As Obama’s final term dwindles down, New York Times reporter Gardiner Harris made a celebratory defense of First Lady Michelle Obama’s supposedly newfound political voice in his Monday “White House Letter,” “Addressing Graduates, First Lady Speaks Out.” The text box read: “Displaying a personal side by highlighting issues involving race, gender and class.” All the liberal buzzwords went unchallenged by Harris. The NYT did the same thing for the First Lady during last year's commencement season.
Michelle Obama, stung by criticism during her husband’s first campaign that she was too outspoken, arrived at the White House and took on a careful role promoting health and fitness as “Mom in Chief.’’ In the seven years since, she has slowly shed that early reticence and has been more forceful about issues of race, gender and class.
Last week was no exception. The White House announced that Mrs. Obama would give three spring commencement addresses, probably her last as first lady, and the choices -- Jackson State University, Santa Fe Indian School and the City College of New York -- indicate that Mrs. Obama will continue to speak out.
Has she ever stopped?
“She’s become much more open in talking about the obstacles she faced, and she’s now much more comfortable talking about racism and other issues than her husband is,” said Peter Slevin, author of “Michelle Obama: A Life.” “In important ways, Michelle Obama is more political than any of her modern predecessors.”
On April 23, Mrs. Obama will speak at Jackson State University, a historically black university holding its 139th spring commencement ceremony. University officials are expecting about 30,000 people to attend, the kind of crowd that even her husband now rarely addresses.
....
In her speeches, she has become more personal and often uses words like “we” and “us” when describing the challenges that only African-Americans face. Last year at Tuskegee, Mrs. Obama told the audience that she was subjected to a barrage of questions as the nation’s first African-American first lady.
“Was I too loud, or too angry, or too emasculating?” she asked to applause. “Or was I too soft, too much of a mom, not enough of a career woman?”
....
“Back in those days, I had a lot of sleepless nights, worrying about what people thought of me, wondering if I might be hurting my husband’s chances of winning his election, fearing how my girls would feel if they found out what some people were saying about their mom,” she said in remarks that led some conservative commentators to say she was “playing the race card” and displaying “bitterness.”
....
Mrs. Obama uses stories about her modest upbringing and the barriers she faced to tell audiences that they can succeed as well. And she urges students to devote at least part of their lives to a social cause such as climate change, economic inequality, human rights or criminal justice reform.
Last June Michelle Obama spoke at another historically black college, Tuskegee University. Peter Baker’s front-page story had a similar feel, emphatizing with Michelle Obama's triumph and struggle in a way the paper would never do with a conservative commencement speaker (when they're allowed to speak on campus, that is).
She looked around and saw herself three decades ago, young and uncertain, from a part of town where success is a struggle, not a birthright. She knew what they had been through, what it was like to take the long way home to avoid gangs, what it was like when the family strained to make ends meet.
....
At a time of roiling debate over the issues of race and opportunity, punctuated by the events of Ferguson, Mo.; Staten Island; and Baltimore, the nation’s first African-American first lady has added her voice. It is not a new message for her, but one that has taken on special resonance and one delivered with bracing candor in recent speeches. Along the way, Mrs. Obama has opened a window into her own life, not just in Chicago but also in the White House.
Baker also pitied the resident of the White House.
By her telling, even living at the world’s most prominent address has not erased the sting of racial misunderstanding. In recent weeks, Mrs. Obama has talked of “insults and slights” directed at her husband and caricatures that have pained her. It all “used to really get to me,” she said, adding that she “had a lot of sleepless nights” until learning to ignore it. But she said she realized that she and her husband had a responsibility to rewrite the narrative for African-Americans.
