One of the more poignant moments comes when Michelle Obama's mother, Marian Robinson says
the following:
"I keep saying this: Michelle, Barack, and my son are not abnormal,"
Marian Robinson said. "All my relatives, all my friends, all their
friends, all their parents, almost all of them have the same story.
It's just that their families aren't running for president. It bothers
me that people see [Michelle and Barack] as so phenomenal, because
there's so much of that in the black neighborhood. They went to the
same schools we all did. They went through the same struggles."
On some level, that will ring false for some people--these are two Ivy League lawyers, after all. But for those of us who've lived in black neighborhoods all our lives--and probably for black Chicagoans in particular--Robinson's point has a particular resonance. It's not that Ivy League lawyers are walking up and down the street, as much as we see talent, drive, and ambition every day. We see people taking their kids to school, going to PTA meetings, working their jobs everyday. But somehow the worst of it, becomes the most of it--and then the all of it. I think Obama, herself, also got at this at the end of the piece:
"People have never met a Michelle Obama," the soon-to-be first lady
said toward the end of our interview. "But what they'll come to learn
is that there are thousands and thousands of Michelle and Barack Obamas
across America. You just don't live next door to them, or there isn't a
TV show about them."
Anyway, here's another video where me and Pops discuss that aspect.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
I've heard this same sentiment from a couple of black friends, and I still don't get it. I'm white and we grew up worshiping the Kennedys. We always thought they were exceptional, not everyday people. You don't get to be president by being just like everyone else - especially when you don't come from a lot of money like the Obamas. What's wrong with being acknowledged as exceptional? There are a lot of smart, ambitious people, but you don't get elected president without having something very special. I don't understand how this insults other high achieving African Americans.
It's true that there's a whole swath of black achievers. They are the sons and daughters of middle class black folks who had good city jobs in the 70s and 80s. But I'm not sure we can say that the level of success that the Robinson kids and Obama's reached is usual. But I definitely take the point -- they're not mythical-creature rare either.
Mostly, I just like these little chats between you and your dad. I hope you make it a regular thing.
@Jennifer
I think what Marian and to an extent Ta-Nehisi is getting at is the ambition and the drive to get there. It's not directly related to becoming president.. Exceptionalism when discussed with regards to presidency is only applicable to those who actually run for it. Marian is arguing that exceptionalism in the case of being a young, ambitious, urban non-white in these neigbourhoods, is something mainstream and not just "specialness" or having a "gift".
I found this gem from Tavis' show...I think tavis is awesome on his own, but this is a good interview! Dont know if u've put it up before...but im going for it anyway!
http://www.pbs.org/kcet/tavissmiley/archive/200806/20080626_tanehisiandpaulc.html#
Coates,
you tell your father that he has a fan out here..LOL
I agree with Mrs. Robinson, and I agree with Jennifer.
Yes, you don't get to become President and First Lady without having something a little bit extra, but the facts are, there IS a pool of highly educated Black folk going back generations. We're the community that had PhD's working in the Post Office , ' back in the day'.
Jack and Jackie were extraordinary from the getgo - both born into money, power and privilege.
What makes Barack and Michelle so wonderful, from my Black perspective, is that Barack and Michelle aren't from that.
Barack's mother was a teenager when he was born. His father left by the time he was two. He spend a long period being raised by his grandparents. Take away that those relatives were WHITE, and a whole lotta Black folk can relate to his story. A whole lotta Black folk are happy to be able to point out that he used his BRAINS, and not a microphone or a ball to achieve his success.
On the other hand, Michelle Robinson was born to two high-school educated folk who, though they didn't have, knew that there was a ' better way', and worked hard to provide that for their children. She wasn't in Jack and Jill, didn't summer at Oak Bluffs, wasn't a debutante. She was a brown-skinned Black child with parents who believed in her and in THIS COUNTRY, and in the old Black belief system of 'education..education..education - is the way'. Now, the rest of the invisible Black America who was doing the same thing as Mr. and Mrs. Robinson, didn't produce a First Lady. But, they produced whole swaths of doctors, lawyers, engineers, entrepreneurs.
That's why I say when I hear Michelle Obama talk about her childhood, I hear my parents. I was a naive child. I didn't realize how hard my smart mother maneuvered me in the public school system so that I had every possible opportunity. Mama was a Phi Beta Kappa, but she was a Black woman of a certain era, and there were two possibilities for her when she graduated college: teacher or social work. She was limited by the times in which she lived, and vowed to make sure that her daughters didn't have to do the same. By the time I was born, when she was 40, the world had changed, and she made sure that I could have chances that weren't even imaginable when she was a child. But, my mother wasn't unique. She was part of a whole swath of Black parents who prepared their children for a world that they had no knowledge of in the least, but wanted them to have.
@Jennifer & @Bruce
I agree with Bruce to some extent; my take from Marian's statement is that applied to my own experience as a young professional, a lot of people treat me as 'exceptional' because I'm a young, well-educated black kid from Detroit - but the truth is I don't feel that exceptional sometimes. The vast majority of the kids I went to school with in the D have degrees, a good number of them with grad degrees. This happened because I went to two of the (very few) stellar schools in the city for middle and high school, and was surrounded by other high achievers. Sure, my neighborhood was shit, and I had to walk a half mile out of my way to get home safe, but at school, all of my friends were going to college. Most had involved parents, and those who didn't were just extra driven - so while in the grand scheme of things, I am very much an 'exception', it doesn't properly describe my experiences before college. Once I got into situations where instead of being 'another black kid' I was the 'only black kid', I started feeling the weight of that idea of that supposed exceptionalism.
The one thing I would like to know is where Michelle went to high school in Chicago. If she is a lab rat like her children you never doubt your intelligence quota or self confidence. If she went to some of the private girls schools or in a program of exchange of talented kids it would be another way she was constantly reassured of her value just like at home.
Posted by Robert M
Robert M,
I didn't know if you would go back into the other thread, but I hope you come into this one.
Michelle went to regular neighborhood schools until high school. Michelle went to Whitney M. Young Magnet High School. Until the last 5 years, it was THE best high school in Chicago for about 15-20 years. Selective placement through testing. Since Michelle was obviously in the Honors/AP track, she was in with a variety of students. Though majority Black, it has always had a high concentration of everyone.It was the school that the Black middle-class had so that they didn't have to pay for Catholic or Private high schools.
So, Michelle ' She said Whitey on videotape' Obama has been working with, going to school with, and dealing with people of different races and ethnicities since she was a teenager. And when Michelle went, Chicago was a far more hostile city - racially - than it is now.
Ryan...good points! I could say, to some degree that i had a similar childhood..with some modifications and/or qualifications. I lived in a mixed neighbourhood made up of poor whites and immigrants. The norm in my extended family was/is atleast a masters degree. The norm of immigrants as a whole was staying of welfare at that time. Now it's different, but still... i can relate to what u are saying. In school i was to some degree "exceptional"...only non white child in my class until college, and also the one with the top grade. In the eyes of society i was "exceptional". In the eyes of my family...well, it was expected...nothing less than what i had produced was to be expected next. So there was always someone who thought you were exceptional, but that 's only because they didn't understand the culture i came from. And the cultural background of my family. Which is in a way similar to both you and michelle...they (the mainstream) to some degree are surprised of this "magical" almost "mythical" desire to grow and progress.
That's wonderful that Marian and people like her live in a neighborhood where exceptionalism is common. My background doesn't resemble their story whatsoever, mine is more similar to TNC's.
TNC does have a point, though, which is the majority of African-Americans and Latin Americans(me) don't have the background described by Marian, though we are aware of it. There are plenty of intelligent and driven individuals of these cultures that aren't in the same circles of the Robinsons, Obamas and families such as them, which is what I think TNC is commenting on. I strive to better myself and maybe one day be in such a neighborhood and I'm optimistic about this possibility.
But now I would like to point out something controversial, which is I think the families in these good and affluent neighborhoods don't want to recognize the others of the same ethnicity who aren't socioeconimically equal. They want to forget us because maybe we represent something of their past, which might constitute struggle and pain, and this connects us. I think this is part of the conflict TNC mentions in his video, this also scares me because at what price is social ascension worth.
In other words, I know of the world that is common to Marian, but they don't know the world that myself and many more are part of. One side has a more expansive and open perspective than the other.
Keep up the good work TNC,
Alex M
@Alex M
I think you raise a good point, but I don't think it applies to Marian Robinson. It applies more to some of the Jack and Jill crowd (not all of them). For example, my friend's mom was in Jack and Jill when she was young, but my friend was rejected because her mother had her in college and did not marry her father. That is crazy and foul. These are the people we need to worry about. The upper middle class who want to close the circle on all the strivers.
"But now I would like to point out something controversial, which is I think the families in these good and affluent neighborhoods don't want to recognize the others of the same ethnicity who aren't socioeconimically equal."
I don't think that it's really controversial. White people of different socioeconomic classes tend to be insular and not mix. It's the added pressure of having to combat racial sterotypes and assumptions--the feeling that no matter what you acheive you will be viewed as a prototype.
Meanwhile as the pile of bodies of dead Palestinian children grows ever higher TNC's colleague Jeffery Goldberg, is getting multiple erections. Is that anti-semtitic?
"But now I would like to point out something controversial, which is I think the families in these good and affluent neighborhoods don't want to recognize the others of the same ethnicity who aren't socioeconimically equal."
I don't think that it's really controversial. White people of different socioeconomic classes tend to be insular and not mix.
While that has been common for Whites, the opposite has been true for Blacks until a generation or so ago. I wrote in Coates' original post on his article about how, though the Black community was segregated, both North and South, it created a sense of community, because everyone, from the lawyer and doctor, to the bum, lived in the same neighborhood. Because of that, there was the underlying sentiment of ' don't forget from whence you've come'.
In the past generation and a half if not two, we have seen the mimicing of the White community by Blacks who were able to move away, versus those that couldn't. The class divisions in the Black community have become more visible, IMO.
A comment from http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/002772.html
"I gotta give Goldberg credit for one thing--he's smart enough not to have a comment section on his blog. It's bad when you're dumb and callous and hypocritical and people have a forum to point this out in detail, something that would be easy to do with his record."
TNC-you are judged by the company you keep. Yes, I know most, if not all the academic responses you could make to that statement-the free exchange of ideas-blah,blah,blah. But supporting war crimes is just one of those things I must criticize. What about you? Do you have anything to say about Mr. Goldberg's support of war crimes?
@Alex M & fanita
I didn't even know about Jack and Jill til I was out of the hood. Crazy stuff. The upper middle class of all races generally doesn't have time for helping the rest of us get up there. (Plus no matter how much bread I make they wouldn't let me in, go go gadget interracial relationship!)
It's not that they don't want to recognize the underclass, its that they view them as a step back in that idea of social ascension. (Keeping up with the Jacksons?) Families in the better neighborhoods are really cliquish because most of them come from someplace worse, and are (somewhat irrationally) afraid of it being 'ruined'. I think its less of wanting to forget them, as much as the general distaste for people of a lower class - something that is prevalent throughout every racial group in America. We Americans love a good bootstrap story - someone making it against impossible odds - but most of us will be damned if we'll be the one helping to pull, and want nothing to do with those who don't make it. The balance of those who try and reach back and help people from where they came from versus those who wish to put it behind them is tilted heavily in the latter's direction.
The idea of exceptionalism is double-edged though; in college, it was my propellant - I couldn't fail because if I was exceptional (and I thought I was pretty normal,) then I need to represent. If my path really was more perilous than the average, then all the more reason to succeed and prove all the doubters wrong. You start realizing how other people's childhoods go, noticing that books everyone mentioned in class you've never read (Huck Finn anyone?) and that while you've got the tools to make par or even birdie, you're starting off at a further tee. Still, the easiest way to break the burden of that exceptionalism (and it is a burden that claims many a minority) is to make it, and when everyone asks you how you did it, be humble, recognize that there are others who pulled it off, and try and make it easier for those who come behind you. I stand on the shoulders of giants - and I just want to be another rung in the ladder upward when its all said and done. {/ramble }
Dan,
If you have an issue you'd like me to address on the blog, please be polite enough to e-mail me. I answer virtually all my e-mail. Please don't hijack. It's not fair to everyone else.
rikyrah,
"While that has been common for Whites, the opposite has been true for Blacks until a generation or so ago."
I know. My own family runs the gamit from former drug dealer (probably less former than part time) to professionals with two Masters. Black churches still represent various factions of the black community.
What I meant by my comment is that it's the easy if not natural choice, I beleive, for people of different socioeconomic classes not to mix. I think it's an unhealty obssesion to demand that black people be the exception to that rule.
@Ryan
I'd never heard of Jack and Jill until I stepped foot on Howard's campus. I grew up in small town Georgia. I came from a two-parent household, but we were not rich. Hell, I thought we were middle class until I talked to some of my peers at Howard. I think all first-generation college students face that same culture shock when we move from our small enclave of black life.
I agree about the double-edge sword, but eventually you learn to just be you and do you. That's all we can all do. You know where you came from and don't let anyone make you any less for it. Also, give back.
There were 11--count'em-11 black students at my high school of 4,000, in the late 60s, on Milwaukee's northwest side. One is now on the Board of The Milwaukee Brewers--although he told us all back then he wanted to be a brain surgeon and we all believed him, just the same.Another was a National Merit Scholar. Still another--a girl--went on to become the surgeon.
From all accounts, most became more sucessful than many of their white peers, except for several minority Jewish students, including two class presidents, one of whom became a published author, another produced a very popular and successful TV sitcom, and several others were layers and a restaurant owner.
Credit parenting, high expectations for children, and, even difference. Being different or feeling different may isolate one into being the studious nerd. I was.If you are not among the in-crowd celebrating at the local pizza hangout after the game on Friday night, then you won't probably be the cheerleader who became pregnant by graduation, the football player who was the reincarnation of Springsteen's Glory Days'jaded hero, or the in crowd clique who married out of high school, didn't attend college and talked draperies and carpeting, old times, and the mundane and vacuous redundancy of their dull, empty jobs, as they were slowly boring themselves into oblivions of their own making.
Why is anybody so surprised at Michelle's, Craig's, and Barack's story? They shouldn't be but yet we know they jumped over hurdles, just the same;hurdles placed there by these white folks with the boring, mundane jobs who feel personally thwarted by the success of their black peers. They so want to believe that gangsta rap, saggin' and baggin', crack and crippin' are all that goes on in black neigborhoods because they are in a vacuum exisiting in a white neighborhood. That's why you go to a blog like that of Fox's Greta van Susterren, who worships at the shrine of Sarah Palin, along side the Cracker Faithful who all congregate there to post their neo-Klan BS about the non-existent Michelle Obama "kill whitey" video and other such spittle. We know they exist; we sense their resentment. Talk radio validates it.
Of course Mrs. Robinson is correct. There are these stories not only in black communities but in largely white ones where a minority is forced to work 10x as hard.
In classrooms across America they thrive. Some, especially female minorities-- will tell you about a lot more they have overcome--rape, incest, physical and mental abuse, poverty, hunger--and STILL THEY RISE, getting scholarships to major universities. I have a friend whose daughter did not go to college right away, joined the Navy and literally DID see the world while she told me all her friends were married with children and stuggling to pay for day care with the pay from their shit jobs w/out health care.
No, we shouldn't be so surprised Mrs. Robinson. The sad truth, though, is that we still are for reasons beyond our control. The great news, though, is how many more Craig, Michelle and Baracks of all races will follow through that giant crack in the ceiling.
What I meant by my comment is that it's the easy if not natural choice, I beleive, for people of different socioeconomic classes not to mix. I think it's an unhealty obssesion to demand that black people be the exception to that rule.
Posted by BelleIsa
I understand what you mean, and it's a difficult subject, because it's so complicated. I worked with a woman who lived in the suburbs, and she and her neighbors were organizing to make sure that HUD didn't put Section 8 housing in their suburb. Now, this was majority Black folk doing the serious organizing. My co-worker and her husband, both professionals,as were most of their neighbors, didn't apologize. They had custom built their half-million dollar home, and thought it was ridiculous that HUD remotely thought that Section 8/Affordable Housing, should even be considered. It was a contentious issue.
@ B.G.
I appreciate the insight in your comment, but I have to say the line 'Cracker Faithful' almost made me spit out my Kool-Aid. Hilarious.
But for those of us who've lived in black neighborhoods all our lives--and probably for black Chicagoans in particular--Robinson's point has a particular resonance.
This may be true for you but I didn't see this, now the part about parents working and all yeah, but most of the folks around me weren't particularly ambitious, they weren't necessarily troublemakers but they were not looking to go to college or anything near it, most didn't look too much past high school.
Families in the better neighborhoods are really cliquish because most of them come from someplace worse, and are (somewhat irrationally) afraid of it being 'ruined'.
What's funny to me(or wasn't) was how cliquish parents were even within the same poor-type community. Where me and my brother grew up, we had parents who didn't want their kids to have anything to do with us because they viewed themselves as better and it was very hard to understand growing up. I knew my stepfather used to be pissed at people all the time because of this but as kids we didn't really get it.
Not to fuel the threadjacking but...
Surely that cannot be THE Dan Savage.
Because if it were THE Dan Savage, I have to believe he'd show some cojones and post his points in the Prop 8 thread from a couple of days ago, which directly addresses his unsubstantiated condemnation of black folks a few months ago...instead of hiding out here and launching trolling attacks that have nothing to do with this thread.
Here, for the fake Dan Savage, allow me to help...
http://ta-nehisicoates.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/01/prop_8_and_blaming_the_blacks.php#comments
so, TNC
why so many light-skinned blacks in this administration? and would it have been different if barack looked more like michelle?
Juba,
I appreciate the defense. I'm fairly certain it isn't him. Let's not feed the thing.
so, TNC
why so many light-skinned blacks in this administration?
Lawdhammercy.
and would it have been different if barack looked more like michelle?
Posted by lucretius
If Barack looked more like Michelle, then I think the ' Muslim' attacks wouldn't have been half as effective. I still shake my head when folks talk about Barack being 'visibly' bi-racial, when he's darker than half my 'Black' family.
What's important to discern from both Mrs. Robinson's and Mrs. Obama's comments is that this is not KNOWN about black Americans. This is not what is reported, or how the narrative about the black community in America is written.
There are millions of black families like the Robinsons in America, and there have been for decades. But that's not the image of the black community that has been broadcast to Americans or the rest of the world. The same goes for the hispanic community in this country.
What TNC is doing here is great. He is ratcheting up a long needed sincere discussion about race in America. And I am enjoying every post of it.
In the mid 50's and early '60's I grew up in a Black working class neighborhood in Jamaica Queens NYC. The kind of neighborhood where at least one family on the block bought their house after hitting the number and at least one family had a grandmother who claimed the new baby was hers and not her unwed daughter's. I went to PS 116, all Black and I could walk to school. Dad left his wife and 6 kids for good (or ill) by the time I was 10. Small single family homes, some two family duplexes. Our tree shaded neighborhood was called "Bricktown", neighbors looked out for every kid on the block, there was a candy store owned by a Jewish man and a green grocer owned by a Black man we called Mr. Green Jeans.
Here is some of what I learned in that all Black school in our working class neighborhood: the score of "The Mikado" (I played Katisha mostly because I was the tallest girl in class) Ave Maria (the latin) and songs from the "Sound of Music" (before the movie came out,) the "Tomorrow" soliloquy from "Macbeth" (which I can still recite today), African and Caribbean dances, classical music, the history of the Triangle fire, how to order in a french restaurant (field trip, I really pissed off my foody Mom when I ordered a chicken sandwich for lunch at the restaurant during the Chinatown field trip), started french language class in the fourth grade, and perhaps most importantly, the address of the NYC board of education, 110 Livingston Street, because my mom and several other parents made regular visits to demand the best that could be provided for their kid's education.
One of my beloved teachers, Joy Berry went on, several years later to become the Georgia State Human Rights director. Joy and many of my other teachers, Black and White, and our parents fought long and hard to give us what they believed we would need to succeed in a White and wide world.
About 25 years later I was working for a US Senator and several years later in the White House. Trust me, mine is not a particularly "exceptional" story.
I'm pleased to learn from one of the commenters above that Michelle attended the best high school in Chicago; it confirms my impression. Readers of this blog may also be aware that BHO himself attended the finest school in the state of Hawaii from fifth grade through high school. This school, Punahou, was also named by Sports Illustrated earlier this year as the top high school for sports in the entire country. As English victory at Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton, perhaps some of this election was won thanks to the leadership and teamwork learned in the gym at Punahou.
It is commonplace to point to the fancy colleges attended by successful individuals. Just as influential may be their fancy high schools. Deval Patrick is so attached to Milton Academy, a famous prep school in Massachusetts, that he and his wife have made their home in Milton for twenty years. Could he, or either of the Obamas, have done as well in life had they not attended top quality institutions beginning in early adolescence? That's the sort of rhetorical question that goes against the grain of our most cherished American beliefs about individual achievement. Fortunately, most of these elite private schools have tons of scholarship money. Why, then, are they not swamped with applicants? Is this not one of the best-kept secrets of the upper class of this country?
gd,
I understand your point I think, that great schools at an early age can be predictive, I went to one. In the mid '60's the High School of Music & Art was one of the 5 "specialized" hs' in NYC that included Bronx Science, Brooklyn Tech, Performing Arts and Stuyvesant. Dianne Carroll is a fellow grad of M&A. These were some of the best hs' in the country. Yes, you had to take a test to get in, but they were all FREE! No scholarship needed for low income students, just hard fought want to go along with their need.
Fortunately, most of these elite private schools have tons of scholarship money. Why, then, are they not swamped with applicants? Is this not one of the best-kept secrets of the upper class of this country?
Posted by gd
It has been my experience that Black folk don't want to send their children away during high school.
" You just don't live next door to them"
Yes I do! The Obama's live half a block from me! Or they did till they moved this week...and thank God for that. Showing my ID every time I wanted to get into my own house sucked.
I understand Mrs Robinson's point, to some degree. But coming from a community of exceptional folk doesn't make you un-exceptional. And from TNC's wonderful essay, one gets a sense that the Robinsons' neighborhood *within* South Side Chicago was singular in nature for African-Americans.
And Michelle did get that BA from Princeton and a JD from Harvard. She met her man as his supervisor in a corporate law firm. And up until he ran for president, she was the breadwinner, making the six-figure salary and time to care for *two* kids. This brand of success is statistically exceptional for African-American women, and should be seen as such even when your posse contains a fair number of Michelles.
Actually, I'm worried that Michelle's fully successful side is being written out of her bios and interviews. In many ways, her "phenomenal-ness" has been toned down since early 2008, definitely to help her connect more with mainstream America (see DNC speech) and perhaps to make her a more palatable First Lady. Very different image being constructed here from Maya Angelou's in her well-known poem. And one has to wonder if this isn't her particular Duboisian veil at work.
Meanwhile, I'm with Jennifer (1st comment). When Americans voted the Obamas into the White House, they were looking for exceptional folk to take over. They just spent eight years with The Man You Can Drink A Beer With, and couldn't afford to buy another round. In choosing Barack, many made explicit their wish for someone extra-ordinary. Not another Clinton, not a McCain or Edwards, not a Kerry or Gore. But someone who made them think of JFK, MLK, Roosevelt, even Lincoln. I hear folks describing Barack and Michelle as exceptional and sense they're setting them off from other African-Americans, yes, but also from members of other cultural and professional communities to which they belong, including lawyers, politicians and Americans.
But someone who made them think of JFK, MLK, Roosevelt, even Lincoln. I hear folks describing Barack and Michelle as exceptional and sense they're setting them off from other African-Americans, yes, but also from members of other cultural and professional communities to which they belong, including lawyers, politicians and Americans.
Christ almighty, thank you. I think Obama is exceptionally intelligent, exceptionally competent, and exceptionally qualified -- when compared to 99% of the political yahoos we got out there now. And not because of "oooh, how UNUSUAL for a black guy to be this way."
You want to know why white folks clam up about this shit around black folks? Because we realize we can't say anything without getting our heads bit off. I say "Obama's exceptional" and I got 20 people thinking I'm implying that a college education or accomplishment is out of the ordinary for a black man. It's just not freaking worth it.
"You want to know why white folks clam up about this shit around black folks? Because we realize we can't say anything without getting our heads bit off. I say "Obama's exceptional" and I got 20 people thinking I'm implying that a college education or accomplishment is out of the ordinary for a black man. It's just not freaking worth it."
Zack,
That's not a fair defense of not speaking your mind. If you believe say it, and then argue for it. People ultimately respect sincerity. If it were easy to be sincere, then everyone would be. For the record, I don't see anyone biting off your head here.