Michelle Obama will be Amerca’s first black first lady, but how black can she be? There is an excellent post about this at Womanist Musings. Here is some of it (the bold lettering is mine):
To remain the idol of all, Michelle must deny, or create as invisible, any aspect of her identity that is uniquely African American. For acceptability to be maintained she must keep the conversation on a level that whites can feel comfortable with at all times; otherwise she will be reduced to an “exotic other” in an effort to discipline her into performing.
….
This is where the disconnect begins; to prosper and function one must necessarily adopt the behaviour patterns of those that are most able to help you succeed, but the cost is losing a true connection to African American culture. It means performing for others and saving your true self for more private moments.
….
Though Michelle is now held up as a representative of black womanhood, it is a false designation because her class status will not allow her to publicly display her African American culture without being attacked. She is a slave to the very concept of the post racial world that she and her husband tried so valiantly to declare. Throughout the entirety of her husband’s tenure as President she must remain an enigma; shifting from situation to situation.
….
Acceptability and representing black womanhood comes at a cost. How can she ever be her true self as long as we continue to deny that there is a difference between Black America and White America? Culture and class combine to ensure that a successful person of color will forever perform on a stage that is not of their own choosing.
Read the whole thing at Womanist Musings: Michelle Obama and the Politics of Shifting.
See also:
Thu 4 Dec 2008 at 02:06:22
Long, drawn out, well-articulated posts like the one you linked above from the Womanist Musings blog show how friggin’ race-obsessed this nation is. Even more specific than race, we live in a nation that is morbidly fixated on blackness. Ever since the Obamas have been in the picture, it’s always just been about race with everyone. Not their education, their backgrounds, their distinctive personalities. Nope. Just how their blackness funnels everything. It’s crazy.
Thu 4 Dec 2008 at 13:05:23
Race is the Great American Hang Up.
Thu 4 Dec 2008 at 14:57:44
I read the Womanist screed. As far as I can tell, what Womanist is saying is that if a black person doesn’t exhibit some modicum of authentic “ghetto culture” (her words, not mine), then that black person is losing his/her identity as an authentic Black Person. Give me a break.
By the way, I was amused to see Womanist refer to a media “preoccupation” with Michelle Obama’s butt, while linking to a single actual media article, a rather obscure piece in Salon by Erin Aubry Kaplan (a black woman journalist who has a history of writing about black women’s butts) and a single blog. I’d hardly call that a “preoccupation,” but it does speak to the level at which Womanist’s viewpoint on this matter is distorted from reality.
Thu 4 Dec 2008 at 15:28:19
She does state things too simply – there is more than just white middle-class culture and black ghetto culture, for example – but her main point is sound. It is something many black people face, especially at work.
Fri 5 Dec 2008 at 16:25:58
Code switching is something many non-black people face, too, especially at work. I could cite dozens of examples, such as the San Francisco news anchor who spent untold hours in college trying to learn how to speak without his West Virginia twang; the gay man trying to show bonhomie at the water cooler when his male colleagues remark about how hot a female co-worker looks; etc. I recognize that black people, in general, face the issue more often and more profoundly that white. Also, there is the fact that a black person cannot “code switch” the color of his skin, which skin color in turn often invites heightened scrutiny from superiors at work, thus making the code-switching issue more acute. But it is a question of degree.
Sat 6 Dec 2008 at 03:32:01
Race is the Great American Hang Up.
If it weren\’t, Barry Soetoro would be nowhere near the White House (or indeed, Washington) right now. In fact, no one outside of Hyde Park would have ever heard of him.
Sat 6 Dec 2008 at 18:56:59
Ever since the Obamas have been in the picture, it’s always just been about race with everyone. Not their education, their backgrounds, their distinctive personalities. Nope. Just how their blackness funnels everything.
That\’s because they owe their education, their backgrounds, every step of their careers to their race (more to the point, to the dominant racial attitudes of whites). Their blackness funneled them all the way to the White House.
Sat 6 Dec 2008 at 23:18:49
As for the Womanist\’s screed, she needn\’t worry. Mrs. O is doing a very poor job (if any) of disguising her true self.
Sun 7 Dec 2008 at 00:55:20
That would explain why most American presidents are white – “the dominant racial attitudes of whites”.
Sun 7 Dec 2008 at 03:46:13
That would explain why the very first time that a somewhat plausible black candidate run, he won overwhelmingly.
Not the only reason, obviously — another one being the utter wretchedness and cluelessness of his punch-pulling opponent — but one of the main ones.
Sun 7 Dec 2008 at 03:54:04
I expect Kenya (and Indonesia) will reciprocate by electing white presidents now.
Sun 7 Dec 2008 at 13:11:46
nonserviam, you said:
As for the Womanist\’s screed, she needn\’t worry. Mrs. O is doing a very poor job (if any) of disguising her true self.
What are some examples of this?
Sun 7 Dec 2008 at 13:14:18
nonserviam, you said:
That would explain why the very first time that a somewhat plausible black candidate run, he won overwhelmingly.
How do you know he was “plausible” – like a year ago before he started winning states? How do you tell a plausible black candidate from an implausible one? It seems like your reasoning begs the question.
Sun 7 Dec 2008 at 21:42:34
any black woman in a white-orientated world, has to hide any cultral pride to get by. sorry thats just the way it is. I love a traditional west Indian dish called sous, mad of either pig cheek, or trotters but if i admit that in a society where whiteness is the norm, i will be looked at as depraved. go figure!
I love the fact that Michelle is in the postion she is in, a sucessful career woman with a loving family, she is like a shining beacon!
Tue 9 Dec 2008 at 00:27:01
For anyone who ever wondered just how much more likely blacks or are than whites to commit various crimes, the answers are here.
It takes hard work to pry the facts out of the reluctant grip of federal crime databases. But the results are eye-opening:
Blacks are just 13 percent of the population but they commit more than half the muggings and murders in the country.
The proportion of blacks in an area is the single best indicator of how dangerous it is. The racial mix is a much better predictor of crime rates than poverty, unemployment, and dropout rates combined.
Although Jesse Jackson and Bill Cosby wring their hands over black-on-black mayhem, blacks actually commit more violent crime against whites than blacks. A black is about 39 times more likely to do violence to a white than the other way around, and no less than 130 times more likely to rob a white.
And yes, everyone’s suspicions about rape are correct: Every year there are about 15,000 black-on-white rapes but fewer than 900 white-on-black rapes. There are more than 3,000 gang rapes of whites by blacks—but white-on-black gang rapes are so rare they do not even show up in the statistics.
There is plenty more—but just as interesting will be how the Mainstream Media will treat these facts.
Back in 1999, we released an earlier, less detailed version of this report. [PDF] Even before publication, the Associated Press, Time, CBS Evening News, National Public Radio, Knight-Ridder, and the Washington Times wanted copies. A dozen other media organizations, including the Washington Post, attended the press conference with which we launched the report. At the same time, we arranged to have copies delivered to more than 450 news organizations with offices in the Washington, DC area.
The result: complete silence—with one exception. The Washington Times ran a substantial story on the report, in which it interviewed several prominent criminologists who confirmed the accuracy of our numbers but said they were too inflammatory to be discussed publicly. [VDARE.COM note: One other exception: Dr. Walter Williams, in his Creator's Syndicate column.]
Maybe no other editors thought people are interested in race and crime.
Or maybe they were afraid people are too interested.
Some years back, a group called Violence Free Duluth in Duluth, Minnesota, studied a year’s worth of the city’s gun crimes. They looked into type of gun used, whether liquor or drugs were involved, the relationship between shooter and victim; age, race, and sex of criminal, etc.
But when they released their report they left one thing out: race of perp.
Frank Jewell, head of the organization, explained that “we didn’t include it because it might be misinterpreted.”
Duluth’s deputy police chief Robert Grytdahl added that race might distract whites from the real problem: “It’s a comfortable place for white people to park the [gun crime] problem. It would be a huge distraction, and we wanted to focus on firearms.” [Duluth Gun, Crime Study Withholds Race Data, [Pay Archive] By Larry Oakes, Minneapolis Star Tribune, April 30, 1999.]
Mr. Jewell and Mr. Grytdahl are saying, almost in so many words, that the people of Duluth can’t be trusted with the truth.
Duluth is about 90 percent white. What if it turned out most of the gun crime was committed by the other 10 percent?
Someone might think Duluth has, not a gun problem, but a minority problem.
When an organization deliberately suppresses its findings like this, it is not doing research: it is putting out propaganda.
It is impossible to know whether the national media suppressed the findings in our earlier report or just didn’t think they were newsworthy. But if they thought no one was interested in race and crime they were wrong. Radio talk show hosts greeted the report with shouts of joy.
Over the years, I have spoken on hundreds of radio programs. But no other subject has ever caught the attention of hosts and listeners the way this one did.
Over and over, I was asked to stay on the program longer than scheduled because listeners could not get enough. Producers called up a week later and had me back again because listeners demanded it. Some producers even called because they had heard me on a rival station and wanted a piece of the ratings bonanza.
Most whites lose the power of speech when the subject is race, but they can tuck right into a purely factual discussion of crime rates. Everybody—and I mean everybody—knows blacks commit crime way out of proportion to their numbers. People want to know just how way out the proportions are.
Needless to say, some listeners didn’t want to hear that blacks are in jail for robbery at 15 times the white rate. A surprising number of black callers claimed our “racist” white government cooks the statistics. Most white callers said one of two things: either that I was “racist” or that I was brave. (Somehow, no one ever thought I was a brave racist.)
It is a sorry day in America when you are either brave or racist if you dig up and publicize crime data the Department of Justice has been collecting for decades.
The main point of the “racism” accusation was that, even if the numbers were true, publicizing them only encourages other “racists” and feeds stereotypes. This is the Frank Jewell argument: White people can’t be trusted with the facts.
Of course, the Internet makes it hard to keep facts under the rug. People know the big media are full of pablum; that’s why they come to sites like VDARE.COM and my own American Renaissance.
In fact, more and more people are laughing outright at mainstream prudery. When I talked about crime on the radio, talk-show hosts were exultant: “You didn’t read about this in the Baltimore Sun did you? That’s right, folks, this is where you get the real news.”
This time around, it would be pleasant if AP or the LA Times wrote about The Color of Crime.
But we’re not counting on it.
The internet and talk radio will get the word out—and big media will sink just a little further in the minds of people who are tired of being told they can’t be trusted with the truth.
Tue 9 Dec 2008 at 00:47:36
@Nicole,
Stop trolling, you’re no different from other trolls that have come on here spouting ridiculous bigoted statistics.
Tue 9 Dec 2008 at 18:02:15
\”Bigoted statistics\”. Love it. Can the facts be bigoted?
Tue 9 Dec 2008 at 18:07:32
abagond #12:
The \”For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am proud of my country\” moment. The \”\’they\’ (sinister \’they\’) keep raising the bar\” moment. The \”Barack will make you work\” moment. All adding up to the air of baseless entitlement and even more baseless resentment.
Tue 9 Dec 2008 at 18:10:48
abagond #13:
Plausible, as in having at least an apperance of substance. I.e. not a crude race racketeer of the Jackson/Sharpton variety, but a clean and articulate (to quote his VP) one.
Tue 9 Dec 2008 at 19:58:08
Nicole #15:
This thread is not about race and crime. While the article you apparently copy-and-pasted is correct in its assertions, spamming a thread with unrelated material is bad form.
Wed 10 Dec 2008 at 09:52:13
Race and crime is an excellent subject but it has nothing to do with this post or the comments that came before it. Nicole’s comment is borderline spam.
Wed 10 Dec 2008 at 09:57:38
Bigoted statistics: the facts themselves are not bigoted, but their selection, arrangement and interpretation can be.