Many people seemed to be moved by Michelle Obama’s speech last night. Political figures regularly go through the motions of presenting themselves as “regular” people, but as I watched Michelle’s speech last night, I felt frustrated that ultimately her task was greater: she had to convince a great deal of Americans that the color of her skin did not mean she was not an American. Black folks have been here since this country’s birth, fighting in every conflict since the Revolutionary War. Yet here was Michelle Obama on stage, attempting to convince the country that she is a person, like everyone else.
It’s an infuriating image: The Harvard and Princeton grad who is forced to, in some sense, apologize for achieving what every family wants and works for the children to have, merely because the fact of her blackness causes anxiety in the same people who have claimed for years that all black folks need to do is “work hard” to succeed. And yet when women like Michelle Obama do succeed, they’re supposed to minimize their accomplishments so that certain people don’t feel insulted by their success. The talking heads never ask why, because white anxiety about black self-determination is self-justifying, even in 2008. Meanwhile, John McCain runs solely on his biography, as the press sits in a rapturous silence. “I used to be a POW” will not reverse the housing crisis, it will not bring health care to the uninsured, it will not regulate the credit card industry, it will not prevent the government from taking your laptop or tapping your phone with no evidence of wrongdoing. But you wouldn’t know that from watching CNN.
Then you have those like Marie Cocco, who remarked in May that the sexist talking heads who denigrated Hillary would never stand for say, lines of merchandise humiliating Barack Obama because of his race. Where has she been? The answer is in her Op-Ed for the Washington Post today, lamenting that Hillary now has to “do the hard work” of campaigning for her party and her nominee merely because she is a woman. No. Hillary has to work for her party because she is a Democrat who presumably cares about issues of choice, equal pay for equal work, and universal health care. To read Cocco’s writing is to understand that the only worthy cause of the Democratic Party was to elect Hillary Clinton President, and now that this has not occurred, she should not have to suffer the humiliation of working towards those goals she was campaigning on in the first place.
And in a testament to the epic self-absorbtion of Cocco and her like, we have heard nothing but silence about the double-standards facing Michelle Obama, who is no less a woman, and facing no fewer burdens or arbitrary sexist hurdles as Hillary Clinton did in 1992. Gloria Steinem, who guiltlessly appropriated the plight of black women to argue for Hillary’s candidacy in January, has said nothing. These women, as Audre Lorde said to Mary Daly, “merely finger” through the stories of black women to find thoughts that “valuably support an already conceived idea,” namely that sexism is the only remaining social force of any consequence.
Michelle Obama is no less a woman, except in the eyes of the so-called feminists who would use the stories of women like her to further their goals, but have remained silent about her treatment as they continue to complain bitterly about the idea that Hillary Clinton should be obligated to work towards a goal beyond electing herself president. These “feminists” would be in far better company with those on the Right who turned Michelle’s speech last night into a loyalty oath , who see no dissonance in demanding that she prove her she is no less a patriot for being black and claiming that racism is a thing of the past.
We’re living in a different world than the one my parents grew up in, and there will be millions of Americans who saw themselves in Michelle Obama’s story last night, millions more than when my grandfather moved my mother and uncle out of Tampa so they would not have to attend segregated schools. But there are doubtlessly those who wish that wasn’t the case, and as the election continues, they’ll do their best to undo whatever goodwill or understanding those watching last night’s speech came away with.
–A. Serwer
