Last night, Olivia Jade appeared on Red Table Talk to open up about the college admissions scandal that landed her parents in jail for 60 days, sentences they are both currently serving. Talking to hosts Willow and Jada Pinkett-Smith as well as Jada’s mum Adrienne Banfield-Norris, the show has received a ton of attention particularly thanks to Adrienne’s apt judgement of whether Olivia Jade deserved a place on the show.
Opening the 30-minute episode, which airs on Facebook, Jada acknowledged that Olivia Jade asked to be on the show in order to finally talk about her experience as part of the largest college admissions scandal ever prosecuted – which, if you can’t remember what happened, you can read all about here.
‘We all had very different feelings about it,’ Jada said. With Adrienne admitting she was vehemently against having Olivia on the show, she explained that as three Black women, it shouldn’t be their job to give her a space to redeem herself in the eyes of the public. At the time of the college admissions scandal, a lot of the backlash centred on how unashamedly privileged the families partaking in the fraud were to take deserving college spots from marginalised students.
‘I fought it tooth and nail,’ Adrienne said of having Olivia on the show. ‘I just found it really ironic that she chose three black women to reach out to for her redemption story. Here we are, [with] a white woman coming to Black women for support when we don’t get the same from them. It’s bothersome to me on so many levels, her being here is the epitome of white privilege to me…It’s not our responsibility to raise her consciousness.’
‘At the end of the day, I really feel like she’s going to be okay,’ Adrienne concluded. ‘She’s going to recover whether her ass was sitting at this table or not.’
Her words have since become the centre of discussion following the episode airing, many supporting Adrienne’s sentiment. ‘I found the debate over whether #RedTableTalk should give Olivia Jade a platform infinitely more interesting than anything Olivia had to say,’ Jarett Wieselman tweeted to over 50,000 likes.’
Indeed, Adrienne and Jada’s conversation seemed to replicate the two sides of the conversation not just about Olivia Jade herself, but in giving people like Olivia who experience immense privilege these kind of opportunities to redeem themselves publicly – when they are already so much less likely to experience the fallout a less privileged person might.
‘Just because you have privilege it doesn’t exempt you,’ Jada rebutted Adrienne, pointing to her own learnings from raising children in a wealthy family. ‘[Look at] the fact that Willow for so long suffered in silence and even turned to self-harm because didn’t feel like she had a right to be hurt. I’ve had to deal with that part as well. People go “You’re kids are going to be fine because they’re rich, and we don’t care.” And that’s painful, and it’s not true. I feel like Olivia deserves a space.’
Clearly, Jada won the battle in having Olivia on the show, with Willow stating that both of their feelings are valid and they had to find balance in them (this show is honestly the best example of healthy communication you will ever witness). But what came from it was even more important, because even though she really didn’t have to, Adrienne went above and beyond to educate Olivia on her own privilege in a scene many viewers found very powerful.
Right now, in the atmosphere that the world is in, it’s very difficult for to feel compassionate about you.
Asking her if she understood why she wouldn’t want her on the show, Jada asked Adrienne to explain herself. ‘For me, there is so much violent dehumanisation that the Black community has to go through on a daily basis,’ Adrienne said to Olivia. ‘There is so much devastation, particularly this year… that when you come to the table with something like this it’s like, “Child, please?”’
‘I’m exhausted with everything we have to deal with as a community and I just don’t have the energy to put into the fact that you lost your endorsements or you’re not in school right now,’ she continued. ‘Because at the end of the day you’re going to be okay, you’re parents are going to go in and do their 60 days and pay their fine and you guys will go on and be okay and live your life. There’s so many of us where it’s not going to be that situation, it just makes it very difficult right now for me to care. Right now, in the atmosphere that the world is in, it’s very difficult for to feel compassionate about you.’
And while Adrienne’s comments have been applauded, Olivia’s reaction and overall apologetic demeanour on the show has too received a positive response. ‘I didn’t come on here to try and win people over or because I really need people to like me,’ she said. ‘I just want to apologise for contributing to these social inequalities.’
Watch Olivia Jade's Red Table Talk
With over 20,000 comments on this episode alone, it’s clearly making waves. ‘This episode started off uncomfortable for me...I understood Gammy's position, but hearing Olivia out, I believe she was very genuine in her responses. So much respect for RTT,’ one person commented to hundreds of likes.
Ultimately, whether you agree with Adrienne or Jada, the biggest takeaway from this – apart from to watch it for yourself – is, of course…Adrienne for president.
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