Michelle Obama has been the target of plenty of racist rhetoric during her eight years as First Lady, and endured all of it with grace and class. But that doesn’t mean that the words didn’t hurt. During a 2015 speech to Tuskegee University’s graduating class, Obama admitted that she often worried about perception and racism.
During her husband’s 2008 presidential bid, New Yorker magazine published an edition with Michelle Obama on the cover depicting her as an Afro-wearing terrorist. The magazine received significant criticism for the image, but it nonetheless shook the future First Lady up:
“Then there was the first time I was on a magazine cover — it was a cartoon drawing of me with a huge afro and machine gun. Now, yeah, it was satire, but if I’m really being honest, it knocked me back a bit. It made me wonder, just how are people seeing me.”
The criticisms that Michelle and Barack Obama received never ended. They were too black or they weren’t black enough. Michelle was too hard or too soft. Barack was a terrorist and not really an American. She also admitted that sometimes the negative comments kept her up at night:
“And all of this used to really get to me. 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.”
But she didn’t let the doubters or the racists define her:
“So throughout this journey, I have learned to block everything out and focus on my truth. I had to answer some basic questions for myself: Who am I? No, really, who am I? What do I care about?”
For Michelle, that means being a mom, a lawyer, a wife, and an American. Oh, and a wonderful First Lady that we will miss.
Watch part of Michelle’s Tuskegee University speech here:
And if you missed the First Lady’s awesome DNC speech, watch it here:
