On Thursday, when [Trevor] Noah broached the subject, Omar compared her defensiveness about her tweet—denying that she was anti-Semitic—to the way poor white people react when some say they still possess "white privilege."
"With that tweet, what I finally realized is the realization that I hope that people come to when we're having a conversation about white privilege," she told Noah. "You know, people would be like, 'I grew up in a poor neighborhood. I can't be privileged. Can you stop saying that? I haven't benefited from my whiteness!' And it's like, 'No, we're talking about systematic, right?' And so for me, that happened for me.
"I was like, 'Do not call me that [anti-Semitic]. … And it was like, 'Oh, I see what you're saying now.' And so I had to take a deep breath and understand where people were coming from and what point they were trying to make, which is what I expect people to do when I'm talking to them, right, about things that impact me or offend me."