SPEED BUMPS ON THE WAY TO THE WHITE HOUSE - MICHELLE OBAMA

Those speed bumps that Barack and Michelle had to hurdle over were constructed of race and racism, of course.

In a commencement speech from 2015, Michelle Obama tells some of the story of how she and Barack were treated by the white press on their way to The White House in 2008.  As I said in the original article, I didn't think we were going to get this kind of transparency until after Barack and Michelle had been out of the Washington for a decade.

I hope you make a little time to listen to sections of her speech. It's a good one. And it let's you know why it shouldn't be at all surprising that Donald Trump is the Republican nominee. 

Michelle speaks about this magazine cover in her speech

The artist has defended this cover as "satire."   If that was so, however, if this cover was meant to be seen as mocking the fears of those on the right, then were are the white people in the window looking stupidly horrified? Where is the indication that this is so stupid as to be ridiculous?  It's funny how magazine editors and artists at predominantly white run magazines don't think of how a cover will be interpreted all by itself, sans any reading of the article, so very much more often when black and brown people are being depicted. 

It is disheartening to keep reading that white people think that black and brown critiques of white racist behavior in 2016 only has to do with what many white people will do consciously and purposefully. It is  ridiculous that so many white people that don't consider themselves as racist or even racism enablers do not realize that black and brown critiques of racism have a lot to do with what comes naturally sans any conscious effort at all.

So much of white supremacy seems perfectly "normal" to white people, and sometimes that even after you point huge, decades long patterns of white behavior, they still can't move some behaviors out of the "normal" box into the "enabling white supremacy" box. 

Racism enablers don't think much about anything. But I'm tired to death of them. Furthermore, this image reinforced and delighted the political fear mongers on the right and also the poured gas the very real fears on the left.



Michelle Obama At Tuskegee, 2015
http://thankherforsurviving.blogspot.com/2015/05/michelle-obama-tells-truth-about-racism.html