Tag Archives: Daniela Bär

Oprah Creates a Stir: Switzerland’s Small-State Response

In my blog post of August 9, I commented on the Oprah incident in Zurich which has been dubbed Täschligate (handbag-gate) in Switzerland. While “Oprah-Gate” has long been dropped from short-lived news cycles around the world, the story continues to unfold in Switzerland. And here the story becomes interesting: how does a small country process the scolding and humiliation by the global media?

Here is a brief synopsis: Oprah entered an exclusive Zurich boutique, asked to see a very expensive handbag, but being turned down by the sales clerk with the remark that this item would be too expensive for her. This at least is Oprah’s version of the story. The story was picked up by news outlets around the world after Oprah’s high-profile interviews with Entertainment Tonight and with Larry King, and Oprah’s interpretation of this incident as racially motivated was uncritically accepted and disseminated. In my first blog post, I concurred that there was a racial component to the story, and in spite of some unresolved discrepancies I have not changed my mind.

There have been multiple responses in Switzerland, and the bulk of them focused on discrediting Oprah on some level and thus on putting her credibility in question. One commentator bluntly claimed that she couldn’t sing nor act and that her only true skill was self-presentation. The most common response is to frame Oprah as a petulant and narcissistic star who was irritated by the fact that she was not recognized in an upscale boutique–which is used to dealing with celebrities–and that her show does not have any traction in Switzerland.

First, there was a tearjerker of an interview in the Swiss tabloid Blick with the sales clerk–who was idendified as Adriana N.–with the title “I have not been able to sleep for days!” It is a full-blown victim narrative–“I feel like I am in the center of a hurricane.” Adriana remembers that Oprah entered the store accompanied by a man (Oprah claims to have gone shopping alone). In Adriana’s version of the story, she showed Oprah a handbag from the Jennifer Aniston line and explained that they existed in different sizes and materials. In Adriana’s account, Oprah eyed the expensive crocodile skin bag on top of the shelf: “I told her that this is the same bag like the one I was holding in my hand at the time. Only that that one was much more expensive. I would be happy to show her other bags.” The uncontested fact is that Adriana did not take down the expensive bag even though Oprah showed an interest in it and that Adriana tried to steer Oprah towards less expensive bags.

Trudie Götz, the owner of the boutique, in her own interview with Blick, admits that Adriana committed one mistake by not having taken the bag off the shelf and handed it to Oprah. When Adriana mentioned the price to Oprah, she felt bad about it, according to Götz. Why would you feel bad about stating a price in an upscale shop–unless of course you believed that the item was way out of the person’s price range. So Oprah’s reaction seems justified: she indeed was profiled by Adriana and considered not worthy of being shown this very expensive bag. Was racism a factor? Götz, flatly denied that, adding: “I am sorry, but perhaps she [Oprah] is a bit too sensitive in this regard.” Götz unwittingly points to the inverse as the real problem: if you are white, you don’t have to concern yourself with issues of race.

This is the mainstream interpretation of this event in Switzerland. Even the speedy apology to Oprah by Switzerland Tourism, Switzerland’s heavily subsidized tourism office, now is being criticized in Switzerland. Rino Büchel, a member of parliament representing the populist-right Swiss People’s Party (SVP), is demanding to know how this “bizarre apology” came about. Even Daniela Bär, the spokesperson for Switzerland Tourism who had tweeted the apology, is now backpedaling, stating that the apology was premature, too emotional and provided an unfortunate interpretation of the event. Büchel in the meantime increased the pressure by promising a parliamentary investigation of Switzerland Tourism’s original apology, stressing that too many outside of Switzerland were confounding Switzerland Tourism with the country itself and read this as a national admission of guilt. Unfortunately, the headline in Britain’s The Telegraph bears this out: “Switzerland apologises to Oprah Winfrey over handbag incident.” And Politico reported: “The Swiss government and the boutique apologized, trying to tamp down what had a become a worldwide story.”

One of the more bizarre commentaries by Martin Sturzenegger in the Zurich daily Tages-Anzeiger focuses on the object of desire: the handbag, made from crocodile skin and with a SFr. 35,000 ($38,000) price tag. For this handbag, the skins of three crocodiles were used who were raised under horrible conditions in a crocodile farm, as the linked PETA video narrated by actor Joaquin Phoenix graphically shows. Sturzenegger points out that PETA, the animal rights organization, named Oprah the person of the year in 2008 because she made her large audience aware of the systemic abuse of animals in industrial settings. Based on the handbag incident, Heinz Lienhard, the president of the Swiss animal rights organization, declared that Oprah was not a true protector of animals. So Sturzenegger’s take is that Oprah is a phony animal lover with a pathological desire for publicity. The problem with this argument: Oprah just wanted to see the bag; she never expressed the desire to buy it.

The most recent line of argumentation in the Tages_Anzeiger and in Blick is that Oprah created a big stir around this incident to promote the new movie “The Butler” in which she has a starring role. Granted, Oprah knows how to generate publicity and how to stage herself. But the article in Politico–on which this theory is based–more generally argues that “Oprah Winfrey is stepping back into politics,” mentioning her discussion of the Zurich incident as one example and only in passing.

All of these responses are typical for a small state that sees itself exposed to massive criticism from abroad. In moments like these, defending national interests trumps introspection and reasoned debate. Even Martine Brunschwig Graf, the president of the federal commission against racism (Eidgenössische Kommission gegen Rassismus), condemned the efforts by mostly foreign media outlets to turn an ego problem into a racism problem, as she put it.

But in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, the response seems to be more moderate. A piece in the Lausanne daily 24 heures, entitled “Oprah Winfrey finds Switzerland racist, and our black community does as well,” takes this opportunity to reflect on racism in Switzerland. Celeste Ugochukwu, the president of the Conseil de la Diaspora africaine de Suisse (CDAS), stated in the article that racial discrimination was common in Switzerland–but more so in the German-speaking part. André Loembe, vice president of a different immigrant organization, diagnosed a rising anti-Black attitude in Switzerland since the early 2000s. The federal commission against racism in a 2010 report confirmed a rise in anti-Black and anti-Muslim incidents. Loembe further expressed his view that Swiss anti-racism laws should be used to prosecute the sales clerk. If you are black in Switzerland, it is a lot easier to see the racial component of Oprah’s handbag incident.

Some progressive politicians take a more critical perspective as well. In an interview with the German news magazine FOCUS, the social democratic politician Andreas Gross recognized a “combination of an inflated self-importance of being Swiss (Selbstüberwertung des Schweizer-Seins) and a strange provincial attitude in contact with foreigners.” In his view, this paradox between competency in foreign trade and inability to deal with foreigners in their own country is poorly understood in Switzerland and not part of a critical self-examination.

The context of increasing hostility towards immigrants in Switzerland also is hard to overlook. Most notable are popular votes against the construction of new minarets in November 2009 and for tightening asylum laws in June 2013. In July, allegations of inhuman treatment of asylum seekers in some Swiss towns became public. In the affluent town of Bremgarten, for instance, asylum seekers have been banned from the public pool and from local sports facilities–this town of 6,500 people has created a total of 32 exclusion zones where asylum seekers are not allowed to go.

So the Oprah incident is just the tip of the iceberg. It reveals a country that feels pressured by immigration and that is deeply troubled by the rapid demographic transformation unleashed by immigration. It also reveals just how clumsy and insecure the Swiss debate about race is. Moreover, it reveals the typical collective small-state defensive reflexes against any perceived threat from the outside that render a national debate toxic. In a more recent  interview, Oprah showed a surprising insight into this issue: “It’s not an indictment against the country or even that store. It was just one person who didn’t want to offer me the opportunity to see the bag. So no apologies necessary from the country of Switzerland. If somebody makes a mistake in the United States do we apologize in front of the whole country? No!” The Swiss would do well to take this to heart.

 

 

 

Racist Attitudes in Switzerland? The Tales of two African-American Women

Oprah traveled to Zurich, Switzerland, recently to attend the wedding of Tina Turner who has lived in the tony Zurich suburb of Küsnacht since 1995. Earlier this year, Turner made the headlines for accepting Swiss citizenship while simultaneously renouncing her US citizenship, presumably for tax reasons. The US has the questionable distinction of being the only industrialized country that taxes its citizens who reside abroad. (One would wish that the US would apply similar standards to US corporations, but that is a different matter.) Taxes aside, Turner seems to be genuinely at ease in Switzerland: “I’m very happy in Switzerland and I feel at home here. […] I cannot imagine a better place to live,” Turner reportedly told the Swiss tabloid Blick.

Oprah, her wedding guest, had a different story to tell to Entertainment Tonight. Oprah apparently entered the exclusive boutique Trois Pommes (which Oprah refused to identify) in downtown Zurich by herself, without any of her handlers. She asked to see a handbag with a SFr. 35,000 ($38,000) price tag. According to Oprah, the sales person replied, “No, it’s too expensive!” When Oprah further insisted on seeing that bag, the woman at the store replied, “No, no, you don’t want to see that one, you want to see this one, because that one would cost too much and you would not be able to afford that.” The employee then proceeded to show Oprah other, less expensive handbags. After three unsuccessful attempts, Oprah apparently left the store without making a scene and without pulling “the black card,” as she put it.

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Upscale shopping street in the historic heart of Zurich

In the interview, Oprah was clearly annoyed because her star power apparently has not reached tiny Switzerland yet: “I didn’t have my eyelashes on, but I was in full Oprah Winfrey gear. I had my little Donna Karan skirt and my little sandals. But obviously The Oprah Winfrey Show is not shown in Zurich. So this does not happen to me unless somebody obviously does not know it is me.”

It is unfortunate that this narcissistic display of injured vanity obfuscates the matter. It has allowed commentators in Switzerland to focus on the hissy fit by a narcissistic international entertainer–as a commentary entitled “Die verletzte Narzisstin” (the injured narcissist) in the respected Zurich daily Tages-Anzeiger did. This line of argumentation enables commentators to deny that there is any racism at issue in this scandal that now is referred to as “Täschligate” (handbag-gate) in Switzerland. As in the cases of the Nazi Gold and the bank secret, Switzerland again sees itself exposed to a barrage of international accusations, and the gut reaction is to circle the wagons–a posture that is common when small states see themselves exposed to massive criticism and pressure from abroad. And Oprah delivered all the arguments for this defensive posture.

This also is unfortunate because Oprah clearly has had a positive impact on young black women around the world. In a visit to South Africa some years ago, a group of young women from Limpopo province glowingly told us how Oprah is a role model for them who as a person of color and as a woman made it in a world dominated by white men.

But Oprah is right that this incident would not have happened if the sales clerk had recognized her as a celebrity. Which brings up the question why it did happen. Trudie Götz, the owner of the boutique, in an interview with the Swiss tabloid Blick framed this as a “misunderstanding” due to the imperfect command of English of her employee and claimed that her employee meant well, acted correctly and in no way displayed racial prejudices. She further stated that she sees no reason to fire her sales person. Ironically, Ms. Götz was an invited guest at the Turner wedding as well.

Trudie Goetz

Trudie Götz, owner of the upscale Trois Pommes boutique, in an interview with the tabloid Blick (screenshot Aug. 9, 2013)

If the sales clerk acted correctly by not showing a handbag to a customer deemed undeserving, business policies and practices come into focus. It is obvious that the profiling of customers in this boutique is standard procedure and that sales people are trained to profile customers–a practice that was confirmed by other upscale Zurich retailers. But what are the criteria for this profile? Obviously, the perceived ability to pay is key, and race factors into that in a major way. Furthermore, the rabid denials of racism by so many Swiss commentators imply that race indeed is a major underlying issue. Switzerland just in recent years has been forced to deal with a multi-racial society. Switzerland still lacks any authoritative mainstream voices–like Oprah–who can talk about race from a minority viewpoint. As the clumsy and insensitive commentaries in the Swiss press indicate, the Swiss have a long way to go to develop an understanding of the subtle ways of racism in our globalized world.

In the meantime, Switzerland Tourism, Switzerland’s official tourism office, showed outrage over the scandal, apparently fearing damage to its brand. International tourism in Switzerland has been in decline over the past few years, and the perception is that this scandal is not helpful. Daniela Bär, the spokesperson for Switzerland Tourism, offered a speedy apology to Oprah, reducing the issue to a clumsy salesperson who acted inappropriately. This also seems to be the view of other retailers in Zurich–again denying any systemic issues this scandal seems to have revealed. It is evident that Switzerland Tourism and other commercial interests would like the world to see Switzerland through Tina Turner’s eyes rather than Oprah Winfrey’s.

 

Note: see my later post, published on August 13, 2013, entitled Oprah Creates a Stir: Switzerland’s Small-State Response