Kelly Osbourne stepped in deep sh-t on Tuesday. It was half-funny, half-sad, with a strong vein of “GIRL, STAHP.” Kelly was guest-hosting America’s new Algonquin Round Table, The View, and she and the other ladies were trying to take on Donald Trump’s history of saying derogatory crap about Mexicans (like how they’re all rapists and murderers). Whoopi Goldberg and Rosie Perez were leading the discussion, basically saying that most Latino voters do not care for Trump at all. Raven-Symone chimed in and even she didn’t step in it. Then Kelly decided to say something. And it went off the rails SO FAST.
Kelly Osbourne asked, “In what way does he think that people are going to vote for him after he’s just called them rapists and murderers?”
After Michelle Collins jumped in, Osbourne addressed Raven-Symoné and said, “I have a feeling that what is going on is that he is drumming up all of this following and he’s going to pull out right before the campaign…to get all of his voters to vote for the other Republican.”
“I said that a long time ago,” Raven-Symoné said.
Perez clarified the point Collins was trying to make, saying, “There are a lot of Latinos here in this country that do agree that the immigration problem is a problem and it does need to be addressed and it does need to be fixed. But making those comments—those racist comments—does not help”
“If you kick every Latino out of this country, then who is going to be cleaning your toilet, Donald Trump?” Osbourne said. “In the sense that…you know what I mean? But I’m saying that in L.A., they always…”
The other co-hosts were taken aback, and Perez said, “Latinos are not only the only people doing that.” Osbourne cut her off and said, “No, I didn’t mean it like that! Come on! I would never mean it like that! I’m not part of this argument.”
See what I mean? It’s both horrible and funny. It’s like Kelly screamed, “How dare Donald Trump say that Mexicans are rapists? Everyone knows Mexicans just maids and gardeners!” Oh, girl. Later in the show, Rosie Perez actually apologized TO Kelly, saying: “I want to apologize to this young woman once again for being overly sensitive….Kelly Osbourne is on our side and I was sensitive. My disdain should go to only Donald Trump, so I’m sorry, darling.” Nope. I mean, I appreciate that Rosie was trying to keep the peace, but Kelly deserves the backlash. That’s how she’ll learn. In the heat of the moment, she said what she really thinks and believes: that Mexicans immigrants are not violent assailants, but they are merely low-income workers on the edge of society. Which is more racist?
But Kelly still has some lessons to learn. After the backlash began in earnest, Kelly posted this to her Facebook & Instagram:
I want to start by saying I ALWAYS take responsibility for my actions. In this particular case I will take responsibility for my poor choice of words but I will not apologize for being a racist as I am NOT. I whole-hearted f–ked up today. I don’t want to bullsh-t anyone with lame excuses. Although, I was stopped mid-sentence by Rosie and couldn’t finish my point I will not let Rosie take responsibility for my words. I should have known better as I was on The View and it was live. I’ve learned a very valuable lesson. It is my hope that this situation will open up a conversation about immigration and the Latin community as a whole. By the way I clean my own f–king toilets.
You know how you can tell that someone is racist? When they start their argument with “I will not apologize for being a racist as I am NOT.” Sorry, girl. We’re not going to take your word for it. Not after the toilet comment. And why in the world is she throwing Rosie Perez under the bus? Is it because Latinas should never interrupt a white woman pontificating about how she’s totally not racist, especially after said white woman just said something incredibly offensive?
Photos courtesy of WENN.
Vomit.
she’s so clueless and the worst part is she doesn’t realize it, “but I, like, didn’t mean it like thaaat, you guyzz”
“I didn’t mean it like that and also it’s not my fault that you misunderstood what I was saying because Rosie stopped me in the middle of my sentence. Basically, none of this is my fault, I’m not racist, I clean my own toilets, and I’m NOT RACIST. #notracist #really #iwillkeepexplainingmyself #untilyourealizeivebeenright #thisentiretime”
IT seemed liked she paused for a second waiting for people to laugh. Like she just delivered the punch line
Wow.
This disgusting troll will say anything to keep herself in the news… Even if it exposes her for the colossal asshat she is…
I specifically came to Celebitchy to see if you were giving Kelly a pass on her incredibly offensive comments. Thank you to Kaiser and the readers for holding her accountable.
Me too! and am glad no one is giving her a pass. It was racist, it was racist it was racist. and Rosie Perez never should have given her a pass.
Sorry Kelly- you can’t prove your not racist, by screaming it. And if was intended to be a joke- well. You are no Joan Rivers.
So talking about dreadlocks is racist but this is not racism???
Yeah, really. Amazing. Dreadlocks = pot is shocking racism (really, it was just that Zendaya was her buddy)! But Mexican = toilet cleaner is fine (because privilege)! By her own standards of flouncy holier-than-thou outrage, she needs to show herself out.
Amen to both of the above comments.
True. I thought about Guiliana when I read this story. Somewhere, Guiliana is laughing her head off. Although I dislike both of them.
Privilege: racism 2.0.
I wish people would realize that you don’t just decide not to be racist and congratulations, you’re off the hook. You’ve got to work on digging that crap out of your system. And the way to do that it to take an honest look at your assumptions and fess up when you find a little racist morsal tucked away and rotting in there. Then dig it out and actively work to change the way you think by exposing yourself to real people and taking on board what they actually say.
Exactly.
Her “joke” only makes sense if you see a Latino or Latina and think “janitor” or “maid”. She needs to stop and unpack the reason it was offensive, because she’s ignoring that completely.
Racism isn’t just individual hatred of minorities, the definition she seems to be resisting… it’s an institutional system of oppression, and if you’re a privileged rich white girl, it absolutely colors your world view. She obviously sees Hispanic immigrants as “the help” and her Hispanic friends/co-workers as exceptions… if that. The need to include Rosie’s “interruption” in her statement — rather than coming right out and saying that obviously her mind took a dark turn toward racist stereotypes — proves that she’s not magically immune to a lifetime of conditioning.
Yep. A writer on another site summed it up well:
“But the egregiously blinkered conception of Latinos as, above all else, the people we hire to clean our shit, implies two things. First, it indicates that our burgeoning immigrant population, documented or not, bears an indelible mark of social inferiority. We cannot imagine them as homeowners, only as the those who maintain and tidy them. As a white woman born into considerable wealth, Osbourne very well may have grown up relying on Latino labor in the ways she suggests Trump does.
Osbourne’s comment also fortifies the stratified perception of labor prevailing in white America. When we refer to certain occupations not simply as jobs, but as warnings—do you really want to scrub your own poopy toilet?—we assign those who hold those jobs to a lower rung on the social totem pole.
It’s clear that Osbourne wanted to emphasize the importance of the Latino immigrant population, but her comment stresses a wrong-headed conception of their value. Immigrants are not valuable because they perform the tasks we find distasteful; they’re valuable because they are people (really, this is kindergarten material). And they are people who have every right to live here. “
Most undocumented Latinos are janitors, maids and farm worker though. I think people are reading more into her comment than was there. I’ve seen so many comments from Latino activists saying much the same thing. If you kick out all the illegals who will do this or that. But when Kelly Osbourne makes the same kind of point there’s an uproar. She never said Latinos are only capable of doing this kind of work but that’s how people are interpreting it when it’s so obvious what she meant. It’s like people are looking to be offended when no offense was meant. I don’t even like Kelly but I’m bewildered by the backlash when she was trying to defend Latino workers. I was raised by parents who did low paying menial jobs. I find it sad we’re now looking down on people like that as if there’s something shameful about these jobs.
WR, well said! ITA
Such a good point. I think we all have assumptions and little kernels that surprise even us – maybe not racist, but stereotyping or just assuming you know the motives of everyone else or not considering all of the other person’s experiences, etc. that need to be examined when they come out. If she really thinks about this, I think it will be a good lesson for Kelly. But she seems to be happy saying she was interrupted and that’s not what she meant. Maybe she will not be quite so holier than thou after this.
yeah, good point. I mean, sometimes i catch myself having some rasist reactions, sort of, “all those chinese everywhere”, of course I wouldnt say it outloud, and i dont rationally think that people are better or worse because of the race. It’s just this almost unconscious reaction sometimes arises and i’m surprised to find out how full of shit I am. So, even if u honestly think u r not rasist, u still can have rasist thoughts slip through your mind unchecked. And if u r unfortunate enough to voice these thoughts, u should admit them for what they r, and not think that u can cancel them out by claiming that “generally, im not a rasist”
You have no control over the thoughts that slip into your mind. The majority of people have intrusive thoughts. As long as you don’t act on ithem and see them for what they are it’s fine.
Implicit bias guys, implicit bias: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html
This x 1000000
I think for the most part most people are not overtly racist. It’s just no longer tolerated in civilized society.
But we have so many ingrained assumptions, habits, and just basic lack of thought…. 100% disclosure – I have made assumptions in the past where I had to stop and think, OK why did I think that? How can I change my though process so I don’t make that mistake again?
Example: I was meeting 2 people for work, a teacher and an engineer, and I assumed the Korean gentleman was the engineer and the Latina lady was the teacher. This was instinctual. Of course it was the other way around, and I had to do some real soul searching on why I was still making these assumptions. I’m a woman in IT for heaven’s sake, yet some of this stuff is so ingrained and incidious.
If Kelly was smart and sincere about not being racist, she would make this a teachable moment, for herself and others.
How many people saw this and did not register it as racist until someone else pointed it out? How many people laughed?
If we are serious about eliminating racism (and sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ets) from our society, these are the kinds of questions we need to start asking, not only of others, but of ourselves.
It’s not a one step process. We may not want to be racist or be willingly racist, but most of us still have some deeply embedded left over stuff that we need to work on, whether it’s about roles of gender and race, or cultural stereotypes, or any number of things. And that will take ongoing effort to eliminate. Effort and awareness, not empty non-apologies.
I caught myself in something similar to your example yesterday. Met a normal-looking white guy and his stunningly beautiful Asian wife … assumed he was the one who managed the successful electronics company, and that she was a trophy wife. Whoops – turns out she’s the manager, he’s just the accountant.
I think of myself as a feminist. I know I made a sexist assumption. And yet I’m still tempted to say “aw, but she was so gorgeous, and wearing such high heels … it was an obvious mistake”. I *should* know better than that. Obviously I have some more work to do on the “stilettos equals trophy wife” stereotype that’s lurking somewhere in the depths of my subconscious.
I think recognizing that we’re human and that we have random thoughts and then QUESTION those random thoughts is what separates us from from the Kellys and Trumps of the world. They are just so oblivious as to why they think this way and why stereotypes aren’t FACTS. I have a 7yr old & a 4 1/2yr old, and when my sister used the word “stereotype” in conversation a few days ago my kids asked what it meant. It really got us as adults to really think about stereotypes, where some of them originated, why they still exist, etc. Even at their young ages my kids understood that stereotypes aren’t fair assumptions and can be hurtful. It just goes to show that Trump-esque generalizations are learned and not instinctual.
I can’t think of any personal examples off-hand but I know I’ve had many and probably another level of many beyond that which I haven’t even noticed. We all do, don’t we? Whether it be race, gender, sexuality, class, we all have unworthy thoughts and assumptions at times.
I guess self-awareness is key. We’re all best off examining ourselves before we start on everyone else.
(My personal bugbear is well enough meaning people – who think they are being charitable and kindly, probably – sounding off about “the poor”. As if “the poor” are somehow a helpless breed apart, needing philanthropy, rather than human beings with perfectly vivid, meaningful lives and thoughts and opinions, and who, in conditions of equal opportunity and economic justice, are perfectly capable of running their own lives, thanks.)
You make an excellent point and yes there are no “Yay! Decided I’m not racist today!” balloons at Hallmark.
Great comment! I have my students read the essay “Unpacking the backpack of white privilege” every year. It startles all and angers some of them. Excellent essay.
It’s difficult, because that’s often an argument used in immigration debates – immigrants often do the jobs nobody else wants, as opposed to the old “they’re coming over here and taking our jobs” thing. But what she said is just terribly worded, expressed, just plain terrible really because she’s generalising so much.
It’s not difficult. What she said is demeaning & racist. Period. This is white privelage & institutional racism at work.
And no Kelly you ARE part of the conversation & you didn’t own squat.
I think I agree with Lennox. You have to be an idiot to make a statement like Kelly did, yet beneath her words is an ugly truth that Americans need to acknowledge: Many immigrants (not just Latino) are willing to do the tough jobs with long hours for low pay that natural-born Americans with the same level of education refuse to do.
Sure, there are also plenty of people who come to America to become doctors, lawyers, CEOs, financial advisors, etc but those aren’t the immigrants that Trump has a problem with.
Well said, Kitten. It’s an ugly truth that if acknowledged, isn’t a racist statement. Not even the teens are willing to do these jobs since parents aren’t making them work, as many of us did decades ago. It’s been like pulling teeth just to find part-time sitters motivated to watch my kids this summer. They don’t have other jobs, they just don’t want to work and don’t need to because their parents fund everything for them.
Agree 100% Kitten! I’m a second generation half Polish American. My mother’s parents were both Polish immigrants, her father did menial work at the steel mill while her mother picked seconds potato chips from a conveyer belt. Talk about blue color shit jobs! I’m old enough to even remember the ‘dumb Polack’ jokes.
I think to some extent, in the U.S. anyway, immigration has caused terrible stereotypes on a generational basis. With the influx of Latinos, could this just be their time or is it strictly based on race? I’m not sure…
I thought trump said “latinos are rapists”, so by his statement his issue is with country of birth. And I cringe over what Kelly said. If a friend of mine said this in my home I’d feel uncomfortable. I’m a whole mix of marginalized labels, and can’t abide ignorant statements on a private or public platform. Her career has timed out. Now.
Lennox, I agree that was the point she was (probably) going for, but she said it in a way that made her look like a sh&thead. She was trying to be provocative – which annoys me about Trump, because he’s doing the same thing. His construction projects would be more expensive to build without taking advantage of cheap illegal labor, and he knows that. What a clown.
That was exactly my thought Lennox: the argument she was trying for is raised by pro-amnesty people ALL the time, she just did a shitty job of wording it.
It’s raised in arguments to support immigration for sure and I think many people have seen A Day Without Mexicans, which exactly drives home the point and hypocrisy that while many oppose immigration and look down at Latinos, they’re doing a lot of jobs others won’t, and that they’re deeply ingrained into our workforce, and that people have no problem exploiting them when.
I took her comment more along the lines that Trump is disparaging the same people he has no problem exploiting. But, you know, we live in an outrage culture, soooooo…..better to get outraged than actually critically analyze the situation apparently.
“I took her comment more along the lines that Trump is disparaging the same people he has no problem exploiting. ”
I believe that SHE believed that’s what she was saying – although she did herself no favors by the way in which she worded it, nor in her written salvo of protestation afterwards.
In related news, it distresses me no end that this is the sort of thing that passes for serious, heated debate & discourse these days. I am certain there is a room in hell with a version of The View – or a Sunday morning pundit show – running 24/7.
I have to agree.
“Although, I was stopped mid-sentence by Rosie and couldn’t finish my point I will not let Rosie take responsibility for my words.”
so…what was the rest of the sentence? Because I fail to see how starting a sentence the way she did was going to be anything other than it was and it negated any point that was going to follow.
She doesn’t actually clarify what she meant.
Honestly, I just have zero tolerance for her. She is awful.
She should be thanking Rosie for stopping her before she stuck her foot deeper in her mouth.
For reasons such as this, and because TV show producers know, she has diarrhea of the mouth. She is bound to say something controversial, or shocking, to create headlines.
BTW, this is the most press “The View” has had since Elisabeth Hasselbeck , Rosie O’ Donnell, and their collective big mouths, left.
Ooops, sorry, this was meant to be a response to lucy2.
She said something so dumb.. I’m curious if she called Giulana Rancic.. Kelly was so high and mighty when Rancic made a stupid statement.. she claimed to have quit Fashion Police over it.
Stepping back I know what she was trying to say.. She was trying to be “funny”. I think life is so interesting; it puts you in a position that you attacked someone else for. People who are not comedians should stop trying to be funny.
Maybe Kelly should take a long vacation and come back when she learns to think before she talks.
Maybe she shouldn’t come back at all. I don’t know why she continues to be famous or invited to shows like this.
Racism can be subtle. It’s everywhere and we have to be aware. Kelly has never lived in the real world. Her attitude is obnoxious and self-righteous. Can’t stand this entitled tw@t.
Exactly.
Immediately reacting with “I’m not a racist!” is the worst possible way to handle this… it proves that she’s unwilling to dissect her attitude and identify the flaws in her belief system. THAT is more racist than being humble and admitting she needs to work on herself.
I’m white, and I’m nowhere near as rich as Kelly, and I never had maids of any ethnicity… but I still understand that I benefit from a racist society, and that I’ve been conditioned to jump to racist conclusions… by Hollywood, by the news, by teachers, by the sheer reality of living in a country that was founded on slavery and still has massive income inequality issues. I’ll never fully realize the scope of it, but if I never tried at all…? If I were still stuck in the mentality of a young girl who truly believes she thinks everyone is equal, period? That would be far worse, because I’ve grown and learned so much by accepting these institutional influences. Ignorance accomplishes absolutely nothing.
+1. Just the fact that she thought she could make a joke about it shows how clueless she is. It’s not funny to laugh about exploited people.
Her failed joke was aimed at The Donald, not at the people he pays poorly to do such jobs. She specifically spoke about whoever cleans his personal toilet. Others here have made similar points, that he exploits those he uses as a target now. I can see why they jumped on her since it sounded wrong, but it doesn’t mean she herself assumes anybody in such ethnic groups must have such jobs.
But “illegal” immigrants do indeed have far fewer options because of the need to fly under the radar. Cleaning toilets is actually a more important job than anything The Donald has been doing, if you think about it. Imagine the epidemics if nobody did it. (Or notice the havoc wrought by restaurant employees who don’t wash their hands properly.) Just because a job is low pay doesn’t mean it’s not important.
I don’t find that it’s so much blatant racism as it is a spoiled brat who’s grown up wealthy and entitled, and doesn’t see the people who work for her as altogether human. It’s a shame that Ozzy and Sharon, who grew up working class poor in post WWII England haven’t instilled in their children one iota of respect for folks who work hard every day and struggle to make ends meet. I think Kelly would have the same view of any maid or housekeeper, regardless of her ethnicity. Hate to give credit to Bill Cosby, bit I remember a line from the show where Theo finally figured out his family had some bucks. He says to his dad, “Hey, we’re rich!”, and Cosby answers, “no, your mother and I are rich – you have nothing.” Celebs should rise their kids with that kind of mindset. Even Diana cleaned her fair share of toilets before marrying Charles!
Don’t give kudos to that POS…give it to whom it belongs: the WRITERS of the show!
I don’t think that Sharon Osbourne was “working class poor”. Her father, Don Arden, was an entrepreneur and managed Black Sabbath among other acts.
But… but… some of her best friends are toilets!
She is a racist, as much as Trump is a racist for having a view of an entire group of people as rapists, she sees them as toilet cleaners. It is the same prejudiced mentality of otherness and lesser than.
When you give an ignorant, uneducated, stupid person a microphone they show you how foolish they are. She’s a fool who’s been raised insulated by rich privilege, too lazy and stupid to get an education and only on television because of her parents.
Exactly that. Yes, she was trying to expose Trump as a racist. Girl, we ALL know that including his supporters who share his racist views. You were not exactly coming up with a fresh, unique perspective. But the way she said it exposed her own prejudices and it does not surprise me one bit that a person who lacks any intelligence, education or accomplishments of her own other than being born into a life of privilege and being handed a career just for being someone’s daughter would,know any different.
Oh and Kelly – I will never believe that a rich white, spoiled little girl who fancies herself a celebrity because her mom gave her a career, actually cleans her own toilets or anything else for that matter.
Please tell me why this non-entity has a microphone in hand and a platform on tv? Not that I watch that dumb show, or anything similar… But why?
+1
She really is a dumb and privileged person-not to mention, vindictive and vengeful. I’ve always disliked her.
Oh God I am just grateful Raven and Whoopie didn’t seem to be there that day. There is no purpose to The View except to give a platform to very opinionated morons.
Right? What a think-tank.
Pathetic. And depressing.
Sometimes, I watch youtube clips of vintage Dick Cavett shows, Chris Hitchens interviews, Tom Snyder – and even William F. Buckley’s old Firing Line – when I want to remember that accessible, public discourse in this country was once entertaining and witty and serious – without pandering to the lowest common denominator, or to the crowds throwing cartoon chicken legs and tomatoes at the stage.
“The View” has been awful for a long time. They really needed to put this show out of its misery a while ago. The only hosts I ever liked were Meredith Vieira, Lisa Ling, and Joy Behar.
This is the same woman who called Rancic a racist.
But I’m not going to declare Kelly a racist because she made a distasteful joke. I wonder if this would even be an issue if a Black person, Whoopi or Raven had said it. In Kelly’s defence every person who makes a distasteful joke is not a racist.
“Not a racist” doesn’t mean what you think it means. She’s part of a racist society, and she has racist beliefs… this made one of those beliefs very clear.
There’s no distinct and convenient line we can draw between “cruel angry racist” and “totally unbiased white girl”… racism is institutional, insidious, and comes in many shapes and sizes. I don’t see how changing Kelly’s hypothetical race helps at all; in fact, there’s a lot of racism between the black and Hispanic communities, but it stems from a larger tradition of racism that directly benefits white people more than any other.
This “distasteful joke” was just an example of the lines that get drawn between the value and interests and careers of those who are white, and those who aren’t. She has a head full of stereotypes, and even if she doesn’t personally perpetuate or advertise those stereotypes, one of them came out on TV. Period.
Raven and Whoopi are not Latino or HIspanic. If they had said it, it would absolutely still be racist. Racism isn’t just white people vs everyone else, POC are racist toward other, different, POC all the time. It’s even possible for Perez to have said it, and have it come out in a nasty, self hating racist way. But Raven and/or Whoopi didn’t say it, Kelly did. I know what she was probably trying to say, but it looks icky when the most privileged white girl in the room, who, let’s face it, doesn’t even go here, tries to use the “but who will clean our houses” argument.
It implies, as well, that all Latinos are immigrants and if we kicked them out or stopped them from coming in, there’d be none left. And uh… 1) for example, Puerto Rico is part of the US. Rosie Perez is Puerto Rican, for example, so Kelly was basically saying… and 2) in the American Southwest, like NM, Arizona, Texas, and uh, California, those places used to be part of Mexico and there are many people who are descended from people who were already living here when the border changed. They were there first. Not every poor Latino is an immigrant or a first generation American.
Also, that “who will do the jobs white people won’t do?” is a fallacy. White people would do those jobs (there are plenty of white people, and American born PoC who are desperate for work right now), they just ask for a living wage, which employers don’t want to do so they use undocumented immigrants and desperately poor new immigrants instead. “They’re taking our jobs”, they’re not, your boss took your job away because you’re more likely to demand your human rights.
You guys are going off on an unnecessary tatrum while missing my point. Some Blacks in show business have made many stereotypical jokes or racist jokes about White people as well as Latinas but they rarely if ever receive any backlash from it. Furthermore they are not called racist when they make those jokes.
You’re preaching to the choir when you said Blacks can be racist as well. I have made that argument several times on C/B.
This is not just in reference to Kelly. I don’t care for her one way or the other. But I still stand by my deeper meaning of you can’t label every White person a racist that makes a stereotypical or distasteful joke about minorities .
“in fact, there’s a lot of racism between the black and Hispanic communities, but it stems from a larger tradition of racism that directly benefits white people more than any other.”
How does racism between the Black and Hispanic communities benefit white people? Or have I misread what you meant?
She really stepped in it this time!
I didn’t get the “funny” part, just the horrible one. Does this woman have any fans? She’s ridiculous.
I still can’t believe they ended the show with ROSIE apologizing to Kelly. If anyone needed to apologize at that time it was Kelly for her halfwitted statement, not Rosie for being outraged at what she said. Ridiculous
Exactly. Even if she didn’t really mean it, her words were incredibly hurtful and ignorant and she should apologize. Americans think like that about Mexicans and people in the western Europe say the same exact words about Poles. As a Polish immigrant, I know how much it hurts – I never cleaned anyone’s toilets, apartments or anything but I met so many people assuming I did that, and it is awful. It’s not that cleaning jobs are that demeaning or that I’m above it – someone has to do it, many immigrants do. It’s the implications hidden behind those words – that all I am able to do with my life is to clean other people’s shit just because I’m an immigrant. And that those other people = those, who were lucky enough to be born in the countries with better economies, are automatically better than me, more advanced, more worthy, educated et al. When I say I’m Polish, they automatically assume I’m on the bottom of a job chain. They don’t ask about my education, my qualifications, they ask – do you work as a help?
Yeah, but that’s because people in Western Europe often don’t know their own history and the crucial role played by Poland in the 20th C. My dad was a Pole who fought in WWII and was old-school intelligentsia, so I was raised to believe that being Polish meant that you should be smarter and better educated than everyone else 😊
Exactly some people have this very specific stereotypes for each nationality.
When I say I have family in the US, people always assume they are illegal immigrants, therefore working as maids, gardeners (I have nothing against those jobs, as I believe all honest jobs are dignified, but it does make me angry that some people believe that is the case of every Mexican in the US). My aunt is a teacher at University and my other uncle works for a big company, both are living there because while doing their PhD, they were offer jobs and so they stayed in the US.
I just wish Latinos were given more credit, we are all way more than just cleaning-toilet-immigrants.
Do we need to separate here the difference between assuming that a Latino is working as janitor (cleaning toilets) and assuming that an immigrant is working as a janitor cleaning toilets?
An immigrant, whether illegal or not, would presumably start off in the U.S. with less work/job opportunities than someone who is a U.S. Citizen so it wouldn’t be uncommon to have to start in service industry, or restaurant jobs.
So being Latino really doesn’t have anything to do with it. It is the status of being an immigrant that would impact work opportunities (at least in this situation).
Zwella Ingrid – As I wrote, I’m a Polish immigrant in western Europe so I write from my perspective and in my case there’s a big difference. I’m a citizen of the European Union, which means I’m automatically a legal immigrant almost everywhere in Europe and the law is supposed to protect my right to work with the same privileges as the respective country’s citizens. I speak fluent English, I have a master’s degree, so there’s absolutely no reason to assume I would be cleaning other people’s toilets. But people do just because I’m Polish. They do not assume those things about immigrants from the “better” countries though. I agree that the start-up is more difficult for immigrants in general – all immigrants, but we are not all treated in the same way.
I imagine it’s the same with Mexicans, legal or not. People assume they are the help and they would not assume the same things about German, British, Australian or Japanese immigrants. But they would about other Latinos or Slavs. USA is a melting pot of different cultures, the same as western Europe, but yet Trump focuses solely on Mexicans in his rants and Kelly made a connection between them and the toilet cleaners for a reason. Do you think she would say the same hurtful things if the discussion was about the first world immigrants? I’m sure she wouldn’t.
Things were the same here in the U.S. for my people (Irish). They were considered ok as servants and ditch diggers, but as one mayor of Boston said in the 1830s, the Irish would never be the social and intellectual equal of his people. But a lot of Irish did indeed work as servants and ditch diggers, since those occupations were open to them. Even when I was a kid, Catholic churches continued to have Masses early in the morning, originally to accommodate Irish servants who had to get Sunday breakfast together for their Protestant employers. Respectable stores didn’t want us to work for them, since we were supposedly stupid, lazy, and untrustworthy. No blending in was possible, contrary to myth, since as long as the distinction is important- people know how to recognize the distinctions (I was told by one old guy that I “have the map of Ireland on my face,” when I was surprised he knew about my Irish ancestry — my last name isn’t Irish and we lost the brogue a few generations ago). The U.S. parochial (Catholic) school system arose out of the need to bypass the public school system, which was blatantly Protestant and had too many teachers who thought the Catholic immigrant kids from Europe (including Irish) were worthless and congenitally stupid. When the Irish Catholic John F. Kennedy ran for President a few decades ago, I lived in a town where the Protestant pastors were preaching sermons on the danger of a papist in the White House (they were convinced the Pope would be running the country). We got anti-Catholic Watchtower pamphlets tossed on our lawn. By the time Joe Biden (another Catholic) was more recently running for Vice President with Obama, his religion was a non-issue.
The point is that prejudices against immigrants die hard, but they typically do eventually die down. Might take quite a while, though. As immigrants’ native-born children move into other work options, the preconceptions necessarily change. Often there are breakthrough occupations – for Irish Americans, these included police work and boxing. For a while, every cop in cartoons and in many movies and tv shows had an Irish brogue…
Seriously. It seems pretty clear that she was pressured by the producers (or Kelly) to try to defuse the comments. (“Look, a Latina is fine with it!”). The show should apologize to Rosie for putting her in that situation.
Gawd, I hope they’re not grooming the purple Osborne for a permanent perch on TV again. It was total nepotistic affirmative action for a privileged Hollywood moron that she ever had a spot on Fashion Police in the first place (Joan knew her from when Kelly was a kid); I cheered when she left that show. She’s all dumb opinions, exaggerated English accent and name dropping.
Uh, I think she comes by the English accent legitimately. Many people keep their accent, especially if their parents have it, even when they eventually live elsewhere.
This headline made me choke on my tea. I’m not surprised it came from Kelly — she seems to have ill-informed views on a lot of topics. And speaking of ill-informed, I cannot stand The View, it’s ridiculous.
And her apology? She says she doesn’t want to make BS excuses and then she immediately blames Rosie for interrupting her, as though without the interruption what she was saying would have been appropriate. Please.
Yeah… what could have possibly come *after* those words, to justify what she was saying? Not that she had a larger argument at all; she probably says stuff like that constantly, and it’s perfectly acceptable in her circle of rich white friends who grew up only knowing people of color as “the help”. She immediately realized she shouldn’t say that on TV… there’s no “taking it wrong”, because it’s loaded with demeaning and out-of-touch implications.
Come on people! Sometimes the wrong words just fly out of our mouths….years ago, I was talking to my minister and discussing my summer job and saving for college in the fall, I meant to say ” I am hoarding my money”, I said, ” I am saving like a whore”…I was humiliated! It happens to all of us, celebrity or not. Cut her some slack.
This wasn’t a slip of the tongue… this was Kelly associating an entire continent of people with manual labor and cleaning up after rich white people.
That’s entirely different, and I think you know that. She didn’t mis-speak. She accidentally revealed her true thoughts on the subject, which were extremely offensive. Does that mean that’s she’s a hate filled racist? No. But she needs to examine her assumptions. We all do.
Oh please, that’s a whole bushel of apples and a whole crate of oranges.
Now this saying I like.
Spoken like a true white person!
Sorry, but that comment was no better than Kelly’s…
Yeah, no. (Unless you are making a deliberately unfunny falsely equivalent joke?)
Moving on, I’m sure Kelly feels in her heart that she’s on “our side,” but if she will not pause and reevaluate where what she said came from, she’s still a major part of the problem.
I strongly disagree BeckyR. Her true feelings flew out of her mouth, she was making a “joke” and then realized she was on TV and had to backpedal. That tells me that she likely makes stupid ass jokes like this in private. Screw her. I can’t believe people are actually defending her and giving her a pass. If it were a “joke” about any other minority stereotype, this would have been even bigger and no one would be giving her a pass. It is because we are simultaneously experiencing a big immigration problem at the moment that people are letting her slide with a “well there is X problem” and “Latino politicians are saying the same things!” Well, I’ll tell you one thing…as a Latina (born & raised in the US) I’ll be honest enough to tell you that I don’t get offended when Latinos say stuff like that in a constructive debate, but it sounds SUPER SH*TTY when non-Latinos don’t do it very carefully, and especially when they attempt to make a joke of it. BISH…it’s not YOUR joke to make!
I understand your explanation, but I feel like in this case it wasn’t just her not thinking and saying something…….they way she said it, you can tell she thought she was being really “witty” and that everyone would think it was a funny jab at Trump. Totally different, and it backfired (like it should have!)
She’s racist and a liar. No way do I believe she cleans her own toilets.
I found that difficult to swallow as well.
Kelly is an ignorant little girl who has never lived in the real world. Why she is invited onto shows I will never know.
Kelly doesn’t strike me as educated nor a voter. I’m baffled by her appeal. Why don’t they just let Kloe Kardashian’s pinnocchio butt take over and fluff out more gaffs. Get it over with- nothing on television is worth the price of cable.
I teach just outside of Chicago with a heavy Latino population. If I made that comment at work I would lose my job. Period.
I would hope so, I won’t declare Kelly a racist but that statement is totally unacceptable. She’s lucky in the end her mother will always give her a job.
You can bet her mother will be on The Talk today defending her peach and admonishing the people at The View and ABC for painting her in a negative light and swearing that she will never work for an ABC production ever again in her life.
I agree. Her mother will certainly pick up the pieces and stick up for her after this.
Wow, she’s even stupider than I thought
I think the point she was trying to make was that Trump probably hires a bunch of Latinos as part of his hotel/casino staff, all of whom are hard-working and contribute to the economy.
Then say “you probably have a lot of very hard working Latino people on your payroll”, which is a more than fair point to make about the crap that Trump is spewing. Saying who is going to clean your toilets was probably the worst thing example to make and she needs to be checked on it. Her apology isn’t cutting it, as she doesn’t even explain herself.
This. Latino groups and advocates have said for decades the American economy would collapse without Latinos (primarily illegal immigrants because those are the types of under-the-table pay employment that they often have to take) in the service sector–maids, servers, housekeepers etc. But to act like that’s the sum of their contributions to the economy and society and to put it in the context of cleaning toilets was hugely tone deaf and shallow.
it was a terrible choice of words but i also kinda got the feeling that was the point she was trying to make—that mexican immigrants often take jobs that other Americans feel are “beneath them” (which is a whole other issue in and of itself) and Trump probably does exactly that b/c of how he values the Latino population. But if that’s the point she was trying to make, she seriously made a massive error in relaying it.
THIS. I think it’s complete BS that because she very poorly worded what she was trying to say – something everyone is guilty of – everyone is labeling her a racist. It was clear to see where her point was coming from, even with the crap wording. I mean, I guess no one here has EVER verbally flubbed up before……
It was not poorly worded. She was starting to say that in LA cleaning toilets is the work Latinos do. Kelly was putting her foot deeper in her mouth. Her tears & concern were for herself being thought to be racist. She lost a HUGE opportunity to own her mistake and turn it around by saying we as human beings have hurtful, stereotypical beliefs and/or stereotypical phrases that we ALL use. She sidestepped that issue.
@Joy
Yeah…no. It’s actually NOT BS that people would get offended at her verbal diarrhea, because people say what they really mean when they’re not actively monitoring their words. I’m sure the Latinos who work in Trump’s accounting department, Media/Public Relations, Wealth Management team, etc…would not like to know that this idiot, who likely has way less of an education than they do, thinks their only contribution to his empire is scrubbing his toilets. FFS, get out and meet people in this world. As a Latina, that sh*t was offensive to me and I’ve never worked a service job in my life. But what I have done, is experienced this very “latin maid / illegal” stereotype before, crap like “oh, you speak English so well!” Of course I do, jackass! I’m an American! We don’t all sound like Sofia Vergara.
Yeah, no. I love how everyone knows EXACTLY what she was saying as long as it supports being able to bash her.
The way *I* took it, was if she were speaking to him to sarcastically saying “Ohhh, but then who will clean your toilets (you hypocrite)”. I use this ‘sarcastic fake conversation’ alllll the time which is why I saw what she was trying to say. She wasn’t speaking for herself, she was verbalizing the way he hypocritically lives.
But there lies the problem. We don’t know if YOUR assumption of what she was saying is right, or mine is….and since I like to give people the benefit of the doubt because people MAKE MISTAKES, I’m going to err on the side of not rushing to play the blame game, because I think that’s just what good human beings should do.
I agree this is all incredibly sad and funny because I honestly got what she was trying to say. WHAT I’m offended by is that Rosie apologized. That is a clear indication of Kelly’s people (mommy and daddy) pulling the strings and blaming Rosie when all Rosie did was let you know that “hey- this sounds bad”. Classic victim role tactic. Ugh.
I really wish that this was the final nail in the coffin and Kelly would just disappear from public life, sadly I don’t think that’s going to happen. For some reason, morons with big mouths keep getting asked to be on TV.
Like mother, like daughter. Nothing to see here folks, the Osbournes will say anything to keep in public eye. This faux outrage will work out very well for her.
*checks watch* Yup yup Micraggression is Right on time, i’ll tell this one to the family, Im sure they’ll be amused, cause you know, us latinos with our toilets to clean and fruits to pick and criminal endeavor to pursue
As someone who hails from the other side of the world, can someone please tell me WTF is going on with all the Latino-bashing at the moment?? In my mind, you’re all ‘Americans’, and you’ve all been living together for hundreds of years ( even purchasing bits of the US from Mexico), so it’s not like your southern neighbours just showed up one morning unexpected. I know it’s a Trump, bottom-of-the-barrel pandering-to-arseholes kind of thing, but it is SO weird to an outsider.
I should add that my own country has its share of racist scum, so no smugness here.
Oh is just The Xenophobic rhetoric and jingoism that rustles up every election year, is a Beautiful occasion where older white americans part of the republican party ( but any scragglers that they can locate) love to blame society’s ills on their “lessers” code for:
Black people: with their saggy pants( deserve to die) , their “welfare queens” (though the majority of the social service aid does indeed go to poor white people)
Latinos: We steal jobs, you see, all those good ass jobs no one wants to do, we also “take services” ( though in 20 years in this country i’ve met only people that even in nebulous legality pay taxes and try to not even importune the system by going to a hospital even as they are damned near dying or getting abused etc)
But also to be clear we would NEVER consider ourselves the same kind of “Americans” as US Citizens, or Mexicans, or Central or South Americans( or even as homegeneous as that , Tell us Venezuelans that we “must be Columbian” … shit Tell a COLOMBIAN, he is from “COLUMBIA” and they’ll get RABID, That’s sorta like expecting Russians to think themselves Europeans etc just because of Contiguous landmass sharing
Not to step in it with QQ laying down the knowledge but I don’t think you’re ‘ever’ really considered an American if you’re not white. I still see comments from people demanding why blacks don’t go back to Africa if they’re so damn unhappy here.
Literally a race of people stolen by force for hundreds of years who’s ancestors all grew up here are still told they’re an ‘other’ and not a true American.
Oh THAT also as well, you aint’t stepping Side eye, you are addenduming LOL, you can option in if you are white passing and voting with the rank and file though ( see Cubans, white Jewish people )
Sadly, I think there is a large grain of truth in what @Side-Eye and @QQ are saying. My mother’s family – she and her siblings were the first generation born here, and are by no means considered wealthy or privileged – are constantly yammering on about minority immigrants (legal or otherwise) and how they should go “home”. I once tried casually pointing out that if their father had done just that and stayed in the homeland they would not be Americans themselves. They all looked at me like I had just smeared doggy doo on the dinner table.
@Dara
Lol, using logic will only get you kicked out of dinners with your mom and her family. Don’t you know how dangerous basic thinking is??
Yeah, technically everyone ‘is’ an American but if you’re not the right skin tone or background you can still hop on a boat and go back home according to a few ignorant people. I had the pleasure/torture of hearing a man railing against immigrants recently and while I was half-tuning him out I noticed he managed to whip through the entire history of this country. You know ‘whites are awesome, they invented everything, the whole world hate us cause they ain’t us’ and…totally skip the Native Americans.
Truth be told I was damn impressed. It’s gotta take some real damn commitment to go to bed everyday and make sure you keep telling yourself the Native Americans didn’t exist or were only a few hundred of them anyway (that was his honest defense, that there were only a few hundred Native Americans when the settlers took the land…yeah).
@Side-Eye – Hah! Logic has never been a prevailing trait on that side of the family. I do love them (most of them anyway), but I have to do some serious tongue-biting when we’re all together to preserve the peace.
Only a few hundred Native Americans? Yeah, right. And they’d still be savages living in tents if the white man hadn’t arrived to save them from their uncivilized ways. Where’s the gratitude?
And just FYI…the U.S. didn’t really “purchase bits from Mexico,” more like they stole it and it wasn’t really all that long ago, only a couple generations back in my own family. My great-grandfather’s family owned a significant amount of land in what is now California (back then known as Las Californias) which they were driven out of and had to start all over in another part of Mexico. My grandpa (may he rest in peace) used to tell us that his dad griped about it all the time and was quite racist against White Americans.
Thanks everyone. Yes, I should have put “purchased” in inverted commas.
I really don’t understand why people are such a-holes.
Some people need to be high-fived in the face with a chair.
Gives this comment a gold star.
Ha! Excellent
I hate to be snarky, but Kelly probably raised in a bubble ,a sheltered life in Hollywood, where the maids and gardners probably worked for her family. She is a guest host on the View not for her talent or wisdom, but who her father was. She is no different to me then the Kardashians.
I saw the video on instagram. I see many people in the comments are saying Kelly was making a joke when she said this, but she was dead serious. She didn’t crack a smile and she said it with such conviction that it was obvious she thought she was making a perfectly good point. That makes it even more problematic, in my opinion.
Kelly needs to take a good look at herself and the way she views people of color. Root out those disgusting views.
I feel like people are saying “joke” in the context of one of those half truths people say and then realize how bad it sounds and trys to say “Oh come on I’m just kidding.” But really you’re backpedaling and what you said in the first place wasn’t a joke at all.
I agree. I watched the clip a few times- she clearly was not joking, and even paused for the reaction she thought she would get. When it didn’t come, then she tried to back peddle.
She meant every word of it, exactly how it was said and sounds. To give her any credit for higher thinking is preposterous.
There is no excuse for what Kelly said, however, I believe what Kelly was trying to say was, Donald Trump hires Mexican People to works for him in his hotels, or golf courses in menial jobs like maids or housekeeping, gardening, Ect. I read that Donald Trump sponsored over 1,000 last year to work in his hotels or golf courses for sessional employment. I’m guessing they were coming for menial Or unskilled employment. I’m not excusing Kelly. I don’t know why she keeps getting on TV talking nonsense, her but I was
trying to see where she was coming from after what I read about Donald and what he had said about Mexican people.
I do see what you are saying, but if she had half a brain she would realize that Trump’s properties are mostly on the east coast, where a bigger chunk of the Latino population is Puerto Rican, Dominican, Cuban, etc. NOT MEXICAN. And in his Hawaiian hotels, a large portion of the service staff employed there are Pacific Islanders and Japanese. He does have a hotel in Vegas that likely staffs people of Mexican heritage, but that’s only 1 so they are not the majority of his service staff overall.
She is as vile as her mother. Why is she even on television? What made her an authority on American politics? These D list celebrities [even A list] usually lack the intellect and intelligence to speak on anything. Most of them don’t even finish high school.
I have a different take on it. I thought she meant that although Trump was complaining about the violence of immigrant groups, he no doubt is still very happy to exploit the inexpensive labor they provide and hire them for pennies for the many jobs that many immigrants are willing to do. And I say this as a daughter of two immigrant parents – many immigrants take on the work of caring for kids and those who are sick or elderly, clean, work in low-level construction jobs, etc. They do so because sometimes they don’t have a lot of education, sometimes they have education but it’s not recognized or appreciated here, and mostly they have the spirit to do whatever it takes to make a new life for themselves. My dad unloaded lumber from trains when he was 13 and my nonna cleaned bedpans in the hospital, among other things.
Many immigrants work in higher-level jobs, but I think Trump was targeting poorer immigrants in his speech, and I think Kelly (who I personally don’t like at all) was pointing out that as much as people complain, they sure are willing to exploit them with poor jobs and poor wages.
@Josephine, I totally agree with you. I believe we are both saying Trump is taking advantage of the disadvantage by using them for cheap labor.
I agree Josephine – I want to give her the benefit of the doubt that’s what she was TRYING to say too but started off very poorly and even if she had started off better, couldn’t have said it as eloquently as you (and others here) have.
That was my first reaction as well. She worded it poorly and if she had finished, maybe she would have said more that would have made it obvious what she was getting at. But, that didn’t happen and people like to get outraged without thinking things through, so she will now suffer those results.
Yep. I wish we’d be more understanding. The more we look like an angry mob, the more it drives biases underground where they turn into feelings of victimhood and weird ideas like reverse racism.
I would rather be constructive and move on. I am not horrified or need smelling salts. What she said was stupid, but at the end of the day, she’s on the right side, she just needs a lot of fine tuning.
I really don’t understand how somebody with a brain this small is given such a big platform to speak!! There is absolutely NO explanation or reasoning Kelly Osbourne can give to justify the comment she made about Latinos!! This is a perfect example of ignorance and racism!!
I agree with you 100 percent. Who the hell does she think she is to tell us LATINOS that live in the USA that we are only qualified to be maids or gardeners???? It just shows how racist and condescending she is. Who the hell does she think she is?? The drug addict daughter of a famous drug addict/alcoholic father and a wanna-be Barbara Walters mother? I wonder IF she hang out with the royalty in England or IF for them she is just a low-class tv host. Because you must think you are the shit next to a Mexican maid but are you the shit next to British royalty dear Kelly or they discriminate your low class background??
Is that what she said? That seems more like you are projecting and filling in.
Seriously? In this day and age, anyone in Hollywood is given a platform to spout off their opinions although they don’t know their a$$ from a hole in the ground. I’m sick of Hollywood types and their “Knowledge”.
SO much ignorance everywhere, I dont even know where to start. This woman was born with a silver spoon in her mouth, her parents have given her anything she has wished/asked for, she has traveled all over the world and seen many cultures and heard many languages. Has she ever been in South America? Does she even know that not all the Latinos are Mexicans? Does she know that the main reasons for South Americans to emigrate to USA are not economical but social / political? Does she ever acomplished anything with her life other than being a drug addict with an up and down out of control weight, no college education, famous and on a TV show where she threw her co-host with a professional degree under the bus claiming “racism” when we all know that thats not what happened just because Zendaya moves in her social circles. I admire 1000 more times her Latina Maid that clean the toilettes in her LA mansion -courtesy of daddy’s money- that this hypocritical fake british accent bitch drug addict full of crappy tattoos that thinks she is better than hardworking immigrants who come to this country with a bag full of dreams and aspirations. Bitch
Hmm. I initially heard about this pre-apology, and gave her the benefit of the doubt.
I can see a kernal of a joke in there. It’s funny because it’s true … in the sense that Trump probably WOULD think like that. (Not true in the sense that Latinos are all janitors or that all janitors are Latino. That’s just a dumb-stereotype, not a “joke”.) Does that make any sense? Stereotypes aren’t funny, but a billionaire presidential candidate thinking in dumb stereotypes actually IS kind of funny. (Unless he gets elected – in which case it suddenly becomes terrifying.) It’s okay if Trump is the butt of the joke.
But … her apology doesn’t say anything at all like that. So I’ve changed my mind. She seems to think dumb stereotypes are funny in and of themselves. That’s not cool.
Kelly is an ignorant b-word – always has been and always will be. ‘Fashion Police’ did the right thing in (allegedly) giving her the boot – she’s nothing but trouble.
I think she is too stupid and ignorant to be racist. We all know that there is only one reason she is on these shows, and it has nothing to do with any kind of talent. Considering all the grief she gave the fashion police chick, this makes her the worst kind of hypocrite. Maybe she should go back to her singing career
Please trust me, there are plenty of stupid, ignorant racists. I’ve met quite a few.
With all due respect, ignorance begets racism.
I’ll clean my own damn toilet, you insensitive bitch.
I’m amazed sometimes at how ignorant and tone-deaf celebrities are. But then I remember what world they live in.
This privileged, undereducated moron! News for you Kelly, Latinos speak English, drive well, can walk and chew and some become Stanford Med scientists too.
I don’t believe she cleans her own toilet. I’ve never seen a wealthy person in LA doing any housework.
If I was well off I would not clean my toilets or anything else. Well maybe the odd gentle wipe or dust. Sorry. I’d pay someone a decent wage to do it for Me. Not that the issue arises.
Kelly was at the very least clumsy and crass. But there are various offensive assumptions made about appropriate jobs for certain groups. Certainly in the UK there was pretty nasty anti- Irish bias which Included the assumption that Irish men were normally labourers On building sites who paid No tax and probably had a side line in aiding and abetting terrorism. That stereotype is thankfully mostly a thing of the past, but skin colour and ethnicity Is not always a factor in this sort of prejudice. Nationality is often enough. If people are that way inclined, they will find a Reason to be offensive.
I agree. I doubt she there has been a period of time in her entire life where she hasn’t had a housekeeper.
This might come off indifferent to some, but as a Latina I have become desensitized by comments like this, whether it was said in a negative way or not. At the same time, I am also bored by comments that Trump and now Kelly have made.
And this is what is really sad. To even have the attitude of brushing off comments like these because they are EVERYWHERE. What a travesty that nonsense like this doesn’t even really cause an uproar anymore, and even scarier that Trump has made so much headway in gaining fans with his BS racist rhetoric.
Part of the benefit of privilege is that Kelly has more than likely never had to hear this kind of garbage about herself or white people. Part of the benefit of privilege is that she gets to move on after her alleged apology and forget all about it, while Rosie gets to add it to just more garbage she can’t escape from through no fault of her own.
I actually think she was making fun of Trump and the people who agree with him. These people scream about too many immigrants, yet they don’t mind such people in the background, doing the dirty work that Trump or themselves don’t want to do, with low as possible pay. I get the irony.
I get the irony too but she could have worded her comment differently. What she said is really insulting.
I used to like Kelly but now I have NO respect for her. Just because you grow up rich doesn’t mean you get to stay stupid, ignorant things. Latinos have done so much for this country – they don’t just clean toilets! She’s a racist just like Donald Trump and needs to just away.
I think what she means is this: Americans will not do hard labor for low pay like Mexicans will. Can you see one of these teenage kids today cleaning toilets? Most of the menial jobs in America are done by non-Americans. I was a manager at a fast food restaurant and I told this white American kid to clean the grill. No, I’m not doing a Mexicans job, in front of a full kitchen staff of Mexicans. I made that boy work in the kitchen from then on. These American kids today are so lazy and think they’re do above menial labor. I say the same thing as Kelly. The majority of illegal immigrants are working jobs most Americans won’t do, because they are so spoiled. Most of the business owners in this tourist area hired non-Americans via subcontractors who provided. These people were willing to work way harder And for less money. Get Rid of all the illegals, business owners are going to be paying way more for American workers. And good luck finding ones that will clean up the puke the drunk spring breakers left behind. Our country would be screwed if we got rid of all the illegals. Higher cost of labor equals higher cost of goods.
Perfectly put! And good for you for the way you handled that kid!
Thank you !
Snowflake, you are so right ….menial jobs und underpaid, this has always puzzled me. My house is my castle and my most private. Yet this menial workers clean your house, cook your food and watch your children, are as close to you as one can get. People are just weird.
I grew up on a farm, in farm country in the frozen Adirondack mountains. Saw lots of American kids working their asses off everyday for no pay but to help their parents make a living, including my brothers, hard, physical work most grown men wouldn’t do. Maybe we can just agree to stop generalizing and vilifying whole groups based on stereotypes and our own limited experiences. Trump and his ilk are happy to exploit the cheap labor of immigrants, and that’s morally wrong. Let’s just leave it at that.
you did good.
@Snowflake, you’re not really arguing your point all that well if you’re going to make sweeping generalizations about Americans, though: “These American kids today are so lazy.” Now swap in “Mexican” for “American” and that’s the exact kind of nonsense that people like Trump and Kelly are spewing. You sound just as ignorant as they do!
I see your point acid rock. You are right, I am generalosing about Americans. Let me speak from my own experience. I’m white and American, and I would not do the jobs that many of the illegals do for less than minimum wage. Some Americans might do it, you are right. I’ve just come across so many entitled kids and parents, maybe that’s tainted my impression.
I hear you about the entitlement of kids/parents these days, and I see it everywhere myself. That “the world owes me something” attitude is so aggravating.
racism is so ingrained and can be so subtle. I think that everyone is guilty of it to some degree at some point in time, even if they have friends of other races/ethnicities. I don’t see how she could think that her comment was anything but racist
I’m Latina, my mom cleaned toilets and raised us well. And lo and behold she’s a smart, funny, charming women, yet toilets she cleaned. You do what you gotta do. Not really a judgement or opinion on this story, just a statement, no shame in doing what you have to do to survive. Regardless if it’s used as a punch line, as a way to degrade someone or to make a point.
Great input! God bless all good mothers.
+1 I’m Italian and my mom did the same, and I was employed doing the same job as I attended college. There is no shame in the work.
White girl who had a job for a while cleaning toilets in a factory, here!
There were lot of immigrant custodians, but where I lived at the time they were white – Ukrainian, Russian, etc. Now there are a lot of immigrants from Africa so they probably do those jobs now.
I understand what Kelly was saying, low end labor is part in our work force that is being fulfilled by immigrants, but agree that it was a lousy joke and she was insensitive about it.
Same here!
“There were lot of immigrant custodians, but where I lived at the time they were white – Ukrainian, Russian, etc. Now there are a lot of immigrants from Africa so they probably do those jobs now.” Excellent points. I’ve known people from these backgrounds as my mom is employed in this industry as well and so many of them have done this job as they put themselves and/or loved ones through college. There are a lot of people Hispanic and from other backgrounds who are willing to “clean toilets” to earn a living. I don’t appreciate how flippantly this the term “clean toilets” gets thrown around as if it is this horrifying, demeaning job that these privileged people just can’t even fathom doing themselves.
This is why I *don’t* understand what Kelly was saying and why she will not get a pass from me. It isn’t a job only fulfilled by Latinas, just as Hispanics are not the only immigrants coming into the United States, legally or illegally. She had no business discussing politics in a public forum, and she is obviously clueless. Unfortunately, her uneducated, ignorant opinion seems to be pretty standard for people who live in the same privileged bubble she does in California.
>>>This is why I *don’t* understand what Kelly was saying and why she will not get a pass from me. It isn’t a job only fulfilled by Latinas, just as Hispanics are not the only immigrants coming into the United States, legally or illegally.
You’re totally right, I think she was conflating immigrants/immigration with the presence of Latinos in the US, because maybe in California they represent the majority of that group? That was my thought, anyway, that she meant something like “without immigrants, our workforce will fall short” but said it in a way that played on stereotypes and was therefore awkward and insensitive. (I refuse to pay attention to Donald Trump so I’m not sure if he is opposed to immigration overall or just people from Central and South America.)
>>> I don’t appreciate how flippantly this the term “clean toilets” gets thrown around as if it is this horrifying, demeaning job
Yeah, it implies that people who don’t clean toilets for a living are superior somehow. F%#$ that, labor type jobs all of the respect in the world from me.
That was my point I was trying to make up thread. Immigrants does not equal Latinos. We have immigrants from everywhere in the U.S.
True colors are tough to hide, aren’t they?
But why is anyone listening to anything this talentless, entitled, obnoxious woman has to say? The fact that she has any sort of platform at all is mind-boggling.
First of all, let’s not refer to her comments as a joke because she wasn’t kidding. I am so damn tired of celebrities feeling a need to bloviate about politics. The View needs to end, and Kelly Osbourne needs to shut up and go away already.
I’m from the East Coast and my mom is a first generation Italian-American and she is a housekeeper. She has made an excellent living. I’m proud to be from a blue collar family and I was employed in the same industry while I paid my way through college. My friends are mostly Hispanic, Brazilian, and Portuguese people with immigrant parents, and many of their parents are employed in the same industry. Kelly is a moron who has no grip on reality.
In 2006, I went to California for the first time with my family to stay at my dad’s childhood best friend’s house in a rich suburb in LA for two weeks. ALL I heard about during my time there from this man and his friends and family was how vital “Mexicans” (they referred to all Hispanic people this way) were because none of them wanted to water their landscaping, mow their lawns, care for their pools, clean their own houses, cook their own food, or raise their own children. Many of them employed Mexican women that commuted on Mondays to stay at their homes serving as housekeepers and nannies until Friday nights when they would go back to Mexico and get to spend the weekends with their own families. Coming from the East Coast and a blue collar background all of this was pretty shocking to me, not only because having someone try to wait on me hand and foot was so foreign and uncomfortable to me, but also because where I come from Hispanic people aren’t limited to these jobs.
The Hispanic people that I know, including my own Cuban-American and Puerto Rican family members are lawyers, teachers, an economist, engineers, entrepreneurs and the list goes on.
I’ve digressed, but the point I want to make is that Kelly lives in some rich bubble in California, right? This isn’t an uncommon stupid opinion for the privileged who live in close proximity to Mexico, in my experience. I’m just going to write her off as another dumb, out of touch person.
Yes to all you just wrote!!!
Daria, many immigrants from Mexico and Central America / maybe some other parts, do not have a higher level of education. YEs, there are those who are educated and still emigrate , but they have lower numbers. For example, I’ve had a share of opportunities to go and stay in the US and I never took them, same with my brother, we both are college educated, and yes, most of us know someone or have relatives living in the US.
Most “Mexican” (you know what I mean) immigrants , have no knowledge of the English language and their job skills are physical, so they end up in the fields (the worst), working in contraction, factories and houses (later two for women). People from Cuba, as I understand, the community had it differently because many of those who left Cuba did it with a higher level of education, and some of them even with wealth. The history of the diaspora of these communities (Cuba, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, etc. is not the same, even when we are still Latinos too. Cuban-Americans are more politically powerful, even when the community is smaller.
Thankfully many of the immigrants stories are stories of success, they are successful themselves or their children have studied and became the first who went to college, or have come back to open a small business, etc. Sadly, many are exploited , women and men in those jobs.
I wasn’t saying that all Latinos get higher education. I was just making a point that writing off Latinos as “toilet cleaners” is false because they contribute plenty else to society.
“People from Cuba, as I understand, the community had it differently because many of those who left Cuba did it with a higher level of education, and some of them even with wealth.”
Not quite. All of the Cubans that I know personally were wealthy and educated before migrating here but their degrees and wealth meant nothing in America. Like many African, Russian, Polish, and Ukrainian immigrants who have taken up custodial jobs in abundance, their degrees don’t transfer over here and they have to complete an education in the US before they can become employed in the field. My uncle’s mom, my great-aunt, was a teacher in Cuba and had to attend college here because her certification meant nothing in America. It is exactly like starting all over from rock bottom. They still have to struggle to find work to earn money, whether it is just to make a living, to pursue another college degree, or to try to help their kids have better. Having an education in another country doesn’t always mean that these immigrants, no matter what country they’re from, have a cushy leg up in getting started in the US. There are plenty of Cubans who migrate with nothing but the clothing on their backs when they travel by raft or boat. My uncle was fortunate enough to get picked up by the US Coast Guard after jumping off a naval ship and swimming into American waters when he was 19-years-old after being drafted to the Cuban military when the communists took over in Cuba. He didn’t have it any easier than any other migrants from any other countries. He spoke no English.
One of my mother’s coworkers is from Kenya and she was a nurse in her home country but works as a housekeeper here while she attends college to become a nurse all over again in America.
“Cuban-Americans are more politically powerful, even when the community is smaller.”
I’m not sure I understand this statement. Whether you mean to or not, you’re assuming all Cubans are rich and educated and this is simply not the case.
Migrating from any country is hard and very few immigrants from any country have an easy time making a go of it when they get to the United States. Plenty of immigrants whether they’re from Latin America, Asia, Africa or Europe show up here with little to no money in their pockets, unable to speak English and have to start from the very bottom. It’s unfair and inaccurate to assume people from one part of the world have it harder than others when it comes to migrating to America.
I am not being negative, and if you see, I was carefully wording trying to not generalize.
One thing that creates a big difference to a kid is if the parents (particularly the main caretaker) are educated, even if they are humble and poor, the child will most likely achieve or try harder that those kids with parents who are not educated or, on top of that if the parents do not have expectations for the child.
I know the educational level of Cuba, and many of the early immigrants waves was of better educated people. That gives them a different perspective of life that other immigrants.
Cuban Americans are (I already knew it, but I looked in the net anyway) the most politically active and the one with most elegibille nationals Latino group, even when Mexicans are the largest group.
I was in an exchange scholarship in the -us a few years ago, and I befriended high school teachers who asked me things about Mexican youngsters (their students). Some of those students do not care for school, they are constantly absent or drop out. I made a guess and told them it was the culture. For SOME people with lower levels of education, the bar is set very low.
The parents do not reinforce them, do not expect or do not know how to help/make the children to accomplish and finish school, be it elementary, middle or all the way to college. Parents work all day, or are overcome with the responsibility, who knows.
They do not do it in Mexico either, they get distracted with whatever is happening in their lives, and I imagine the distractions and family problems just get worse in the US, even when they have all the opportunities for them. This is not true for everyone, of course, I wish we had the solution a magic wand that solved this, as it affects our youth. I love seeing stories of success, like the brain surgeon Dr Q, Alfredo Quiñones Hinojosa, I wish there were more, in our country too.
Sorry if you feel offended. I know good people from Cuba (visited once and got to know a family who were the nicest to us, and a city guide for my friends). I also know stories of Mexican people being used by a sort of Cuban mafia who helped get them married to unsuspecting women in Mexico, just to abandon them as soon as they saved enough money to get to the US.
I’m not offended at all. Your post was very informative and interesting. You’re right that those who don’t have education themselves or get low-grade education don’t usually go on to stress the importance of education to their children. It’s just not something that I’m personally familiar with because where I live and grew up on the East Coast in the NYC area, I’m from a mostly Hispanic neighborhood and grew up with the children of immigrants from all over Latin America and nearly all of the people I grew up with went on to get college degrees despite having immigrant parents who weren’t educated themselves. I understand that a lot of this has to do with geographical location as well, I suppose. For example, where I live, immigrants may be more welcomed than say certain areas of the mid-West where the majority of the population isn’t Hispanic, so perhaps there is a larger chance for success.
Kelly grates on all my nerves and nerve endings. I don’t see much difference in Kelly than what she called out Guilanna on. What I find interesting is the people trying to give her a pass yet again. Next week she will be back with mommy on The Talk under mommy wing again..it’s all very sad that Kelly is allowed the platform she has.i find her immature as hell,also very vendictive hateful and hurtful. There is nothing that screams sweet but a bully yes.. She claims to have been bullied and seems to have taken on that trait.
Kelly: I didn’t mean it like that! Why some of my best friends are Mexicans!
PR Agent: Noooooooo!
Insert foot and goes on apology tour 2015
Stupid, Kelly, Stupid.
Kelly is full of shit. I would bet my left Mammory Gland that she has never scrubbed a toilet in her life.
She sucked on Fashion Police, she sucks on a super Suck-tastic show…. take a seat, Girl!!!
👎⬇️⬇️⬇️
Rancic said out loud: “pot, meet kettle (I mean Kelly)”
You are throwing Rosie under the bus. You are not taking responsibility.
Rosie is being gracious, but Kelly should twist in the wind a bit for this one.
* I’ve learned a very valuable lesson*
Was the lesson that when you make racist comments on TV for mega money that the other rich people who paid you will try to smooth it all out for you?
*It is my hope that this situation will open up a conversation about immigration and the Latin community as a whole.*
It is my hope that your insulting comments will keep you from continuing to profit in any role as a public spokesperson.
Enjoy your toilet.
I must say that I have to thank Kelly. She perfectly illustrated the concepts of white privilege and institutional racism. If anyone had any questions about what those concepts are and how they play out, she answered them all. As one of the posters said above, her Latina mom cleaned for a living, and you do what you gotta do. But what Kelly said was the textbook White Person Think. Do I think she is filled with hate? No, I don’t. I do think she is filled with ignorance, wrong assumptions, and a giant silver spoon. Sigh.
….and so was her apology.
I don’t know what makes me angrier:
1. The fact that she represents a large group of people who think that way of we Mexicans.
2. The fact that she thinks house cleaning is a horrible and demeaning job, when is the way lots of people support their families and is a completely dignified job.
3. That the stupid program made the Latina woman apologize to what she probably and rightfully felt as a personal insult.
“If you kick every Latino out of this country, then who is going to be cleaning your toilet, Donald Trump?”
[…]
“In the sense that…you know what I mean? But I’m saying that in L.A., they always…”
– Kelly thinks Donald hires Latino house servants.
– Seems like Kelly thinks that in L.A., the house servants are always [or usually] Latinos.
I guess in Kelly’s world, her family has regularly used Latinos as house servants.
Yeah, I’m going to say that she has certain stereotypes about who are the servants and who are not, because that’s what she’s seen and is used to and has never really ventured outside of this perspective – by her own choice. She’s an adult. She could have taken time to educate herself about other people.
I’m thinking she’d never say that if all Whites were kicked out of the country, who’s going to clean your toilets?
This is a minor point, but she’s a liar always. She always claimed she had to keep her hair purple because of her Fashion Police contract. So why is it still purple?
Uneducated, privileged, smug little racist.
She totally misspoke. She was attempting a quick one-liner and failed miserably. That being said, I think her intentions were not racist. I think she *meant* to say: “Latinos are hard workers who will come to America and do the jobs that many of us turn our noses up to.”
She could have just SAID those words and made her point. She did make it seem like all Latinos were good for is cleaning toilets. She totally put her foot in her mouth, but her intentions were good, I think..
How lovely!
Euro-trash trust fund piglet bashing Mexican immigrants.
Just out of curiosity, is Kelly an American citizen, or a citizen of Great Britain? I’m assuming she is an American citizen, but I don’t know that for a fact.
I don’t know.
She grew up in Britain, identifies as a Londoner and sports that insufferable accent.
Euro-trash… with no class… like her spoiled and entitled ‘mum’.
Ugh. Kelly needs learn some other mode of communication besides snark.
Ha ha. Karma’s a b-tch. Especially when you are a famewhore.
Guests on these shows are given the topic and talking points in advance. If she had borrowed the family brain cell on the day of the appearance she might have applied a modicum of thought to what she was going to say.
I think it would have been better for Kelly to focus on the fact Trump most likely employs lots of Latinos–at his golf courses, his hotels (does he own hotels?), in his various organizations. There are probably lots of Latinos working for him in various capacities
(and maybe some are cleaning toilets) and it’s hypocritical for him to criticize people who form the backbone of his empire.
I think that’s what she was trying to say but it came off as completely offensive. Trump’s lawyer/doctor/architect may also be Latino.
Who knows…he’s a weirdo. He was rallying against non-American labor the other day. Yet people pointed out that much of his goods, such as his clothing line, have Made in Mexico tags inside them, sooooo…he’s just full of general nonsense.
Ok yes, what Kelly said was pretty offensive. But, as someone living in Houston, Texas where there is a HUGE lower class Latino population just as there is in L.A. I understand the meaning behind her words. Not ALL Latinos are gardeners or housekeepers, but in her city & in mine you’d be shocked to discover the populations that are.
Unless you live here close to the Mexico border you will NEVER truly understand the problem of illegal immigration quite like we do & to pontificate otherwise vfrom your ivory towers is insulting to those of us living day to day with this very real problem.
It’s not racist to point out that the majority of lower income Latinos in L.A. or NYC(Trump’s place of residence) are employed in such professions.
@ Andrea S.
> It’s not racist to point out that the majority of lower income Latinos in L.A. or NYC(Trump’s place of residence) are employed in such professions.
I live in an L.A. neighborhood with a majority of low income Latino population.
The “majority” of them are not house servants or gardeners.
Just saying…
I don’t know if I agree with this: “It’s not racist to point out that the majority of lower income Latinos in L.A. or NYC(Trump’s place of residence) are employed in such professions. ”
As someone living in LA, I wouldn’t say that the majority of lower income Latino’s are in the housekeeper/gardener industry. “Latinos” are 40% of LA’s population right now, there aren’t that many lawns! Low income people work in a variety of fields, Latino’s included.
The distinction here is Latino’s who are undocumented. Those folks have to work in industries where they can be paid in cash. This is a benefit for the employer, because they escape having to pay the employer portion of income taxes. They don’t pay minimum wage, provide benefits, etc. I am going to stop here, but the issue is so complex I could go on forever!
Your average Latino in LA is a US citizen who isn’t going to be limited to jobs that are paid in cash.
So are you saying that because she lives in LA, where there is a large Latino population, some of which are illegal immigrants, she has the right to assume they all clean toilets? That’s ridiculous and extremely ignorant. I ALSO live in Texas and Houston is home to a lot of racist-asshats, too. The last time I was there working at an expo at the George R. Brown center, there was a group of old white southern men handing out CD’s of themselves singing traditional southern patriotic songs and one of them asked me if I was a legal citizen before he attempted to hand one over (but he handed one without question to my coworker, who is a clean cut Ivy-league educated white guy and looks the part). I was horrified and informed him that I was just as much an American as he was and that I declined his “gift” anyway. No one batted an eyelash and in fact, many people tried to chastise me for “lecturing a sweet old man, whose family helped the Houston business sector”. WTF! I didn’t even raise my voice or make a scene and I was the bad guy because “that’s just the way things are around here”. I love my home state but sometimes I just want to smack the bigotry out of people.
I think she was saying that Donald Trump probably hires Latinos to only clean his toilets, and will use their services, while still disparaging them in the media. Her comment was very specific to him.
Claire
I’m pretty sure what she said was more along the lines of “what she said was offensive but I understand because I live in an area with an immigration problem” what the heck does that have to do with the fact that Kelly’s 1st instinct was to assume that the only contribution Latinos make to Trump’ businesses is to clean toilets? And I used to live in Houston myself and most Latinos I knew weren’t maids or gardeners. I think I may have known 1 person who was a nanny and maybe another guy who OWNED his own lawn care company and that is saying a lot because it’s a city with a high Latino population.
If her dad wasn’t Ozzy she would probably be cleaning toilets somewhere. Stupid, ignorant twit
So Rosie gives Kelly a pass but not Trump? No just no. Both comments were offensive and racist period.
Liberals and democrats always get a pass on these things. Lena Dunham molested his sister and nobody says anything. Obama’s daughter works for Dunham but nobody anything either. Poor parenting on his and Michelle’s part.
Kellys comments was just as offensive as Trumps. He called them murders and rapists, but she is saying they are only good for cleaning toilets and low income jobs. Racist either way.
Many have said that Rosie was gracious for apologizing. I can say that I believe wholeheartedly that her apology was not warranted. If anything, Kelly’s apology was much in the same vein as we’re seeing from many celebrities who stick their foot in their mouths: they aren’t apologising for what they’ve said but how we’ve interpreted their words. The wrong parties are considered sensitive or can’t take a joke. The crux of the matter is this: if you want to be a racist, that’s your burden to carry. We, however, have the right to call you out on your malignant comments. I’ve said earlier that ignorance begets racism and Kelly has demonstrated how truly ignorant she is. I pity her since based on her comments, it seems that she still has no real perspective of how hurtful her off-handed comments were.
Racism is like an oil slick that one can do their best to wash away, but will end up staining all those who have the misfortune to come into contact with them.
Kelly’s comments were horrible, end of story. She should have actually apologized for what she said instead of taking the opportunity to defend herself.
Taking the comments back to Trump, I do think that it is horrible that he has said these things about Latinos and immigrants from Mexico when he no doubt has many employees in his many companies that are Latinos or immigrants from Mexico. Odds are these people and their hard work isn’t being limited to tidying the bathroom, but most likely they are also working at nearly every level in Trump’s companies. Latinos and immigrants are a HUGE part of our society. They are our friends, neighbors, family members, co-workers. It is time for people like Trump to stop ignoring the vast contributions they make to our society and to our businesses and economy.
Claim it was the pills talking and go to Rehab! Even then you still won’t be able to escape those words.
I think what she was trying to do was to point out (as people here certainly have frequently) that he hires plenty of people in the group he wants to boot out to do low-pay jobs. She said “your toilet, Donald Trump”, she did not make the general statement in the headline about any other toilet but the one The Donald sits on when he isn’t doing it verbally. She just was not skilled enough to say it without sounding awful under the circumstances. So the attempted diss of The Donald came out sounding like a bigoted stereotype. I’m not sure if anyone could have pulled it off without being Latino themselves, though. Humor is not her strength.
Her career died when Joan did. Just shut up and go live off Daddy’s money. Talentless girl.
She has no class. I realize that she misspoke, but she’s a total hypocrite. She railed her former co-host on fashion police for her dumb comment, yet she is just a dumb. For the life of me, I don’t understand why Perez apologized TO HER for her stupid comment.
So, I’m in Texas and I’m half Mexican, half white, so I don’t have to worry about stereotypes fully because I get the “wait, what are you mixed with?” Question a lot but I also get jobs based on the fact that I look white, depending on the hiring manager’s perspective. But I do know that latinos crossing over often get shoved into these job types because they’re seen as unskilled. Whether they’re unskilled or not, they still get that stereotype put in their faces as if they can’t do any other thing. Others have made similar points on this thread, really good points about what it’s like to come to the US. An immigrant’s level of education is rarely acknowledged. It’s not fair to see relatives or any other latino reduced to these jobs because just like any other ethnicity, you’ll have your smart, your dumb, your strong and your weak, all pooled into the same category. It doesn’t really matter that they could’ve been a surgeon or a math professor, they all look the same, so they’ll all work on a roof, in a stairwell, in a kitchen, or up a f*cking tree. These are mostly good, hardworking people who’ll turn around and put their kids through law school, art school, medical school or even in the military and make a something of their families through their offspring. They knew they were stuck with those jobs because they’re told that it’s the best they’ll ever get. It’s hard to watch because I have family members who are both heavily appreciated for doing these jobs that, truly NO ONE would stoop to, so I’ve seen some really sweet well-to-do people give bonuses, have weekly dinners and see some of my relatives as extended family and trusted friends. But I’ve also seen relatives thrown by the wayside because “Meh, they’re just happy to be here, they’ll do or for cheap. Bet I can squeeze another hour outta him/her” because they’re seen as bottom tier citizens.
I can’t stand Kelly and silver spooners like her, and I won’t give this a pass because she’s an idiot. She needs an education on how to defend and insult without dragging entire cultures down with her. Better yet, she needs to learn to speak, period because she ONLY makes the news when she says something crass and insensitive.
Love your post. I used to live in Texas & met one of the sweetest people there and unfortunately also some of the most prejudiced too 🙁
Kelly may not consider herself a racist because she doesn’t hate people of a different race, but that was a racist comment and shows such ignorance that she goes to cleaning toilets. That was very revealing. I also want to know what is up with the Rosie Perez comments in her statement? Rosie actually defended her more than she deserved! She is such a brat. Her defense of Zendaya was self serving anyway.
Exactly. She got upset with Giuluana Rananic for the patchouli oil comments about Zendya’s hair. Which were not racist at all. But when Kelly says latinos are only good for cleaning toilets, she defends it? Those women on the view have no right to criticize Trump then. When they have a bunch of racist, close-minded people on their show. Whoopie also defends a serial rapist just because he is the same as her.
Well well well…seems Karma came and bit her right in the a$$. Remember all the sh*t she said about Guilianna Rancic? The problem is Kelly never “clarified” what she “really meant”. What exactly did she mean by that comment? I don’t think she is a racist…I think she put her foot in her mouth and was trying to attack Donald Trump but did it in a very unintelligent way.
Yeah, Kelly’s an ignorant ignoramus but really, her idiocy pales into insignificance alongside the % of Americans who see Trump as presidential matierial.
I think Kelly conflated illegal immigrants (from Central and S. America) with Latinos. *ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS* clean toilets or do other menial tasks because they’re essentially shut out of the regular employment system. But Latinos….maybe she’s a little less comfortable around the term because it doesn’t strike me as one in use in Britain.
I don’t think she’s ignorant. I think like everyone else, she said something she didn’t mean to say because she didn’t choose her words carefully (by contrast, I think Giuliana meant exactly what she said).
I hope Kelly Osbourne reads this site because Kaiser just read her from head to toe. I actually laughed out loud!
Love it
Pretty disgusted with all the people here looking down at toilet cleaning as a job. You’re upset at what she said because you all think cleaning toilets is a horrible job. Well it’s not. White chick here who has cleaned toilets for a living, as well as lots of other unskilled jobs.
It’s everyone’s bigoted opinions about toilet cleaning that has created such an uproar.
There is nothing to be ashamed about if you have an unskilled job.
In theory. There’s nothing to be ashamed of about honest work – in theory. The reality is different.
As a white european immigrant I sometimes wonder how my experience and all the chances that I got here in the states would look if I was black, brown or even yellow. Really, I think my life would be way different even if I had the same level of education and desire to succeed simply because of my skin color.
Kelly was clearly speaking TO TRUMP, whose direct experience of minorities- and the extent to which he tolerates minorities- probably and conceivably extends to deigning to allow them to clean his toilets or do other menial or low paying jobs he and other privileged white people consider beneath them.
This Jump Culture is bizarre- Jump down people’s throats, Jump on the bandwagon to Jump down people’s throats- it’s not delivering the social utopia we desire, it’s alienating reasonable, sensible people who will be less willing to open their mouths to stand up to other white, privileged asshats on behalf of non white minorities in future. Because those white, privileged asshats are not interested in what non white minorities have to say, EVER- skin is the wrong shade for them to listen to. They will only notice when another white person says something- and those white people standing up for minorities are the people that listened to non white minorities and care about their rights in the first place.
Kelly was not speaking to Latinos, she was using language and phrasing a racist, rich American will hear- because Trump pretty clearly does not listen to rational, sensible arguments about issues facing Latinos or other minorities.
I agree that people are oversensitive lately, but what she said is offensive. No matter what good intentions she may have, as a latin american I feel insulted. Fighting racism with more racism is not an answer.
I can understand it if she meant it a kind of off color way calling out Americans for complaining about immigrants while exploiting their cheap labor to maintain their lifestyle. But…you have to be very, very careful with how you broach that kind of humor without f*cking up like she did here, and well , I may be giving her too much credit.
Beyond that, we really need to get away from the mindset of immigrants as uneducated, impoverished, and desperate.
Thank you for your last sentence. People still tend to stereotype and think if it’s a harmless stereotype, it’s okay. Besides not being complacent in hazy racism, it’s not accurate. I work for attorneys and let it be known that some of the best attorneys, the up-and-comings, and the most influential and regarded ones, are from a very diverse pool. Many young minorities are super sought after for their work in law and politics becuase they’re paving the way for changes. Just because tv and our small lives portray minorities as living on the fringe, that is not what the rest of the world or even the country is like. Minorities are fast becoming the new movers and shakers. That’s not my opinion. It’s a fact. The most active bar associations aside from the metropolises, are the Latin Bars, The Arab-American bars, and the LGBT bars. It makes sense. They are anarchists – pushing for change in perception and in legislation. Very exciting.
I understand it as a knock at Donald. He would buy human labor for his glory, so to say.
AS IF this purple-haired monster cleans her own toilets. I call bull s***. The word vomit that spews from her mouth on a daily basis is revolting.
Am I stupid for not understanding why the likes of Kelly Osbourne and Raven Symone are on a tv show with the format for intelligent female conversation? Let me define intelligent – up on current events, able to formulate opinions and articulate thoughts, decent if not well-versed in the country’s language(s), and having world experience to back up opinions and thoughts. Isnt’ that what The View is suppose to be? a platform for women’s take on world events and politics? Why on Earth are Raven and Kelly on a show like that when they are completely ignorant, can’t formulate thoughts, are incapable of articulating themselves, have no world or life experience, and no political prowess or expertise. Seriously, I need this explained to me. If theyr’e just looking for a paying gig, for God’s sake, put them on a reality or entertainment show, but The View? Makes no sense and now The View is just a joke. A very bad joke.