Before she became the First Lady of the United States, Michelle Robinson Obama attended Princeton University and Harvard Law School. She is the mother of two daughters, Malia and Sasha. As First Lady, she has supported military families, become a fashion icon, and planted a garden on the White House lawn. Her Let's Move! campaign is working hard to combat childhood obesity.
When I think about what First Lady Michelle Obama represents to this country, I cannot help but imagine what her foundation and journey must have been like as she was growing up on the South Side of Chicago, in a one-bedroom apartment where she and her brother, Craig, slept in the living room with a sheet serving as a makeshift room divider. She was raised by two hardworking, devoted parents whose priorities were clearly family, honesty, and education. Her upbringing by a strong mother and father who emphasized core values of a solid work ethic and pride is not dissimilar to most black people's history in this country.
When I think of Mrs. Obama in the context of how African American women are perceived today, I think of the inspiring women in my own midwestern community (women much like Marian Robinson, Mrs. Obama's mother) and women in communities across America, who in the face of adversity have raised generations of African Americans with commitment and grace. Mrs. Obama has described her parents as being "the warmest, hardest-working people I have ever known," and clearly she has been the beneficiary of the values they instilled. Michelle Obama has made us all extremely proud in representing not only the United States of America but also her own family, for she is an extraordinary woman under the strictest of scrutiny. She has demonstrated excellence from an early age, having learned to read at home by the age of four, skipped second grade, excelled academically, and attended Princeton University and then Harvard Law School. Her brother, Craig Robinson, has said, "Without being immodest, Michelle and I were always smart, were always driven, and were always encouraged to do the best you can do, not just what's necessary. And when it came to going to schools, we all wanted to go to the best schools we could."
After graduating from two of the nation's top universities, Mrs. Obama went on to have a successful career as an associate at the Chicago law firm of Sidley Austin and then as a public servant for the city of Chicago and an associate dean at the University of Chicago, before becoming an executive at the University of Chicago Medical Center. Through it all she has managed to be a devoted wife and mother, while surviving a presidential campaign in which her husband made history by becoming the first African American president of the United States. She was able to kick off her own initiatives in support of military families, to start the Let's Move! campaign combating childhood obesity, to help working women balance career and family, and to encourage national service. She has stepped into her unprecedented role as the first African American First Lady with dignity, intelligence, and candor under the media's relentless glare. Mrs. Obama has remained steady, poised, and thoughtful, with a quiet, commanding presence — she is clear on her goals and earnest in her executions.
Much has been written about Mrs. Obama helping to change the perception of African American women in this country and to eradicate age-old stereotypes we've all seen played over and over in the media — gross mischaracterizations of us as "angry black women," "sassy," "mammies," "aggressive," "controlling," and "emasculating." Such descriptions are dated in their attempt to minimize us and insulting in their inaccuracy. Yet they have persisted and have been exacerbated in recent years. The consistent negative images of African American women in the media — from the slate of reality shows depicting us at our worst to music videos that objectify and debase us to daily news feeds of drugged-out, screaming black women running through the streets in bathrobes — have served to reinforce what we know is not the truth of us. Such imagery has never been the truth of who black women are as mothers, wives, grandmothers, sisters, aunts, or human beings. Mrs. Obama is acutely aware of the importance of portrayals of black women and the need for positive representation. She has said of her March 2009 Vogue magazine cover, "While I don't consider myself a fashionista, I thought it was good for my daughters and little girls just like them, who haven't seen themselves represented in these magazines, hopefully to talk more broadly about what beauty is, what intelligence is, what counts." Without heavy-handedness, Mrs. Obama is ever conscious of what is important and what is just, particularly as it relates to African American girls' perceptions and sense of possibility for themselves and their futures.
The First Lady's embodiment of humanity and excellence invalidates stereotypes that have plagued black women for years. And what is interesting in the larger discussion of what Mrs. Obama's image means to America is that her persona is actually closer to the reality of black women than not. We are, just as our ancestors were, devoted mothers, principled, spiritual, supportive of our communities, and proud. The stereotypes of black women were never representative of who we are. We have never been what the larger society attempted to force upon us by way of unflattering traits. The dignity, pride, and grace that the world has observed in Michelle Obama since she emerged on the national scene should absolutely be celebrated, emulated, and praised. Yet such admirable traits of the First Lady do not translate into a "recasting" or "redefining" of African American women. Rather, their recognition is an acknowledgment of what we have always known to be true about whence we came. Mrs. Obama, in all her grace, is the manifestation of a long history of courageous, intelligent black women upon whose shoulders she stands. She is the embodiment of an enduring struggle of African American women throughout this country's history — great women who helped shape America, from abolitionists Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman to writer Phillis Wheatley; to Spelman College founders Sophia B. Packard and Harriet E. Giles; to entrepreneur and philanthropist Madam C. J. Walker; to activists Ella Baker, Rosa Parks, and Myrlie Evers-Williams; to Vivian Malone; to Coretta Scott King; to Dr. Betty Shabazz; to Marian Robinson; to all the leaders and founders of this country's black sororities and sisterhoods; to all the black women who deprived themselves daily to ensure opportunities for their children; and to all the fine black women who got dressed in their Sunday best without fail no matter how difficult the week to give praise to all the black Women of Inspiration in this book and across the United States of America and the world. On their shoulders Mrs. Obama stands. On their shoulders we all stand. This is the stock from which we hail. This is our history of survival and triumph.
The dignified, strong black woman whom President Obama has referred to as his "rock" is the reality. Mrs. Obama may be the world's most visible African American woman and may thus seem remote from reality, but at her core she represents who we are as black women in this country. The character Mrs. Obama possesses and displays is not an anomaly for African American women. Rather, it represents the best of us, the possibility of us, the beauty of us, the hope of us, the expectation of us, the truth of us.
