Meet the First Lady: Michelle Obama
by Dr. Jamie Walker
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Beside every good man is a remarkable woman, nourishing his dreams, loving him whole, encouraging him to be the very best that he can be. Before she became “the first lady” or wife of President Barack Obama, Michelle LaVaughn Robinson was a highly-powered, female executive, working at Sidley Austin, a prestigious law firm in Chicago, Illinois.
Her husband, the first African American President of the U.S., considers her to be “the rock of our family” and “the love of my life.”
“Michelle grounds me,” says Barack. “She is my reality check. She knows my strengths. She knows my weaknesses. And what I rely, more than anything on her for, is a constant reminder of why we do this . . . . She makes me laugh [and] sees the humor in situations when I might be taking myself too seriously.”
Michelle Obama is Barack Obama’s closest advisor and best-friend. In many ways, she provides the sense of stability and balance in his life that he desperately sought when he was a young man -- first in Hawaii and later New York City -- searching for community, a sense of identity, as well as meaning and “belonging” in the world.
Michelle not only keeps Barack balanced, she also encourages him to stay focused on his primary duties at home.
Barack explains, “She’s not somebody who looks to the limelight or is even wild about me being in politics. And that’s a good reality check on me. When I go home, she wants me to be a good father and a good husband. And everything else is secondary to that.”
In Michelle’s world, politics and career are second to her children and family. Work does not define her; it only gives her inspiration to do just things. At the end of the day, what Michelle finds most pleasurable is spending quality time at home with her children and her loved ones.
“What I do in my life defines me,” says Michelle. “And a career is one of the many things that I do in my life. I am a mother first. Where do I get my joy and energy first and foremost? From my kids.”
Even before Barack began his successful campaign for the U.S. senate, Michelle was determined to keep politics separate from family life. This would help to ensure the sacredness of their union and their bond with their two beautiful daughters, Sasha and Malia.
Even though it has been taxing trying to strike a balance between work, motherhood, family, and, most recently, her husband’s campaign, Michelle knows that she does not live in a vacuum and is not alone.
“I enjoy the balance of having a job and having a set of projects and feeling like I have time to make sure that I’m in the girls’ lives, making sure that we have time as a family,” Michelle told Barbara Walters in a recent interview.
“I mean, that’s a full plate. I don’t view myself as being in a position where I’m twiddling my thumbs and wondering how I’m going to get through the day. I’ve never experienced that in my life.”
In a similar interview with CNN correspondent Soledad O’ Brien, Michelle notes, “I am doing what most women are doing regardless of their race or their socio-economic status. I’m juggling and struggling to keep my head above water . . . .
And if we’re struggling, just imagine what’s going on with folks who are getting up working shift jobs where they don’t have the flexibility to go see their kids’ ballet performances, where they don’t get sick days off, where they don’t have health insurance, [or] access to quality and affordable health care. Women and families are drowning and what I’d like to do is bring voice to the direction that we need to be going.”
As first lady, Michelle aims to strengthen the lives of American families and help to better the conditions of both women and children around the world.
The daughter of working class parents who relocated from the South to the North as part of the Great Migration, Michelle Obama, who was born on January 17, 1961, in her native Chicago, has always been known for her tenacity and highly organizational skills. She grew up in a racist and sexist patriarchy where segregation was legalized and large populations of both Blacks and people of color were disenfranchised.
Michelle was not yet born when, in 1955, fourteen year old Emmett Till was lynched and murdered in Money, Mississippi for winking at a white woman, or when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white patron on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama.
Michelle was only two years old when Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech from the footsteps of the Lincoln Memorial. While she was not an actual participant in the Civil Rights movement (or the struggle for racial and social equality in searing 1960’s), she benefited from the teachings and sacrifices of her elders, those brave souls and warrior spirits, who walked before her to make her journey, and the successful campaign of her husband, a little bit smoother.
Fiercely determined as a little girl, Michelle participated in gifted and honors programs all throughout elementary, junior, and high school. At Whitney M. Young, a magnet high school in Chicago, Michelle served as class treasurer and excelled in her studies.
After graduating from high school in 1981, Michelle would later go on to Princeton University, where she graduated magna cum laude in 1985, studying both sociology and African American studies. Her senior thesis discussed the sense of alienation Black students felt on predominately white college campuses.
Michelle knew all too well the sense of marginalization people of color faced on a daily basis. She remembers, for instance, her white college roommate, Catherine Donnelly, who was shocked upon being assigned to live with a Black undergraduate.
Donnelly’s mother is noted for having complained to Princeton’s administration at the time that “it wasn’t right for Blacks and whites to live together.”
Some of Donnelly’s family members even encouraged Donnelly “to leave Princeton.”
Even though Donnelly’s “racial attitudes” have changed over time, and Michelle Robinson excelled at Harvard, eventually graduating in 1988, the type of criticism and backlash that Michelle has received over the years– simply because of her race or her sex – has not necessarily waned.
Michelle was at first discouraged by high school counselors from attending Princeton. She was, similarly, discouraged by college counselors from attending Harvard Law School. Naysayers and non-believers claimed that her scores weren’t good enough or that she could not meet the rigorous demands of higher education.
The excuses that Michelle received, however, were not enough to stop her resilient and talented spirit from accomplishing her dreams.
After graduating from Harvard, Michelle went to work for Sidley Austin, a prestigious law firm in Chicago. It was there that she met a summer intern by the name of Barack Obama, who was assigned to be her mentee.
As most people already know, Barack was attracted to his mentor. He flirted with Michelle and although Michelle did not, at first, approve of “inter-office dating,” she was eventually won over by his wit, intelligence, absolute devotion, tender loving care, and charm. They married four years later and the rest is herstory.
One year before she married Barack, Michelle founded a non-profit organization called “Public Allies Chicago,” which “identifies talented young adults from diverse backgrounds and prepares them for careers working for community and social change.”
Michelle founded the non-profit after her brief stint at Sidley Austin. She realized that corporate law was not her calling. She found more joy in community service and community outreach, as well as empowering young people to succeed.
In 1996, Michelle served as Associate Dean of Student Services at the University of Chicago, where she worked “to establish the University's first community service program.” Later, she became Vice President of Community and External Affairs for the University of Chicago’s Medical Center.
Sophisticated and sharp, Michelle has eloquence, intelligence, immaculate beauty, and style to match. She is a trendsetter, a staunch list-maker, and a go-getter.
Michelle has what her husband calls “the wow factor”—not just because she is a stunning first lady or his closest ally, but because she is accomplished in her own right. She possesses integrity, an admirable spirit of resistance, and is a keen observer of life, able to make wise decisions under tough circumstances and to meet problems head on before they become out of control.
In her biography entitled Michelle, Luz Mundy claims that Michelle Obama is, in many ways, “an old-fashioned person, a woman who longs for a traditional, intact family around the table and sees herself as a mother—first and foremost.”
“I’m not going to miss a ballet recital,” Michelle says. “I’m not going to make [the girls] move their world around to accommodate me and Barack. We have to do the accommodating.”
Mundy praises Michelle’s traditional family values, as well as her “quick and wicked sense of humor,” her “gusto” and her charm.
“She is a better boss than employee,” says Mundy. “She likes to be in charge and does not like her time to be wasted . . . . She is the person her husband trusts to be his radar about people . . . and she is said to be an extremely loyal friend.”
Those who know Michelle understand that she is a woman of conviction. She has courage and charisma. However, her “limelight” in the press has not been without criticism. She’s been called “unpatriotic” for revealing that she’s finally proud of her country, who longs to live up to her true democratic ideals by replacing hope over fear, change over the stagnant status-quo. And she’s also been called “angry” (specifically, an “angry black woman”) whenever she spoke up for herself or husband, aiming to set the record straight before the wrong words about her or the first African American president were etched in stone.
Luz Mundy notes that it is partially due to her “multifaceted personality,” or image in the press, that Michelle decided to grant several interviews with notable magazines. Granting the interviews, Lundy claims, allowed Michelle the opportunity to “explain Barack” while humanizing the both of them at the same time.
While Michelle has never been swayed or discouraged by negative images that have appeared of her in the press (mainly, while her husband was campaigning for the presidency), it doesn’t mean that the racist or sexist images that the American public were bombarded with weren’t offensive, hurtful, or downright ridiculous.
Like several women before her who have been “skewered in the press,” journalist K. Emily Bond claims that Michelle has resisted negative tabloids. Commenting about the depiction of Michelle in the July 21st edition of The New Yorker “as Afro-ed, dressed in military fatigue, and carrying an AK-47,” an image (according to artist Barry Britt) that was supposed “to evoke the likeness of Angela Davis,” Bond writes:
“It wasn’t the first time the fear surrounding Michelle Obama had been satirized in the press—two months prior, the liberal Daily Kos website ran an illustration of her strung from a tree, surrounded by white-robed Ku Klux Klan members holding a branding iron that read ‘Uppity Liberal.’”
Bond says, “And those were the depictions from supposedly friendly media.”
Elsewhere, Bond notes, “without a trace of jokiness,” Michelle has been called “Obama’s ‘baby mama’ (Fox News), his ‘bitter half’ (conservative, columnist Michelle Mafkin), an ‘angry black woman’ (commentator Cal Thomas), and countless other racist and sexist names.”
Many of the demeaning and insensitive labels that ‘Others’ have tried to project onto Michelle can be traced back to slavery. Three dominant myths have persisted of Black women during that time period: namely, the Black woman as mammy, sapphire, and matriarch.
The mammy was known to be the caretaker. She was not a threat to the union of her master or mistress, for she was perceived as being large, asexual, and unattractive. Devoutly Christian and extremely loyal to her so-called superiors, the mammy’s primary duties were relegated to her master’s household. She was forced to work, exploited for her labor, and conditioned to put the needs of others before her own. She had raise her master’s children while rearing and raising her own. Furthermore, it was expected of her to tend to the emotional needs of everyone in her master’s household; specifically, her mistress.
It is, largely, from this myth of the Black woman as mammy or matriarch that Black women have earned the “superwoman” or “strong Black woman” title, for several Black women during slavery were thought to be “strong as an ox”; she was thought to hold down her work in the field “like any man.”
However, the added burden of her sex could not help her stop her from holding or fending off her master when he attempted to sexually harass, physically assault, brutally beat, or rape her.
Over time, some Black women had modified the phrase “strong Black woman.” Alicia Keys and Raheem DeVaughn are only two of countless hip hop and neo-soul artists who have idolized “strong Black women” in their songs. Today, this term is multifaceted and multilayered. Sometimes it is used to revere notable Black women who have survived or overcome insurmountable odds. Other times, it is used to classify someone who is not human, someone who has been socialized to put the needs of everyone else before her own.
Michelle Obama exudes for the world an exemplary image of a “strong Black woman.” However, she is so much more than “a strong woman.” Michelle Obama is to be commended for her courage and her achievements, but her tender spirit, love for family, home, community, and just causes reveals her incredible sense of humanity and commitment to leave a lasting impression on the world.
The image of the sapphire (also known as the jezebel) was another myth that was projected onto Black women during slavery. According to Patricia Hill Collins, the sapphire was known to possess a wild and uninhibited sexuality. Unlike the mammy figure, the sapphire was considered a threat to her mistress because she was perceived as being over-sexualized, beautiful in the eyes of her oppressors, and in need of ‘taming.’
The sapphire was often blamed for being a “home-wrecker,” when, in actuality, it was her master who lusted after her and continually threatened her, using the notion that she was “uncivilized” or “untamed” to justify her rape and subjugation time after time.
According to K. Emily Bond, Michelle Obama was labeled the sapphire “when Fox ran the ‘Baby Mama’ banner, which carries the connotation of a mother and father who’ve never been married.”
Bond continues, “Her softer and gentler appearance on The View, described as her ‘reintroduction’ to the American public in The New York Times, sought to transform her into everybody’s best friend, thus casting her as Mammy for a day. And her early pronouncements on issues as varied as race relations and work-life balance made her the ABW [Angry Black Woman], a stereotype that has trailed her incessantly and is all too familiar among her peers.”
It must be noted that trailing does not mean conquering.
Even though Black women were labeled as the “matriarch” during slavery (and blamed for being “matriarchs” and “welfare queens” throughout Daniel Patrick’s Moyhinan Report), they still resisted such stereotypes. The matriarch is the myth of a towering and overbearing woman, a loud, obnoxious, and “intimidating” Black woman, who is head of her household and has the power to emasculate men. The matriarch is perceived to be un-ladylike. She is not feminine and has a tough exterior. Her work and her struggles have hardened her, causing her to have a “chip” on her shoulder. In many ways, she is perceived to be an unfit, bad mother, a “welfare queen” who relies on the system and has no agency of her own. Ultimately, she is “angry,” but without just cause.
It is these images and more that women have resisted over time. And it is these images that Michelle Obama, in particular, has sought to overcome in the press. Whether she is seeking to protect the innocence of her daughter’s by ensuring that they are not “commercialized” in the mainstream by Beanie Babies modeled in their image and likeness, or articulating her vision for a just society where one’s race, sex, preference, or status does not hinder one’s success, Michelle Obama will continue to speak her mind.
And the press better get used to it.
Wasn’t it Audre Lorde who once said that “silence equals death”? By speaking truth to power, Michelle Obama empowers other women around the world.
In an interview with Barbara Walters, Michelle was asked whether her new role as America’s “Black first lady” would cause her “to feel an additional responsibility as to how she carried out [her new] role.”
Michelle responded, “You know, I don’t think about it in those terms. I mean, I think this position has a huge responsibility in terms of being a good role model for the entire country. Does that feel like a burden? Not so much. I look forward to it. I’m excited about the potential of what we can do in the white house and for the nation.”
Michelle doesn’t feel that she has to take a backseat to her husband, walking ten steps behind him while he seeks to uplift and unite the races. She learned this from watching other powerful women in her family, as well as reading and learning about the benefits of the Women’s Movement, other Black feminists, and womanists.
When Michelle discovered that the wife of British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, had warned her that, as first lady, she “wouldn’t have any kind of career in the White House”-- except a very limited role, Michelle reasoned, “I think it just depends on the person. I have never been the kind of person who defined myself by a career or a job. I just never have.”
Michelle says that people used to ask her during the course of Barack’s campaign if it was hard for her “to step off the track” and devote her life to Barack’s dream.
“But the truth is,” Michelle insists, “that I believe in this man as our president and his vision for the country. And if that meant, you know, stepping away from my particular job for a year and a half, or for four or eight years—if [he] does what he is supposed to do—then that’s a small sacrifice to make.”
A small sacrifice, indeed, especially when the sacrifice benefits millions, empowers the world, and helps to improve our tattered image abroad.
Tara Betts, a lecturer in Creative Writing at Rutgers University, believes that Michelle’s role as first lady will not only help empower other women “because she looks like them,” but also inspire them to take on leadership roles because “she is doing what has traditionally been the bastion of women like Jacqueline Kennedy and Eleanor Roosevelt.”
Takada Harris, an artist, drummer, and researcher, who resides in Washington, D.C., also believes that Michelle will use her status in the White House “to positively influence women and young girls.”
Harris says, “She makes women walk a little taller, with a sense of pride, smiling, feeling good and proud of themselves.”
Michelle Obama makes all of us walk tall because she possesses healthy self-esteem, loves herself, her family, husband, community, and country. She fully embraces her current title, confident of herself as well as the long journey ahead.
“Now is Michelle’s time to leave her mark on the White House,” says Tara Betts.
And we await her resplendent contribution.
Dr. Jamie Walker is a professor of African American Studies at Howard University. She may be reached at drjamiewalker579@verizon.net.