Time for another vacay!
Posted on 05/09/2015 4:42:55 PM PDT by jazusamo
Michelle Obama gave a candid view Saturday of the challenges and emotional toll of being the country’s first black first lady.
Obama, speaking to graduates at Tuskegee University in Alabama, described insensitive media questions and derogatory remarks from political pundits that she said have kept her up at night.
“You might remember the on-stage celebratory fist bump between me and my husband after a primary win that was referred to as a ‘terrorist fist jab,’ ” she said.
“And over the years, folks have used plenty of interesting words to describe me. One said I exhibited ‘a little bit of uppity-ism.’ Another noted that I was one of my husband’s ‘cronies of color.’ Cable news once charmingly referred to me as ‘Obama’s Baby Mama.’ ”
Obama said she was subjected to a different set of expectations on the campaign trail in 2008 compared with other candidates’ wives.
“ ‘What kind of First Lady would I be? What kinds of issues would I take on?’ … The truth is, those same questions would have been posed to any candidate’s spouse,” she said.
“But, as potentially the first African-American First Lady, I was also the focus of another set of questions and speculations; conversations sometimes rooted in the fears and misperceptions of others. Was I too loud, or too angry, or too emasculating? Or was I too soft, too much of a mom, not enough of a career woman?”
In the end, she said, she realized all the negativity was just “noise.”
Obama encouraged the graduates of Tuskegee, a historically black university, to overcome adversity and discrimination by staying “true to the most real, most sincere, most authentic parts of yourselves.”
People “will make assumptions about who they think you are based on their limited notion of the world,” she said. “My husband and I know how frustrating that experience can be. We’ve both felt the sting of those daily slights throughout our entire lives. … And all of that is going to be a heavy burden to carry.”
“But,” she said, “those feelings are not an excuse to just throw up our hands and give up. They are not an excuse to lose hope. To succumb to feelings of despair and anger only means that in the end, we lose.”
Well, believe me, it’s been tough on US too. And darned expensive. You can leave any time, Mrs. O.
You’re absolutely right.
What else are they? Distinguished, accomplished people? They are nothing but tokens, and it has been a disaster...
Oh, the huge manatee!
Time for another vacay!
Jackie Robinson didn’t have it nearly as hard as poor Michelle!
Not me. AFAIK, Ms. Obama isn’t threatening to return for a second residence in the White House.
I’m sure all that stress can be lifted with another fabulous taxpayer-funded vacation.
“What kinds of issues would I take on?”
Certainly not breeding welfare bastards for cash or social promotion by which blacks are awarded diplomas and degrees with second-grade English & math skills...
Right On!! LOL!
And I can think of a few black people her party strung up that probably would have preferred tropical island vacations as well..
Is she welcoming of being in the wax museums?
Pardon my language but it’s pure BS~~
She lost, then, didn’t she.
“pure teen spirit”
There’s a lot of that going around these past few years.
Look at the thread just above: American woman purportedy accompanying Rangers on combat missions and trading recipes with Afghan women. Or knitting them. Who knows.
How many hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars has she spent on her vacays?
mooch said today that blacks have been invisible for decades! Sorta like mooch being invisible at that $300K year chicago hospital job.
T’was a poor choice for a fine instuition to hire her to come and speak. They should have gotten from a different gene pool to really challenge their graduates.
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