ABOUT THE COLUMNIST
Gracie Bonds Staples is an award-winning journalist who has been writing for daily newspapers since 1979, when she graduated from the University of Southern Mississippi. She joined The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2000 after stints at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the Sacramento Bee, Raleigh Times and two Mississippi dailies. Staples was recently promoted to Senior Features Enterprise Writer. Look for her columns Thursdays and Saturdays in Living and alternating Sundays in Metro.
First Lady Michelle Obama's recent comments to Tuskegee University's Class of 2015, and her remarks at the dedication last week of the Whitney Museum of American Art were strikingly candid, hence the knee-jerk reaction from the likes of Rush Limbaugh.
Like the bully who doesn’t feel powerful enough to deal honestly with people, his interests are more important than true experiences.
Mrs. Obama’s truth — the role her racial identity played during the 2008 presidential campaign and how children of color feel alienated from places like art museums — ticked Limbaugh off.
In both instances, I found her comments refreshing. For one thing, she seems to understand that the best way to connect with others is to find some common ground. Many of the black kids in her audience grew up much like her, in a household where the adults struggled to make ends meet. And more importantly, she was telling those grads to face their reality but not to let it define them. They shouldn’t allow race or mistreatment to be an excuse for not doing their best or losing hope.
Limbaugh, of course, accused her of playing the race card.
I don’t doubt some African- Americans might have even seen it that way.
Sometimes even when it happens to them, they hold their peace for fear of seeming too black, or losing their status.
During his confirmation battle, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas didn’t hesitate declaring his outrage about what he called a “high-tech lynching” at the hands of a mostly white Senate Judiciary Committee. And yet, since coming to the bench, he has dismissed the implications of historical racism over and over again, voting against affirmative action and the Voting Rights Act despite having benefited from both.
It’s no wonder we can’t convince the likes of Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and Sarah Palin that racial bias isn’t just a crutch we use to remain on the government dole but that it calls our humanity into questions and often renders us hopeless.
“The road ahead is not going to be easy,” Michelle Obama told the class of 2015. “It never is, especially for folks like you and me.”
She and the president have experienced and continue to experience the same slights they face. Folks who cross the street in fear of their safety. Clerks who keep a close eye on them in department stores. People who assume they are the help at formal events. And those who have questioned their intelligence, honesty, even their love of this country.
“I know that these little indignities are obviously nothing compared to what folks across the country are dealing with every single day,” she told them. “Those nagging worries about whether you’re going to get stopped or pulled over for absolutely no reason. The fear that your job application will be overlooked because of the way your name sounds.”
Last week, she drew the wrath of conservatives when, again speaking from her experiences, she offered this observation at the Whitney.
“I guarantee you that right now, there are kids living less than a mile from here who would never in a million years dream that they would be welcome in this museum,” she said. “And growing up on the south side of Chicago, I was one of those kids myself. So I know the feeling of not belonging in a place like this.”
Limbaugh dismissed her comments, saying no committed liberal wanted “to hear this kind of stuff all the time.”
Well, maybe committed liberals don’t, but I can think of countless black children whose feelings were validated because the FLOTUS dared to speak her truth. Too often those of us who’ve “made” it, forget that hard work isn’t always enough; that sometimes people still see your blackness and they don’t like it.
This isn’t the first time, of course, the first lady has been criticized for speaking her mind. The backlash has always been predictable and swift with conservatives painting her as the angry black woman with an anti-white agenda. They’ve even suggested she is unpatriotic.
I see her the way Democratic strategist Donna Brazile described her once: history-maker, trailblazer, a down-home, down-to-earth woman of tremendous grace.
Her approval ratings at one time were as high as 66 percent; but I suspect there is nothing Mrs. Obama can do to ever change conservatives’ opinion of her. Sharing her life experiences will always be viewed from a racial lens that divides rather than validates and uplifts.
I think I know why. It’s a lot easier for her critics to remain inwardly focused, so determined to be right, than look outside and consider others, to seek comfort rather than offer it, to point fingers rather than deal with the mote in their own eye.
And so they wink at their own shortcomings while judging the flaws in others.
This is what I know for sure. Issues of race will continue to divide us until we are willing to be honest about our own biases and allow God’s love to flow in us and through us.
Here in the Bible Belt that shouldn’t be so hard.
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