Posted on 04/08/2023 9:43:40 AM PDT by simpson96
Michelle Obama says being “othered” as a child helped propel her aim to be “the best first lady.”
“We cannot pretend that kids don’t see when they’re being devalued, because anytime it happened to me as early as kindergarten, I knew it,” Obama told David Letterman in a preview clip from Audible’s “Michelle Obama: The Light Podcast,” obtained exclusively by ITK.
The full podcast episode is poised to be released on Tuesday.
“I knew in second grade that the second grade teacher thought we were all dumb and not worth it because she didn’t organize the class. She wasn’t giving us homework,” Obama said, adding that the educator “didn’t think the kids she was teaching were worthy.”
(snip)
“The world has made me practice liking myself. And that is a tool for young people: You cannot wait for somebody to see you. Because first of all, there are people who don’t even know you exist. They don’t even know your pain. They don’t know your struggle,” she said.
“This just isn’t race,” Obama told Letterman, “This is if you’re poor, if you live outside in a rural county, if you are not in the best school system, if you are a woman. There are many ways to be othered in this world. And for some of us, when it happens, it breaks us.”
Instead, Obama said it fueled her work in the White House and the launch of her “Let’s Move!” anti-childhood obesity and “Joining Forces” military families initiatives.
“For me, I just happen to be that smart aleck kid that was like, ‘Oh, I’ll show you. I will show you. You doubt me, I’ll work harder,’” she exclaimed.
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
My mother taught second grade. For 35 years.
There are very few kids that she “liked” enough to remember a couple of years after they left her class. But, she taught them all the basics of reading and math.
People are so concerned with feeling liked, they miss the point.
Didn’t help, though.
I risk getting the Peggy Noonan Award for saying this, but I feel sorry for Michelle Obama. She obviously felt patronized and marginalized as a child, and likely as an adult, despite attending Princeton and serving for eight years as “First Lady”. Her bitterness over it has ruined her life, and it shapes her political attitudes. It would be interesting to know whether she came to view herself as looked down upon via her own perceptions, or whether someone gave her the gift of victimhood, resentment, and self-hatred. Most black people have been insulted, belittled, ignored, etc., at some time or the other, and the hurt from that lingers. Fortunately for them, most seem able to rise above it but you can’t see inside peoples’ souls.
English is not my native language. Reading from her remarks in the article is “smarter than smart” right English? I never encounter such an expression. Kind of feel it’s repeated somehow
Once people start thinking they are broken they become broken records and never shut up about it.
Heh, so true.
To the girls, a boy is "other".
Hah! They tried.
They failed.
Miserably.
I’m sure Michael felt “othered” when his Mama made him wear his older brother Craig’s hand-me-downs.
Still “Ghetto “
“They don’t know your struggle”
I’m sure she said it as “shtruggle” It’s always “shtruggle” with her.
Yeah, and she was such a good one too!
I won’t argue with her premise of believing in yourself and not looking for outside validation.
But when she says, “There are people who don’t even know you exist. They don’t even know your pain. They don’t know your struggle”, I say they don’t know of my existence, pain and struggle either but I don’t expect them to and don’t care.
And no one needs to be told to think of themselves as an “other”. That is not inspiring. It is passing the buck.
What a failure.
Over the years, I have come to understand the meaning of the word marginalized to actually mean…adds nothing and contributes no positive value to the group
She was one of the worst. A grifter.
“othered”
Just like black people can’t be “racist”, white people can’t be “othered”, in their world.
I have never heard of anyone with such a chip on their shoulder. She’s really had a tough life.
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