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.”
PS Like the graffiti on the bathroom wall: `My mother made me a whore.’
Just below that,
`Can she make me one?’
After she charmingly called her husband a "baby daddy."
Oh boo f’n hoo!! Shut up, wookie!
She’s waited on hand and foot. Cry us all a river. It’s a big party out here, Moosaka.
I can well imagine the emotional price she's paying: so many buckets of lobsters and bottles of champagne, yet so little time.
Did you bother to spend 15 seconds and read her Princeton "thesis"?
Okay, maybe it takes a minute and 15 seconds...
Oh boo-—hoooo.....for crying out loud she needs to stop playing the victim...she knew full well what she was taking on.
Disgusting that she continues to fuel race and it’s all about her. She fully exposes the black mindset...never able to stand on their own without blaming others rather than look at what they’re doing themselves.
When she first came out with some of those awful outfits she wore, as if we were destined to accept this as representing our first lady....she was nuts to do that and left herself wide open...she always does.
I can’t wait to the day where I never have to see her face in our house anymore! She wasn’t worth the honor, nor did she appreciate it then or now.
STFUB1ch
Damn, I broke the nsa radar. O well.
Into the ovens.
Ditto, ditto and ditto!
Pay back all the $$ you spent on your freakin’ vacations... you ungrateful user/poser!
I did not read her Princeton thesis. I assume from your tone that the thesis was race is everything?
She went to Washington expecting to be honored as the first lady....then she herself blew that all over the place. So no...she needs to quite boo-hooing, but of course won’t happen she’s ‘still’ in the hood mentality mode...blame everyone for not giving you the attention you want.
Poor Pitiful Pearl.
Mooching honey, the next time you are on a taxpayer funded posh trip to some exotic destination with an entourage of hundreds of your leechie, spongie pals; pause for 5 seconds and confess to yourself that an occasional slight, whether real or imagined, is very small potatoes in comparison. Ungrateful wretch!
She’s right Doug. The toll on us has been too much to take...
Knuckle dragging ape can kiss my Lilly white @ss!
Well said...She expected adulation and fully intended to demand it if the praise wasn’t to her liking.
Like her partner she doesn’t hold back, she’s the in-your-face type.
Another noted that I was one of my husband’s ‘cronies of color.’
...
What did she ever do to earn all that money she made at her hospital job? Now she’s making children suffer with her dietary guidelines because she’s a disgusting fat body.
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