to her school so that she can monitor her daughters' growth? Not to mention she has committed to funding their 4-year education to any college or university they attend in the world.

So, despite her efforts to create future leaders of South Africa, she's almost ensuring that 1) the girls will leave their country, after all, when they're ready to date and marry, can they really go back to the men of their community and "lift" them up to their level? That ain't gonna happen!, 2) the girls will be completely unfitted for their communities, and 3) the girls will subscribe to an elitist identity, as one girl already expressed this, when settling into her dorm room: "I was meant to live this life!"

They're very charming, these young girls, but I only hope, 15-20 years down the line, that they don't do what most spoiled daughters do when their mothers fail to equip them for the big bad world from which they have been sheltered (as this academy will become a shelter for them as well): blame their mothers for everything when their lives don't unfold according to plan. Girls can't arise as "leaders" when their very community fails to see them as such. They and everyone else will need re-education if they were to ever find seats in parliament or on the boards of multinational corporations. In the meantime, I hope the mass puking that occurred on their inauguration Christmas dinner is not an ominous foreshadowing of things to come.