Posted on 02/22/2008 9:25:40 PM PST by GVnana
Michelle Obama thesis was on racial divide
By: Jeffrey Ressner
Feb 22, 2008 04:20 PM EST
Updated: February 22, 2008 08:07 PM EST
Michelle Obama's senior year thesis at Princeton University, obtained from the campaign by Politico, shows a document written by a young woman grappling with a society in which a black Princeton alumnus might only be allowed to remain "on the periphery." Read the full thesis here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.
"My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my 'blackness' than ever before," the future Mrs. Obama wrote in her thesis introduction. "I have found that at Princeton, no matter how liberal and open-minded some of my white professors and classmates try to be toward me, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as if I really don't belong. Regardless of the circumstances underwhich I interact with whites at Princeton, it often seems as if, to them, I will always be black first and a student second."
The thesis, titled "Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community" and written under her maiden name, Michelle LaVaughn Robinson, in 1985, has been the subject of much conjecture on the blogosphere and elsewhere in recent weeks, as it has been "temporarily withdrawn" from Princeton's library until after this year's presidential election in November. Some of the material has been written about previously, however, including a story last year in the Newark Star Ledger.
Obama writes that the path she chose by attending Princeton would likely lead to her "further integration and/or assimilation into a white cultural and social structure that will only allow me to remain on the periphery of society; never becoming a full participant."
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
I came from a Prep School made up of the kids from the richest families in my town and while many were snotty, very few were dumb though ironically as nature would have it some of the obviously dumbest came from the richest families. One is CEO of his family’s private company which ranks on Forbes 100 largest private companies....billions. His daddy always said...hire bright folks son...lol
So when I got to college, I was already used to National Merit Scholar types being everywhere and was actually less challenged in early years. But I bet if I had gone to a fancy school with higher SAT/ACT entry minimums it would have been like you described.
Today we front load kids into college and the drop out is huge. Here in Tennessee, we provide basically free everything the first year, they will take almost anyone in the lower colleges and the drop out rate is extraordinary...60-70% I believe. What a waste of tax money and creates a bloated university.
I doubt smart kids get challenged much either.
An affirmative action kid in the late 70s or early 80s could have been intimidated by Princeton I’d guess. I lived with a Colombia doctoral student and Barnard professor and her crowd were smart but more nerdy and insulated than anything...and liberal and well off. She was an heiress, there was no pressure to succeed but she did.
Michelle seems to just suffer from old fashioned low self esteem and blames the world. That is a cornerstone of what makes liberals what they are.
We have a few black families here and there around here. A renown heart surgery family, Titans, real estate folks, some of the old antebellum freedmen/mulatto merchant class black families still here....anyhow....all successful.
I can tell you because I know them and my kids play ball and go to school with their’s.
They don’t hang in the hood. They hang with us.
That’s life.
That doesn’t mean they might not have kinfolk in Sugar Ditch they still get on with but they have assumed what would be called white upper middle class lifestyle.
But...a big but.......many still vote Dem. I’ve seen no evidence that wealth changes that.
What a waste of tax money and creates a bloated university.
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Government education is jobs program for those with modest talent. It exists for the teachers, not necessarily for the student.
Seriously? Or are you joking? I downloaded last night, but haven’t had a chance to read the whole thing yet.
No huge surprise. How unoriginal. This will not help hubby.
I’m serious. Introduction, page 1, she anticipates being a black man after graduation.
I’ll check it out. If true, it would explain the rumors about Barack. ;)
She has commented on understanding the phenomenon of successful Blacks never feeling good enough because of their low test scores. One can only imagine her SAT and LSAT results before her Ivy League law school training as well.
Was Michelle Obama an ethnic studies major, or perhaps women’s studies? Ethnic victimization is what they are taught. I know a young woman who was an ethnic studies major at University of WA, she was taking a required course in minorities in the military. The whole course consisted of one paper on the experience of some member of your family in the military. I told her that should be easy, she could write about her uncle and the Bataan Death March. She smiled and said, thats not what they are looking for.
Yes, she intends to be an alumnus, not an alumna.
This is a Princeton thesis, so I must assume she meant what she wrote.
hehehe
As you can see from her senior thesis, she majored in sociology with a minor in African studies.
This is horrible writing and atrocious grammar for a supposed Ivy-League thesis.
I'm surprised the "alumnus" reference wasn't corrected. There really isn't any accepted use of it for a woman. Shoddy.
That was my thought. This is the work of a student about to graduate from an Ivy League University? I would expect this or better from a high school student.
Heck, the same sentence has a dangling participle and a misused semicolon, too.
I think the whole thesis is appalling, but I’m not so sure that the ‘alumnus’ reference isn’t common practice.
Just as ‘man’ is sometimes used to include men and women, I believe that alumnus is used as a generic reference to the broader category of male and/or female alums. (And ‘actors’ to include actors and actresses, etc.)
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