Further Racial Rancor from the FLOTUS
In addition to great biceps, Michelle ‘Black Girls Rock’ Obama also has thin skin. Seems Mrs. Obama has given up food monitoring and instead is on the speaking circuit, where she is attempting to groom African-Americans to be as unforgiving and hypersensitive as she is.
Regrettably, the First Lady is furiously sticking her finger into an old wound. Michelle’s goal appears to be to dredge up animosity and make sure ‘bygones,’ although long gone, are never bygones!
Remember in 2014 when, in a People magazine article entitled “The Obamas: How We Deal with Our Own Racist Experiences,” Michelle blamed her husband’s past trouble in Chicago “catching cabs” on his skin color? Or the story about how in Target a woman asked her to reach up for a package of Tide because the vertically-challenged white lady viewed Michelle as ‘the help?’ Well, this year racial raconteur Michelle is ramping up the agitation rhetoric to a whole new level. For instance, after visiting the New Museum in New York to talk about drinking more water, dropping in on the Terracotta Warriors Museum in China, frequenting the Metropolitan Museum of Art where, as honorary guest, she cut the ribbon for the opening of the Anna Wintour Costume Center and, in time, one day being memorialized in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, Michelle – who, by the way, is black – felt it was fitting to plant a seed in the heads African-American school children about being unwelcome at museums. At the dedication of the new Whitney Museum, here’s what “honored guest” Michelle Obama shared with the kiddies:
You see, there are so many kids in this country who look at places like museums and concert halls and other cultural centers and they think to themselves, well, that’s not a place for me, for someone who looks like me, for someone who comes from my neighborhood. In fact, I guarantee you that right now, there are kids living less than a mile from here who would never in a million years dream that they would be welcome in this museum.
To rectify rampant gallery bias, Michelle challenged color-blind curators to grant children from minority communities free access to America’s museums, because nothing screams long-overdue reparations like a free pass to the MOMA.
From there, Michelle went to Alabama to give a commencement speech where she peppered her racist remarks with the type of bitterness that likely had Tuskegee University founder Booker T. Washington spinning in his grave. After lauding graduates for their accomplishments, Princeton/Harvard alum post-scripted her compliments by adding:
Because here’s the thing -- the road ahead is not going to be easy. It never is, especially for folks like you and me. Because while we’ve come so far, the truth is that those age-old problems are stubborn and they haven’t fully gone away.
Michelle hammered home the “folks like you and me” point by relating her and Barack’s experiences:
We’ve both felt the sting of those daily slights throughout our entire lives -- the folks who crossed the street in fear of their safety; the clerks who kept a close eye on us in all those department stores; the people at formal events who assumed we were the “help” -- and those who have questioned our intelligence, our honesty, even our love of this country.
And I know that these little indignities are obviously nothing compared to what folks across the country are dealing with every single day -- those nagging worries that you’re going to get stopped or pulled over for absolutely no reason; the fear that your job application will be overlooked because of the way your name sounds; the agony of sending your kids to schools that may no longer be separate, but are far from equal; the realization that no matter how far you rise in life, how hard you work to be a good person, a good parent, a good citizen -- for some folks, it will never be enough.
Based on those kinds of comments, clearly it’s the FLOTUS’s mission to nurture resentment on one side of the skin-color spectrum and pile misappropriated guilt on the other.
And on the eve of the 60th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education, the law that banned segregation in US public schools, while visiting the Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site in Topeka, Kansas, racial rancor is exactly what Mrs. Obama tried to cultivate.
Just as she did at Tuskegee U, while speaking to high school graduates in Topeka the first lady couched her comments in praise. First she told the grads that they were “beautiful…handsome…talented…smart,” and diverse. Then Michelle divisively pointed out to the group “Maybe your ancestors have been here in Kansas for centuries. Or maybe, like mine, they came to this country in chains.”
In a bizarre coincidence, the White House photographer even took a photo of a towering Michelle standing under a sign that read “Colored” while the Caucasian tour director stood under a sign that read “White.”
Clearly undeterred by criticism over the content and tone of her Tuskegee speech, in Topeka Michelle lamented that despite progress, school segregation still exists today:
Our laws may no longer separate us based on our skin color, but nothing in the Constitution says we have to eat together in the lunchroom or live together in the same neighborhoods. There’s no court case against believing in stereotypes or thinking that certain kinds of hateful jokes or comments are funny.
Besides making white children feel guilty for their ancestral heritage, what’s apparent here is that this is a first lady devoted to making racial victims out of black women in shopping centers, black men hailing cabs, and black children passing museums. Not to mention the FLOTUS reminding black college grads daring to revel in their achievements that “…no matter how far you rise in life… for some folks” -- namely white folks -- “it will never be enough.”
Which, oddly, is the same prejudicial posture a black woman now living in the White House has assumed toward the white folks she claims aren’t doing enough.
Jeannie hosts a blog at www.jeannie-ology.com