Whoopi Goldberg is reflecting on “wokeness” and who has been awake all along.
The 70-year-old iconic actress and comedian sat down with the star playwright Jeremy O. Harris for a new Q&A in Interview magazine, where, in addition to doubling down on not wanting anyone in her house, she also shared her thoughts on what it’s been like to live through so many different eras of progress.
The topic arose when Harris, 36, admitted to feeling “very disappointed” in his generation, “that somehow a lot of the things people fought for got washed away, because in some ways, we didn’t fully show up.”
“When I was being raised, it was one for all and all for one,” she explained. “Everybody fought for everything. You fought for women’s rights, for gay rights, for Latin American rights. You fought to exist on equal footing here in the United States.”
However, she noted that what people “weren’t prepared for” was just how much fighting for progress would be “an ongoing battle.”
“They talk about ‘woke this and woke that.’ Women, people of color, gay folks, we were never asleep. We’ve had to stay awake,” she said.
She added, “They just woke up, but we’ve been up the whole time, watching their backs.”
Harris also picked her brain about what she would say to her younger self, who has been very vocal on many different occasions in the past, just as she’s about to take up an early fight.
“If I don’t fight for you, I can’t ask you to fight for me,” she said. “I’m fighting for your rights in the hopes that should I need you to fight for mine, you’ll be there.”
She warned that “the shocker” may come when she realizes how angry folks are “about having to share an equal balance.”
“They were fine with it as long as you weren’t their equal,” she explained. “The discovery of that anger in people was a shock because I thought, ‘Wait a minute, we broke it down to you. We took the time to keep you informed.’ What we didn’t know is you were just waiting for your moment in the sun to say, ‘We fooled you.’”
Elsewhere in the conversation, “The View” co-host who famously said she doesn’t want to get married in a traditional sense because she doesn’t want anyone living in her house, opened up about how relationships just aren’t for everyone.
“In the last 25 years, I recognized that not everybody’s cut out to be in a relationship,” she said. Some people are just cut out to be one-night stands.”
