Race, America and Michelle Obama, cont'd

Rod, imagine having to negotiate the lines between class, while also being painfully aware that you can never be just you because your race is an ever present reality AND figuring out which of the rules you were taught to live your life by as an african american with a culture and value system which is different than the majority culture need to be abandoned to be successful in the majority cultures, which you should hold on to and trying to figure out at what point you are compromising who you are to succeed or when you're holding yourself back unnecessarily. And if that terrible sentence gives you a headache as you try to navigate it, imagine that this sentence was foundational to your life.

Then imagine extending a little more grace and compassion towards a woman who has lived with this confusion and much, much more her entire life.

"I was talking with a friend today about race and class, and he said that the kind of behavior that many whites identify as "black," in the negative sense, is in truth mostly a function of class. If you factor out economic status, you'll find that lower-class whites have most of the same mores and behaviors associated with them. But it's even harder to talk openly and honestly about class in this country than it is to talk about race."

What a convenient and comforting thing for a white person to believe.

The interesting part of Barack and Michelle Obama's life story is that they met at a top corporate law firm in Chicago. The reason they met was because Michelle was the only African American lawyer at the firm and Barack was the only African American summer associate. So in 1988 or so, she was the only African American lawyer in a firm with probably 300 lawyers. It's almost incomprehensible that in 1988 this giant, national law firm could only have one African American lawyer. Imagine what that experience must have been like.

A good friend of mine is an African American female lawyer. She tells me stories of being the only non-white and only woman in a meeting and that lawyers from other firms assumed she was the secretary. She was often asked to make copies and get coffee by lawyers from other firms because it was incomprehensible that she was actually "one of them." And this was in the late 1990s in Washington, D.C.

So regardless of the level of success, you are constantly reminded that you don't belong, that you don't fit in.

I grew up dirt poor in rural southern Indiana in the 50's and 60's. Think "Hoosiers". Alcoholism was rampant, lots of unemployment, lots of good old fornicating and adultery. I really do have cousins who spent there summer days wearing overalls with no T-shirt just like in the movies. We were lucky that my parents stayed together (though my mother was always sick and we often couldnt afford to have her see a doctor) and we belonged to a very strict independent baptist church where I had wonderful friends. Our faith and our church kept us out of trouble.

After getting out of the military I worked full-time nights and weekends to get through undergrad and (Ivy League) medical school. I worked at a public health center that did a lot of home visits throughout West Philadelphia, nearly all black. I was usually the only white but I had worked with a lot of my fellow workers while we were in the service. Working there was like being back home except the people were black and it was drugs instead of alcohol. Instead of living in rundown houses with rusting cars all around it was big apartment bldgs or rundown rowhomes. The squalor seemed about the same as home . Just like home it was sometimes amazing how the insides of some the homes were immaculate while the outsides were so awful.It did seem a little more violent than home or maybe I just didnt understand the rules as I did get stabbed once and threatened with guns a few times.

In the Ivy league medical school there was certainly a large group of rich kids who seemed kind of intent on proving they were socially superior. They went to Aruba or Europe for their breaks while I worked to pay my bills. The black guys I worked with were actually incredibly supportive and arranged flexible hours for me so I could work less or more as needed. Looking back there was really none of the "crabs in the barrel" kind of thing. I wasnt really bothered that much by the rich kids I think because I was a bit older, married and having been through the service pretty self reliant. It was pretty tough on the "non-rich" kids though as they really were left out of a lot of stuff. Seemed was too much like high school I thought. Interestingly, the rich black and Asian kids hung out with rich white kids on breaks too.

Not sure if that helps you much but my experience (all anecdotal and totally subjective) was that poor whites acted a lot like poor blacks. There was clearly a class stratification in Med school. I suspect that in law school that could be more of an issue and certainly as a young undergrad it had to be an issue.

Steve

I'm white, married, with children. If I were in Africa looking for a birthday card, I'd buy one with a black child on it, give it to one of my white children, and be done with it. To cry about the lack of white birthday cards would be to make something an issue that isn't. There obviously wouldn't be a lot of demand for a card with a white smiling kid, and that would be OK with me.

I don't know... Everyone has issues to overcome. Some people's issues are apparent at first glance (belonging to a "minority race"), others' are less so (lower social class), and some people's are invisible unless you know them well (dysfunctional family of origin). I have sympathy for the difficulties she must have felt and still feels as a trailblazing black woman and so on, but she *is* the wife of a candidate for President of the United States of America, and I will not hold her to a lower standard because of where she comes from in life--that would be racist.

Agreed, Demetrio. I don't fault her for her resentment, and I'll grant that she's had to overcome a lot more than I have. But I'm not running for President or married to someone who is. I don't know how much her anger should play into her husband's electability, but it's not like she's the first potential First Lady whose past and attitudes mattered.

Barack's racialism and personal baggage from being abandoned by his bigamist father are the same way: not his fault, and maybe he's entitled to them, but they're part of what made him who his is (a significant part, to judge by his own book), and part of who he would be as President. That makes them fair game for voters to consider and reporters to ask and write about, unfair as that may seem.

If people had cared more about the known personal baggage of the candidates in the last four elections, maybe our two most recent Presidents wouldn't have been such embarrassments.

As a white, 71 year old woman, I was not offended by her remarks. I realize that blacks have a different view of America and why not after the way they have been treated. Sometimes I find it hard to be proud of America myself, why not her?

Did anyone watch "Eli Stone" this week? The 'B' plot touched on a lot of these issues, and promises to do so more. It's not the best show on TV, but it has consistently, and pleasantly, surprised me.

I'm White, grew up in East Africa. While my parents were there for humanitarian/ rural development purposes, I unconsciously identified with White Africans and with the colonial legacy (which I took to be overwhelmingly positive). We're rich, they're poor, and it has something to do with our culture, class and skin color. But it's OK because we're here to help.

My occasional visits to America did little to endear me to this country-- it had McDonalds, which was nice, but folks were just so self-absorbed and uninteresting that I longed to get back home to Africa as quick as possible. Didn't find America bad so much as I found it lonesome and boring. And thought nothing but the very best of American involvement in my continent.

It wasn't until college (in the US) that I began, very slowly, to self-identify as an American and to think critically about the legacy of colonialism and Western cold-war involvement in Africa. When I realized that my country was accountable for Mobutu and for apartheid; and when I understood how racist, murderous and cruel White colonialism had been; it made me sick and I felt so deeply ashamed of my country and my race that I would've said something along the lines of "I have never had reason to be proud of my country."

When I would return to Africa to visit, I'd spend the whole time feeling miserable-- guilty and ashamed for the ways that my country and my race had abused and were abusing the continent.

I have a more balanced viewpoint now: while we were funding Mobutu's genocides and propping up South Africa's racism, we were also feeding and saving the lives of millions. There's lots to be ashamed of but there's plenty to be proud of as well.

Still, there are times when I'll use-- or at least be tempted to use-- such rhetoric. When Colin Powell brokered the peace accords in southern Sudan my response was at last, I can love my country! although of course there had already been many many many other reasons.

So I don't find Michelle Obama's statement offensive or belittling of America. Of course she has many reasons to be proud of this country and of course she is proud of this country in many ways. But when you've been smothered so long in the bad and finally get a glimpse of the good, the reaction is exactly that sort of hyperbole-- I've never been proud of America before, but now I am! There really is hope for us yet!

Rod,

In answer to your last question, I was raised by a single mom at or below the poverty level most of my childhood (we made it into lower-middle class by my high school years), and ultimately attended Stanford. Actually I was more bitter in grade school: my mom made sure to find housing near good schools, so I was always among kids with substantially higher incomes. Up through middle school I was still getting free breakfasts and lunches, and everyone knew who used the free meal cards and who didn't (the other kids supplemented the not-so-tasty food by paying cash at the snack bar), and (surprise) kids feel free to comment on Goodwill clothing and free cafeteria food. The lowest moment was having to ask in the main office, in front of God and everyone, for the forms for reduced-price AP exams, since Mom couldn't afford the $60 fee per exam, and then watching all but two of the students (me and one other guy) walk out of the AP Physics exam as soon as it started: our high school let you skip the final if you took the AP exam in a subject, and nearly every other kid had paid $60 just to skip the physics final!

At Stanford I didn't feel half so bitter, mostly because college is all about poverty chic, and it was much easier for my background to go unnoticed. I well remember one conversation, though, where several students were discussing the Republican proposal to cut back on the free school lunch program, and there was much discussion about "those people" whose kids had to have free lunches, and what "those people" were like. The superciliousness of it all left me speechless. In many conversations with a friend of mine at Stanford who had also come from a sub-middle-class background (he had been homeless in high school) we couldn't help noticing that for all the Stanford rancor at Republicans who hated the poor, there was no shortage of contempt for things that actually characterize sub-middle class existence, ranging from religious conservatism to being overweight. They felt for the poor there at Stanford; they just didn't like anything about them, nor think there could be any of Them around.

Didn't expect to be cast in the limelight, but I feel honored that you'd find my post thought-provoking.

Rod said: Americans are extremely touchy on the subject of class, and I think we train ourselves to suppress noticing class differences.

Americans tend not to talk about "class," at least in public (after all, we're the land of opportunity where anyone can make it, right?) istm it's more taboo to talk personal finances in the US than anything else.

Interestingly, we in the US don't tend to see run-down shacks next to gated mansions along a street as is the case in some other countries. Instead, rich and poor tend to live segregated existences (leading to weird phenomena such as some dilapidated buildings in the Bronx once having been cheerily painted with false window scenes along the highways taken by commuting suburbanites). Sometimes this segregation coincides with race, sometimes not.

However, istm races/ethnicities often have in-house expectations concerning wealth status/class and the ways in which money is handled. One's class concept is often formed by the ethnic/racial ideology in which one was steeped in childhood. If one bucks the status quo in one's family, whether for better or worse economic station (by choice or happenstance), dealing with comments "from the neighborhood" and feeling one must "prove" onesself are not uncommon... but as some have commented, that does not mean one has to carry that baggage around for life.

fwiw, I am neither sympathetic to nor offended by MO's remarks. I was seeking more to understand what drives/informs her thinking as that will potentially affect us all if her husband is elected.

Amy, the sad part was that the town in which the card was sought was known nationally as a resort town for blacks. The point was the awakening of one person to see things of which she'd previously been unaware in the majority race, not the buying of a card, per se.

Reaganite, I appreciate your final paragraph. I, too, would like to know how specifics on issues such as this will define "change" during a potential Obama presidency.

In my experience, there are no easy rules for this race/class business, but I do think we are deaing mostly with racial issues. What Michelle Obama said is, I believe, a clear reflective of the true feelings of the Obamaa and is more racial than class oriented. Why else go to a black liberation church? I myself am Jewish and my parents grew up very much in poverty, the children of immigrants fleeing Europe. When my father went to a midwestern university shortly after WWII, he met people who were quite surprised to discover that he didn't have horns (no, he wasn't makeing this up), and he found quite a lot of prejudice from the faculty as well. This was all related to religion/race and not class. His reaction to the prejudice was simply to work harder than his fellow Christian classmates, and he held no grudge against America or anyone else. He was grateful to the country for the opportunities he had. My daughter went to a rather high status private high school, one with the usual affirmative action program, so there were a representative number of blacks. She became good friends with a black girl from a middle class family. It was noticeable that most black students hung out with each other most of the time. My daughter's friend was the exception and found a lot of white friends because she was quite insistent on finding friends regardless of their race; she wanted friends of like mind and interests and she wanted no part of any race game. This made her persona non grata for the rest of the blacks at the school. It all seemed quite racial to me and had nothing to do with class. I have seen and read about many other similar examples. All of this tribal stuff has been breaking down very quickly. Just think of the incredible changes in a mere 50 years. That is one reason that it is surprising that the Obamas belong to such a radical church. They try to present a very different picture to America now that he is running for President, but it seems to be quite fraudulent.

I'm sorry, I just don't think it's that tragic if a person can't find a Hallmark card with a minority on the cover. (How hard has she looked?) It's a free country - quit your whining and make the card yourself. If you feel so inclined, start a company that caters to the demand.
The real world can be a lot worse than that. Some people just need thicker skin.

rte,

You are so right! Those 6-yr old kids looking for cards for mommy and daddy should just suck it up and make their own or form their own card company for that matter. The whiny, lazy little deadbeats.

Time to get a thick skin, ye little ones, people like "rte" have spoken, so you'd better listen up, you hear?

Larry Parker:

Sure, every 18- and 19-year old kid away from home experiences a range of strong emotions. Envy can be one of them. But as we grow in maturity and ground ourselves in Gospel values, personal envy is something we work to minimize -- if not eliminate -- in our daily lives.

This thread is about Michelle Robinson Obama's college senior thesis and what it tells us about this woman when she was in early twenties. To what extent did class envy and racial enmity influence the attitudes of this woman BACK THEN? To what extent, if any, does her husband share these attitudes NOW?

These questions are important, I think, because the exploitation of group envy by politicians worldwide has triggered some of the worst atrocities of the past century. In this country, it has lead to corrosive politics and lousy policy. That's why I'm glad this blog is taking a thorough look at this new face in politics -- as well as the person with evidently the greatest influence on him now.