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I’ve been to sold out Bulls and Blackhawks games at the United Center in Chicago. Also sold out U2 and Springsteen shows. But a sold out book interview? That would take a serious star. Enter Michelle Obama (with Oprah).
To an audience that was about 80% female and 40% people of color, Michelle Obama delivered a narrative that I couldn’t help but interpret as advice to student activists.
The opening video showed a photo montage of her family in the yard of their small home at 7436 Euclid Avenue on Chicago’s south side.
The apartment was made for one, maybe two people. They were a family of four. Her dad had a disability and did shift work. Her mother stayed at home and raised the kids. Pizza was a treat for good report cards. Ice cream showed up once a month or so; chocolate, black cherry and butter pecan. The video ended with the line: “Depending on how you looked at it, we had nothing or we had everything.”
What followed was a story of staring down unequal opportunity and coming out on top.
She stared it down as a music student who grew up playing on an old piano with chipped keys and, when she once got the opportunity to practice on a baby grand, realized that some people grow up learning how to play on perfect instruments.
She stared it down when she started attending Chicago’s Whitney Young, a magnet school for the best and brightest across the city and realized that some families have the resources to take ski vacations and give their kids trust funds, and other families scraped together bus money to get their kids to school.
She stared it down on the campaign trail and in the White House where people were quick to call her an angry black woman every time she got passionate about a subject or raised her voice.
She called out racism and sexism by name, and frequently talked about the unfair privilege that some people have by dint of their skin color, gender and zip code.
She was also open about how hurtful it was to hear the “she’s not black enough” criticism from people in her own community, criticism that started when she was in elementary school striving for A’s.
(Oprah paused on that and said, “Can I get a witness?” A group of black women seated behind my wife and me were happy to oblige.)
She communicated that the systemic barriers she faced made her climb more difficult, but also made her more determined. She absorbed her mother’s attitude: complain at the kitchen table at night, tomorrow you go back with your game face on, and win.
She expressed frustration about how men are taught that they are always priority number one, while women are taught that just about everyone else comes first. Then she looked pointedly at the audience and said, “Remember, you are responsible for your own happiness.”
In other words, you don’t have to succumb to socialization. This is America – carve your own path.
She never used the words ‘white supremacy’ or ‘oppression’.
Why? My guess is because the word ‘white supremacy’ (for people not schooled in its academic definition - which is most of the world), makes a whole set of people feel like they are being lumped in with the Ku Klux Klan when really they are just trying to be good neighbors and citizens.
The word ‘oppression’ sounds like the system is so crushing that you are rendered helpless.
I don’t think Michelle Obama thinks that diminishing your own agency or assigning others a place in the Ku Klux Klan is a useful strategy for achieving either personal excellence or system change.
I think part of her brilliance, that night and during her years in public life, is her ability to position those two things – personal excellence and system change – as different sides of the same coin.
She got applause when she said that America was a great country.
She said “My story is the American story.” She owned the various parts of her identity – being black, female, working class. Yes, these things made getting to the top harder, but they also made life richer, and the ride sweeter.
She ended with this advice:
Tell yourself a story that makes you wake up in the morning and work harder.
Listen with care to the stories of people from all identities - that is how we build community.
Tell your nation a story that helps its citizens want to make it better.
I can’t think of better advice to give to student activists.
