For the past few days, the American media has been focused on Oprah Winfrey’s most recent philanthropic project. Yesterday, the queen of media fulfilled her promise to Nelson Mandela and officially opened a school in South Africa for disadvantaged girls. The school, which took five years and $40 million to build, will accommodate 152 South African girls this year and expand to a 450 student capacity. Although I have a profound level of respect for Oprah’s commitment to African people throughout the Diaspora, her most recent project betrays a problematic understanding of domestic and global educational inequality.

First, the construction of educational opportunities anywhere in the Global South is of critical importance. Nevertheless, Oprah’s decision to build a school in Africa rather than America was informed by an extremely troubling assessment of students in urban America. When asked why she elected not to construct an urban school, she suggested that kids in America wouldn’t appreciate such a gift:

I became so frustrated with visiting inner-city schools [in the U.S.]. If you ask the kids what they want or need, they will   say an iPod or some sneakers. In South Africa, they don’t ask for money or toys. They ask for uniforms so they can go to     school.

While Oprah’s frustration with the condition of urban schools is reasonable, her deployment of a Cosby-esque “blame the victim” approach to the American educational crisis is both facile and counterproductive. Instead of pointing to property tax-based funding structures, unresponsive curricula, or the ill-conceived No Child Left Behind Act, Oprah reduces our nation’s own educational apartheid to music and footwear. Worse, Oprah “Everybody Gets A Car!” Winfrey sees no irony in the fact that her own show pushes many of the products that she says contribute to our youth’s wanton consumerism.

More important than Oprah Winfrey’s personal understanding of educational reform is its contribution to the broader discourse around public education. In light of her comments, Oprah’s latest project feel less like global humanitarianism and more like an extravagant rejection of American public education. Given the current neo-liberal assault on all things public, Oprah’s gesture only facilitates the dismantling of public education in favor of privatized structures that will further expand the current socio-economic divide. Every time a suburban American housewife or middle-class Black person, who comprise a large sector of Oprah’s constituency, reads her comments and actions, it sends the message that “Even Oprah gave up on our schools and our children.” While I do not believe that Oprah shares these sentiments –after all, she has donated exorbitant amounts of money to African American children and organizations– her words, combined with the current public obsession with paternalistic African philanthrophy, only push domestic suffering to the back of our collective consciences.

In addition to her comments about America’s urban schools, Oprah’s school in Africa further reiterates an anti-democratic sensibility. Instead of building public education structures that would accommodate tens of thousands of students, Winfrey erected a single $40 million magisterial artifice for a few hundred students complete with indoor and outdoor theaters, a spa, and full yoga studio. In addition to reproducing the very consumerist pathologies that she allegedly detests –after going to school with a movie theater and full day spa, won’t these students eventually become preoccupied with iPods and sneakers?–  Oprah is preparing a breeding ground for a South African Talented Tenth that denies educational access to thousands of equally young, gifted, and Black youth.

To be clear, I’m not critiquing Oprah’s efforts out of some crude nationalism or anti-African xenophobia. In all honesty, I am genuinely proud that Oprah is devoting time, energy, and resources to a country and continent that have been ravaged by White supremacy and global capitalism. Nevertheless, it is important to look beyond the hype and critical assess the consequences of even the most well-intentioned actions.