Charles Blow wrote an excellent piece on Michelle Obama and her appealing to racists, hoping for a shift in perception and position from racists.
His own stance? He wondered why anyone like Michelle Obama-who has absolutely nothing to prove; definitely not about her worth or her legitimacy-seemed to do so in a way that could sound like appeasement.
Read the article, hyperlinked above.
What are your thoughts?
I’ll share mine at my next break.
That was very much was I was thinking Claire – that this speaks to the way that every one of us has absorbed the myth of white supremacy. And even when we know it’s wrong, we will need to work to discover its depths and root it out. And even for those on the receiving end of all of the oppression, there are still visible markers of that permeation.
Oh my yes, the word ‘human’ is telling, but it didn’t jump out at me until you pointed it out. Yet I do understand it is the fundamental issue to be addressed in dismantling white supremacy: our, wp’s, belief, conscious or not, that Black people are not human, or fully human. This was the justification for genocide and enslavement and remains our, wp’s, primary explanation for the issues plaguing Black/non-Black PoC rather than the fall out from our pervasive historic and present day racist systems and structures.
I also see that it is telling that I didn’t connect this initially—something I ‘know’ but haven’t internalized.
She really did utter this weird sentence: “I can’t make people not afraid of black people.” (I watched the video). She has absorbed the commonplace that non-race people, white people, are “people.” And others have to be identified w/a descriptor, “black people,”as if they are not quite people and need a qualifier to be in the people category. This is our everyday speaking. It trips off the tongue. All tongues. Mr Blow is right, all of us – ALL OF US – have absorbed these beliefs. I love Mrs Obama. And my hunch is that if pressed she would say, as Mr Blow does, that the pathology of racism has nothing to do with the behavior of Black people. B/c it doesn’t. The 8 years she lived in the White House, overt racism in the US increased. That racism was irrational, delusional, the same old crappy myths and ignorance that continue to live in Americans’ poisoned minds. We all saw it. The column itself is excellent – Mr Blow writes the truth about the white-managed history of the US. He made a clear response to Mrs Obama’s statement. And I wonder, who was her audience? Who was she talking to? He is right – she should not pin any hopes on her “good human” – ness, and neither should any Black person.
I have started to comment on this several times and have had trouble even knowing where I want to begin.
For me, it doesn’t matter whether Mrs. Obama was speaking to blatent racists or just about her general experience. It saddens me that either case is a woman wondering if her accomplishments will ever make her “good enough” to be considered a human on equal footing in the mind of wht ppl.
We see this questioning of worthiness (respectability politics) whenever a Black person is murdered by police. The question of “is this Black person worthy in the eyes of wht ppl?” must be answered before sympathy can be bestowed. This question is even posed regarding Black children when schools make decisions on how to handle behavior issues or when the legal system asks if they should be tried as an adult.
But is that a good thing?
If so, for whom?
I see Michelle Obama as modeling behavior for those who consider themselves “good” liberal white people rather than those who are more racist than our “us” group.
White people are all too ready to find excuses not to do the work and having someone like Michelle Obama ignore or express anger towards people who are hateful to her would be perceived as giving us permission to disengage from the work of anti racism. So she puts herself in the way of psychic harm, possibly even physical harm, by standing as an example of what “going high” means.
I was so incredibly hit in the chest by this paragraph:
“Asserting that there is a behavioral cure for racism simply supports the inverse argument: that there was a behavioral cause for it. Blaming white racism on black people’s behavior is an intellectual violence. It’s a crime.”
No, it’s not news as such. But as someone who grew up with the racism around me justified through this exact, criminal, intellectual violence, this is hitting me in all the subconscious soft spots.
It’s something I want to add to my mantra as I fight the temptation to rationalize and especially tone police.
I absolutely agree with the premise that not one black person should concern themselves with what my white self or our white selves thinks of them. But because that’s not the world we live in, *I* need to deeply and constantly concern myself with what and how I think about black people. Because how I was raised is NOT good enough, and it’s still with me just in my blind spot more than I like to remember.
I will also quietly suggest that culling away ‘racist’ white people from, I would suppose, the majority of whites who are not racist is a myth.
One of the tenets of Lace on Race is that *everyone* is racist. Nobody escapes the indoctrination. No one deserves the hubris of externalizing.
Particularly not white people, despite any self conferred carevouts of progressivism or social/internal evolution.
The crux, for me is this quote, and what’s embedded in it:
“I can’t explain what’s happening in your head, but maybe if I show up every day as a human, a good human … maybe, just maybe, that work will pick away at the scabs of your discrimination.”
The part about a ‘good human’.
We are not seen as *just* human.
Further, we are not seen as *fully* human.
‘Human’ should need neither qualifier nor modifier.
Whites lay exclusive claim to that privilege.
As I’ve learned here, I agree with him. As a white person, I need to lift up Black voices. White people won’t listen to Black people, and that includes me. I and other white people listen to other white people because we trust and care for each other more than we care about Black people because of being anti-Black.
Hmmm…
I didn’t hear Michelle Obama appealing to racists. I heard her saying that she just lives her life, does what she needs to do and that she does it not in hopes of changing racists, of getting us to stop being afraid of Black people because it’s not in her power to do that, but she suggests that perhaps a byproduct of racists observing her work might be that the lies about Black pathology and inferiority will be diminished enough that they will begin to see clearly.
That being said, I agree with Mr. Blow’s assessment. I agree that Black achievement will not change the minds of racists because the idea of white supremacy and the myths of Black inferiority and pathology were developed to justify racist policies and practices–not because of some observable facts. They’re lies. Intentional and deliberate. Evidence to the contrary won’t be considered or received because the lies need to stand in order to maintain the white favoring systems and structures.
I’m also wondering about the idea of Black people never entertaining thoughts about how racists are perceiving them. That seems like an important and necessary thing to keep in mind while trying to live/survive in our racist system.
(I’m having a hard time thinking this through because I didn’t understand Michell Obama the same way Mr. Blow did.)
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