The first time I saw Michelle Obama in the flesh, I almost took her for white. It was late July. Pundits were taking whispered bets on the fate of Hillary Clinton's female supporters. In part to heal the intraparty rift, and in part to raise some cash, Obama was presiding over a Chicago luncheon for Democratic women. They were an opulent, multiracial, mostly middle-aged bunch, in pantsuits and conservative dresses. Clinton-turned-Obama staffer Patti Solis Doyle waved from the floor when she was introduced. One of Clinton's longtime backers appealed for unity. Only a few weeks earlier, Obama had appeared on The View in a striking black-and-white floral dress. Now, throughout the room, some of the women were decked out in their best version of that number. Obama flashed her trademark sense of humor, her long arms cutting the air, as she made her points.I'd flown into Midway that morning and driven down Lake Shore Drive, with William DeVaughn crooning "Be Thankful for What You Got" in the background. But even as I took in the stately beauty of Michigan Avenue, notions of Michelle Obama were spinning around in my head. I thought of an ecstatic phone call from my sister Kelley: "You have to ask her how she holds it down!" I thought of my Atlanta aunts, partisans of the Alpha Kappa Alpha pink and green, crowing over Obama's acceptance of an honorary membership that same month: "Tell her she made the right choice." I thought of a Chicago homeboy who'd summed her up for me: "Michelle is a six-foot black woman who says what she means."
My greatest fear, in regards to this story, is that people will say, "Oh yeah that's the article where that dude accused Michelle of acting white." I swear I was coming home yesterday from my reading in Brooknam shuddering at the possibility. I don't want people thinking that that lede is there because Michelle Obama is successful, the product of a two family home, and isn't from the projects. Indeed, I think the piece argues quite the opposite. I think if you watch the video, and read the whole article, the observation makes a little more sense. I also think the initial observation--like most writing--says more about me, than it does about her. You may not agree with it, but I think you can see that it isn't the case that I literally almost took her for white.And then I thought of an image from last February, when Michelle Obama, in a gray sweater and a non-smile, slipped into a box marked Angry Black Woman. "For the first time in my adult life," she had told a Milwaukee rally, "I am proud of my country, because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback." When I first saw that clip, I could almost hear the trapdoor opening. In that instant, Michelle Obama became a symbol of her husband's otherness. And for much of the rest of the campaign season, the opinion media obsessed over her love--or lack of love--of country.
Now, waiting in that cavernous downtown Hilton ballroom, I did not think I'd find Ida Wells or Stokely Carmichael. I did not expect to see Michelle Obama with her fist in the air, slinging bean pies, or hawking The Final Call. But still, I was unprepared for what I did encounter: Michelle Obama recounting her life as if she were an old stevedore hungering for the long-lost neighborhood of yore.
That said, had I to do it again, I probably would have dropped that whole device for a couple reasons. 1.) Given what just happened in this campaign and all the stupid, ugly "black enough" debate we've had going, I hate being tied into that. 2.) I don't want readers tied up on that particular question, and thus not getting into the rest of the article.
It would be really convenient if I could blame my editors here and tell you that the White Satan Known As The Atlantic, twisted a brother's words. Meh, the truth it was my idea. Moreover, I haven't worked for a publication, in a long time, that's been so singurlarly obsessed with letting the writer speak for himself. So on that point, I take the fall. But I also take the lesson.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
TNC have you read Gladwell's new book? I'm halfway through your profile and his book and you guys are hitting some of the same stuff. For sure have some questions coming...your piece is great...must have been tough to lay off the topic on the blog.
I could see the lede bringing a reader up short if it happened to press one of their buttons, but I just blew right by it, and by the time I was 2-3 paragraphs on down, it had pretty much slipped from my mind.
And the only time you bring it up again is to show how wrong you were, so I think it works.
Outliers is a terrible book and Game's a terrible rapper - decent hook though. As for the lede, I don't care for it much. Surely nostalgia for an idyllic childhood can't exclusively be the province of whites.
I really, really love this piece. I grew so tired of the "Michelle isn't proud of America" narrative during the election; this piece puts that stupid meme to rest, I think.
Surely nostalgia for an idyllic childhood can't exclusively be the province of whites.
Of course, it's not -- and TNC is certainly not saying that it is. He is exposing himself for having a stereotype.
I knew what you meant. The interesting question to me, discussed in your conversation with your father, is whether her comfort in the space she occupies, was natural or practiced. I'd like to think it's natural; that her upbringing with a secure support system around her, freed her from requirement to adjust herself for the "other" world she ventured out in, though her college writing might suggest otherwise. Perhaps she had to practice belief in her comfort in herself. And yeah, once I got to reading, the lede slipped my mind too.
To be honest, TNC. It just didn't work for me. MO is in fact proudly and apologetically black-that's one of the things that I love about her.
I understand what you are trying to say, but if you have to spend five minutes trying to explain what you wrote, well, you didn't write it right.
Coates
If anybody takes that lede and runs with it I would say they probably have their own agenda anyway. Lets be real here, even most black folks don't look back on their upbringing in a "white picket fences" kind of way. I had a pretty damn good one with a two parent home and middle class up bringing but even I don't necessarily look back at it that way.
A lot of that has to do with perception (militant black lady) vs reality (just a regular woman) and also the images we are shown almost from birth that supposedly relate to living the American dream and being a family. Other than the Huxtables how many stable black families do we see on Tee Vee? Even the few we have had since then still encorporate some elements of the downfall of black families like on the Damon Wayans family show (the name escapes me) when his son was a teenage dad or on the Bernie Mac show where he is taking care off his sister's kids because she isn't doing right. All of that plays into what our first thoughts are when we think about white families and white families many times in opposition to our own personal experience.
Besides that you make a full explanation of what you meant by the statement. I honestly don't see the problem. Not that there won't be people who try to make it into one, I am just saying you probably shouldn't be sweating what people who would take that tact are saying anyway.
It's a wonderful and insightful article - I was riveted - and a deplorably bad lede.
You start by writing that "The first time I saw Michelle Obama in the flesh, I almost took her for white." That's a statement of visual perception - "saw," flesh," and "white" combine to suggest to the reader that it was the experience of seeing her that made you think she was white. The rest of the paragraph remains keyed in on physical appearances - dresses, pantsuits, and long arms. The implicit message is that somehow, Michelle seemed black when you looked at her words in print and saw a photograph of her in a sweater, but that she seemed white when you saw her in person wearing a dress and flashing her arms.
Of course, this is all wrong. It's the opposite of what you intended to suggest. And the problem, I would suggest, is your descriptive prose focusing on clothing, on visual images, on the personal encounter. It's not until the end of the story that we finally find out what you meant:
Imagine a version of that inserted at the beginning of the essay, with your first paragraph running something like this:
If you're going to play with your readers by putting out a deliberately jarring sentence you intend for them to misinterpret, you need to resolve it, and least in part, by the end of the same paragraph. The rest of the story can stay the way it is - readers, hooked, will probably want to find out what the nature of that vision was. But by the end of that graf, I think we need to know that you're talking about ideas, not physical traits.
I thought the piece was very good -- to Black folks who grew up in mixed income neighborhoods, it was nothing new but I think it opened the eyes of a lot of folks...pssst... the black experience is not monolithic. I still don't understand why you used the lede though; based on what I know of your background, Michelle and her values should not be a surprise to you at all -- did you fall victim to a stereotype even though your personal experience speaks against it? It happens to me as well so am just curious.
One interesting observation about your discussion of Michelle's evolving sense of Black identity is that is fits in perfectly with the old social psychology view on the stages of racial identity (it can actually be used for any "minority" group). Namely, she grew up loving the Brady Bunch even though there were several black sitcoms on the air at the time -- was she in Stage 1 of racial identity, Conformity? When she went to Princeton and lived through the discrimination that so many peers of mine have described, did she go through Stage 2 -- Dissonance, where her prior warm and fuzzy thoughts of the majority are now questioned? Towards the latter years of her college experience where she wrote her thesis, she may have been going through Stage 3 -- Resistance, where she now rejects the dominant culture and more completely wraps Black culture around her. As she grew older, she perhaps slips into Stage 4 -- an introspective period where the rigidity of Black nationalism is questioned and she starts to view people in a more individualistic light, though resentment of the majority remain. Finally, as she is now amazed by the societal transformation that allows so many whites to embrace her Black husband, perhaps her pride is really Stage 5 -- Synergy, where she remains confident about her culture but is open to taking and learning from other cultures, including the dominant one. So the speech that you took for white may actually be the synergetic view of race/society at this time in her life; perhaps she gives a different speech during her sophomore year of Princeton.
I think since you elaborated on the idea by discussing the enclave nature of the South Side and how growing up there is analogous to white growing up in white majority places, it's explained well enough it you read more than 2 graphs.
The interesting thing to me was the enclave hook. I grew up part of an ethnic group (Cape Verdean) in a place where there are many of us (Rhode Island). And most of the time I spent as a kid was around other Cape Verdeans. Thus, everyone knew what Cape Verdeans are in RI, and it wasn't an oddity at all. Then when I moved to Florida, nobody had a clue and it was the first realization of, oh yeah, I am different. I think a lot of people of many strains will find that position empathetic, if not straight emblematic of their experiences.
Also, dope reading last night!
"I also think the initial observation...says more about me, than it does about her"
True. And what happened to the really before the 'proud' in the infamous quote? ;-)
I also paused when I read you almost took her for white but by the time I finished the piece I'd forgotten it. The title is so apt; I love seeing her ,Barack and their family represent our quintenssial Americaness.
To draw an unfavorable comparison to David Ehrenstein of the magic meme, I find some people have an investment in their specialness of not being like 'those other black' people. Their ability to speak standard English, for example,is felt to be an almost unique achievement amongst "the black people". Or the obverse who have a keeping it real enough litmus test. With those pathologies in mind is was nice to read your quote from Michelle's mother:
"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.”
I enjoyed the article.
TNC
I believe you have done a huge disservice to the black community with your lead about 'thinking Michelle was white' for several reasons.
First you are educated, so if you do not get the import of calling a black person 'white, and possess the mindset of the uneducated, despite your degree, what hope is there for the white masses? Second you are black and perpetuating a false stereotype that whites continually express about blacks inferring they are ignorant, uncouth and impoverished by using that 'thought she was white' Third ..it is perpetuating that which you claim to be a victim of! You are like Dave Chapelle.
It is shameful that an educated black man would write such nonsense, knowing that 'acting white and speaking white' are two of the most oft repeated taunts our children hear growing up. Many children opt not to study and to not learn to speak English correctly because of those taunts. In short, those two phrases hold our children back and mire them in poverty and ignorance. Yet, you say you were seeking to enlighten and shine a light on how there are many blacks like Michelle? Doesn't sound like it.
For you to have published this in this manner is just profoundly ignorant. Do you realize the impact this will have on mainstream America. I dare say, your article will be quoted many times by white writers who choose to convey the same thought. Only it will be used to say they are not racist because see TN Coates said it!!
If anything, you should have been writing this in a manner that instilled pride in our youth, where they would learn that they too come from a cultural heirtage that lived well, with dad's working in the home and moms at home and not being rich materially but rich in values and hopes and dreams. Our children need to know that is not an anomaly but rather something that was commonplace in our communities in the 40s,50s,60s and 70s.
As a graduate of a HBC, I expected far better from you.
You should know your cultural history better than to have even hinted that it was 'white' to have Michelles childhood. To think such is to deny the reality of black America's prospering despite tremendous odds and thriving in communities where their children never once FELT poor. That was not just a 'white idyllic and nostalgic view'. Black folks had it like that too, until Reaganomics...surely you know that socio-economic history don't you?
Surely, you knew our communities were not mired in ignorance and poverty as you seem to convey by thinking Michelle was 'white'? It sounds like your father told you and you ignored him. Why did you resist his guidance, especially now, when you seem to think the video helps convey 'what you meant'...do you not understand that video will NOT accompany this article? Actually, you should be glad the video doesn't accompany the article because then it becomes very challenging to think anything other than you were pandering to white mainstream stereotypes given that your father challenged you on the idea, and you wrote it and kept in the article despite knowing it was FALSE! Your use of the Cosby quote does NOT justify that either.
How could you as an EDUCATED black man write your article from such a skewed perspective? Can you explain that? You write about sororities and black middle class and bourgeousie YET you thought Michelle was 'white'? How could that be? Were you trying to 'be black' by disdaining anything of achievement, prosperity and WORKING middleclass lifestyle by blacks? That ignorant black cultural thing where you have to 'put down blacks' to prove you black? Where only 'welfare values' are the REAL black history of our families? Not working dads? An education is suppose to teach you how deeply distorted and warped that type of pathological self-hatred of the black culture is and how it is a LIE. You sounded like self-hating John McWhorter with that 'thinking Michelle was white'..you do know that don't you? McWhorter has biracial issues, what's your excuse. Seems to me you HAD a WORKING father in the home and knew better, so just who or what were you pandering to with that 'hook'?
Our children deserved better than this from you. You had an opportunity to raise the hopes and possibilities for thousands of black kids who live in poverty to know that not only was such a life possible but that it was commonplace for hundreds of thousands of blacks and not just a pipedream of some impossibility.
Frankly, I simply do not get why you considered such a terrible 'sounding/speaking white' teaser to be acceptable given the terrible impact of such statements in our lives.
What were you thinking?
I was a little confused by the lede, but eventually figured it out. Which may have been the point.
But I'm not sure if it might have been harder to figure out if I didn't already have the context of everything that you've said in this blog. I don't think anybody who reads the whole article could seriously take it as a dig at Michelle Obama, but I can see how the article might be a little stronger and less confusing without it.
"The interesting question to me, discussed in your conversation with your father, is whether her comfort in the space she occupies, was natural or practiced. I'd like to think it's natural.."
I've always considered MO's comfort in her space as a consequence of both her upbriging, her professional and personal success and...maturity.
I never onced believed that this was something natural...the way a white women brought up like her might...BIG MIGHT...exoerience a natural ease with her space...
The lede was definetly jarring...not I think the best choice, but certainly followed through in the rest of the article.
What Observer said. Bigger picture, it's a great article and a great blog, so I think the cosmos will forgive the small ways in which it could have been an even better article.
I was confused by it, but more or less figured it out. What I really took away from the article (and discussions here) is of course skewed by my experience as a white woman who came of age politically as the Clintons won: Michelle Obama is the first Dem. First Lady in my adult life who's comfortable about who she is and not at all defensive (and I'm including wives of nominees). Hillary was probably comfortable w/ herself right up until she got onto the national stage, but she let herself be pushed around by image handlers. Tipper Gore and Teresa Kerry weren't really allowed to get out there much. Michelle is just who she is, and isn't afraid to show it. It's a great thing to see, for all women.
Damn. You hear that, T? Our *children* deserve better from you.
Listen, I had the same slight beef with it that your father did, and I appreciated your explanation of it. It made sense, once you explained it a bit. Unfortunately, most people aren't going to delve that deep to find out what you meant. It's an easy statement to misinterpret. But ultimately, I'm with sgwhite.
Puissant, which article did you read? Because I didn't see any hinting that Michelle's childhood was white. Seems like you have other issues at play here. Your disbelief should tell you something... perhaps you're misinterpreting things.
"I dare say, your article will be quoted many times by white writers who choose to convey the same thought. Only it will be used to say they are not racist because see TN Coates said it!!"
Ummm...no. You are not going to see any articles by white authors attempting to claim that Michelle Obama 'acts' white. And you certainly won't be seeing white writers quote TNC to show that she does. She is clearly proud to be a black woman.
Put me down as one who knew exactly what you were trying to convey from the jump.
It may be because I had a debate about this with a white female blogger back when Biden made his, “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” comment a couple of years back.
She tried to blast Biden by naming some well-known blacks. I responded that she was perpetuating a fallacy by only citing the few blacks with whom she was familiar. I explained that there are millions of mainstream blacks in the US that are articulate and bright, not just the famous ones she had heard about.
I understood from the article that you were basing your observation on your world-view, especially that which was developed during your childhood. I further understood that based on MO's presentation, and from others you heard from, the stereotype perpetuated in this country that most blacks are from a one-parent low income home, uneducated and criminal was simply not the case.
MO's family history as she described it and the fact that she did not rail against the stereotype, caused you to almost take her for white.
I hope you don't "drop the device" because I like the way the article flowed from that initial statement and it is my favorite of all your pieces.
Disclaimer on favorite pieces: I have not read your book, but it is on my library list. Sorry. I haven't been able to afford purchasing books for over a decade. But I will be purchasing the issue of the Atlantic in which this article appears.
TNC, while I did find the lede confusing - mainly for the reasons Observer lists above, too bad he wasn't your editor because I think he does it quite nicely and non-confrontationally - I loved the article.
But as I said on here yesterday, I did find it odd that it completely disregarded the gender factor and I would be curious why. I realize that wasn't your focus, per se, but the Angry Black Woman trope is an Angry Black Woman trope. I saw commenters in here yesterday favourably comparing her to Hillary, saying Michelle had a "softer edge," and I thought that comment encapsulated exactly why I don't think you can talk about Michelle as a public figure and not talk about gender.
I was at your reading in Brooklyn last night, and you were fantastic. I was too shy to say hello and get my book signed, but I was just to the left by the windows, leaning on the wall, in front of the standing-room only area.
puissant,
Was that for real? That part about the children deserved better seemed to me like it had to be a parody.
Honestly, I had no trouble with the lede. You eventually explained it in a way that made sense. If you had changed the verb from "saw" to "heard" that would have resolved the precision problem but would have still left you with the "acting white" problem (if you had it). I think your explanation of your point--once you got there--was more than sufficient. And I found the entire essay particularly insightful and moving.
What I've always found interesting about the Obamas' relationship is that, whenever I'm tempted to view Barack as a wanton politico, I just think of Michelle and their relationship, and that image evaporates. I've never seen a first lady do that before. (Even with Hillary...I got the impression that her relationship with Bill was pretty political.) But together, the Obamas seem incredibly real. Almost shockingly real for a first family.
Your essay captured that feeling of normalcy exactly and even helped explain some of it. So, I very much appreciated it!
Michelle,
Why didn't you speak!! I met other commenters there--Belle and Andrew, for instance.
Pussant: "As a graduate of a HBC, I expected far better from you."
And therein is the problem. I'm a dropout. As for Dave Chappelle, man I should be so lucky.
T-N.C.
Please do not worry over this little dust-up from some of the Atlantic crowd. And don't fret about the dashed hopes of thousands of children; they're not going to read the article anyway.
Attentive readers may have stumbled over the lede, but someone who read the entire article could not finish with the impression that you think Michelle Obama "acts white."
I enjoy the open and easygoing way that you, and the rest of us, can talk about race on this blog. There probably are hundreds of sentences, however, that could be plucked from the archives and pronounced "racist" or "self hating." Too bad; this is us talkin' 'bout stuff without self-consciousness or concern for political correctness. It works great in the blog, but might be too shocking to the Magazine's audience. Oh, and to your father.
In the totality of your life as a writer, this is small stuff. No sweat.
The lede does not bother me as much as the economy of expression that runs throughout the whole piece. So many of your ideas are expressed in semi-coded language that can be difficult to interpret if the right cultural referrants are not known to the reader. In fact, I think much of this piece feels like a giant ellipses of thought, where allusions flash in but without context to explain them to the uninitiated. As such, the nuance, so integral to the analogy, is hard to follow. I get the overall point but I just think this should have been eight pages instead of four. What you are trying to convey is important, and it simply warrants more space than you are allowed. Rather than playing with your analogy, I wish you had the space/confidence? to push it into a much deeper exploration of remembrance, idealization, and childhood.
tnc,
i think the article was a great and thoughtful piece. i liked the fact that it wasn't just another piece recanting the fact that her father worked a blue collar job and died early and blah blah blah, instead used her as a jumping point for a more thoughtful discussion of race and community. the lede was good - lede's can be somewhat controversial and it made me want to read the rest of the article. Though i think video podcast did a lot to illuminate your real feelings.
I'd rather read something that seems honest and thoughtful, even if it isn't always what I'd want or expect to hear.
I understand why you feel you need to apologize, but remember that you write what you think, and IMHO, you should never compromise that.
You make me think.
TNC,
I acknowledge you for putting yourself out there, again, like this. No one is asking you any questions, like you asked for, they're all just praising or criticizing.
And I don't have a question, either. Since you started this topic, I'd like you to know how I experienced the lede. Because it's not that I felt it was offensive or anything of the sort.
The lede issue was very simple for me. Observer nails it when he says you "play with your readers" with "a deliberately jarring sentence." I read that sentence and I thought, "No he did not mistake her for white." It's dishonest. It felt like you were trying to throw something crazy about race in our faces to get our attention, playing with us because you were saying something you knew wasn't true and you knew we knew wasn't true but we didn't know why you would make that up.
I thought it was clear within the first quarter of the article what you meant by it.
I did not find it jarring, and I did not think you meant it literally. But I did think it was a bit cheap.
Meaning is created in the act of reading, not in the act of writing. It was a provocative line. Here's how I took it...
You call Michelle's way of walking the Earth a "third way" but really it's just the way white folks move about. I'm only the white guy in a room full of black people (or Indian people, or Asian people...). Otherwise, I'm the tall guy, the nerd, or four-eyes. Michelle, at six foot and smokin', was probably known in a black neighborhood as the tall girl or the hot girl. You say as much in the Princeton bit.
Of course, I'm in the racial majority so the majority of times, I don't take the racial adjective. What this means is that the assume racial adjective is "white." People who are not boxed using the "black" adjective (in this case) are default-set to "white." So when you want to make the point that Michelle doesn't fold easily into society's "black" box, the convention is to call her "white."
Im probably not the one to ask...nor am in any way or shape or form an american, so this could be kind of lost on me. But i did read the article as a fan of your work. Probably the wrong way or reason to do so but it's a reason enough for me. I 'm writing this because i thought the article (from my perspective) was very thought-provoking. Probably because of my ignorance/superficial view of black-america. I've learned about black america as much through hip-hop/malcolm x as anything else. One contrast to that would probably be the Huxtables, and it should be pointed out that i always thought of them as the exception to the rule of the problematic relationship between black america and the mainstream. And that's why the lede was so important in my view. It knocked me on my feet. I was actually a little pissed at you for tryin to make such a point that she wasn't acting/speaking/looking "black"..."how could you" I said to myself at first. But then as i continued it dawned on me that, the lede is just the lede...i actually liked it after a while that you upset me in such a way that i wanted to prove you wrong by finding the rest of the article to prove the point of the lede. And then i finally understood, what a great point it was if u look at the lede as it is intended to be...the LEDE, as in a beginning to something else...a more profound/broad view of national identity. I probably haven't understood all the nuances of said points, but it makes for a very compelling read...my hat's off to you sir!!
Yeah, I see your point. About your lede being taken somewhere it did not intend to go. But I read your entire article (and as extra credit watched the video) and the point you make is kind of great. So I wouldn't worry too much about it. For those who choose to take it in some other direction, well that's a risk that always lies with writing that doesn't follow a template. In other words, good job.
Well, I wrote all I wanted to write on the story yesterday. But, I enjoyed it again today as I reread it. Like I said, I listen to Michelle Obama and I hear the story of my family and everyone I grew up with. I still think that's the Invisible Black America, and it's why I loved her from jump street. She gave a face and voice to a part of this country that had been ignored...well, for forever.
I thought the lede was great -- no need to dumb it down by explaining everything too quickly. In general, I thought the article was a great example of making something good out of (apparently) a pretty mediocre interview with Obama herself. You didn't have a lot to work with, but you made a pretty sweet lemonade out of those lemons.
don't worry about the lede, man, it was a small gripe - at least on my part. glad you realized your dad was right, though... ;)
TNC,
it is a beautiful article and I think your troupe was wonderful. It is disorienting, but by the end you come full circle and your meaning is clear to any attentive reader not blinded by their own preconceptions (ahem, Puissant?!).
Maybe the lede's not perfect because it could be misinterpreted, but I think it's actually pretty interesting from a literary standpoint. It made me ask myself, what does it mean to "take" someone to have a particular identity? As you present it, it doesn't exactly accord with phenotype, but has other behavioral and biographical elements that may, none the less, be conveyed in a persons physical being, though not in typical ways.
If I were and English teacher (and I'm not, I'm a political scientist with an outsized love of literature) I'd be all over it.
I agree with what's been said; the lede takes the article to a place where it wasn't intended, yet opens a really rich, and, in my opinion, necessary discussion. I can't think of a more open and respectful place than your blog for it. I'm glad you're able to share this perspective with the print audience of The Atlantic--great article.
I did think, after reading the piece, that your references of the mainstreaming of black culture, (Barbershop, hip-hop), and the social conscience narrative within the black community would make for great long-form pieces in the future. Just a suggestion...
Thank you.
TC,
Two small quibbles with what was otherwise a brilliant article.
1. The Title - WifeRat is a hardcore feminist and long ago trained me to stop referring to grown-ass women as "girls." I think I understand the sentiment the title was trying to convey (I also can't get the Tom Petty song "American Girl" out of my head now), Michelle Obama is as American as apple pie or in this case, sweet potato pie; she's not some mysterious "other", she's just like everyone else you know. However, you may have been to evoke the same feeling with the title "American Woman."
2. The Electric Slide - I'm distraught that when citing examples of Black culture you included to the Electric Slide. Most White people don't know that we invented that corny-ass shit and I would like to keep it that way.
Like I said, minor quibbles. Congrats on getting some pages in the Atlantic magazine.
Peace,
HR
Ta-nehisi, congrats on the Image Award nom!
http://www.variety.com/awardcentral_article/VR1117998104.html?nav=news&categoryid=1983&cs=1
I knew I liked Michelle Obama before I ever saw her at all, when I read about some sort of "wives of the candidates" debate thing early on in the primaries, and Obama's response to some assertion by another wife was described as prefaced by a "Bitch, please!" look. That sealed it for me.
Coates,
congrats on the Image Award nomination!!
@shani-o | January 7, 2009 11:35 AM
I read American Girl, shani-o, what article did you read. There was not a hint, but there was an inference that Michelle’s childhood was white, if you watched the video. Did you watch the video and listen to TNC’s rationale for saying he ‘thought Michelle was white’? Your inaccurate remarks should tell you something, perhaps you are misconstruing what was read and/ or unaware of what TNC’s rationale was for making the statement his hook.
@Stacy | January 7, 2009 11:35 AM
"Ummm...no. You are not going to see any articles by white authors attempting to claim that Michelle Obama 'acts' white"
No, they will say that Michelle is an 'exception', it will give license to the negative welfare teenage mother offspring ignorant and uncouth negative black stereotype is what they will write.
Many white mainstream writers will take Coates perception and use it as a validation to perpetuate the black stereotype myths. Coates perceptions of Michelle have nothing whatsoever to do with Michelle being a proud black woman, and everything to do with his statement that he thought a black woman, in the flesh, was white and his rationale being her idyllic view of her childhood. This article is going to have a hugh impact and particularly the dissonance he expresses about her being white to him.
@peep | January 7, 2009 11:41 AM
What about our children deserving better seems a parody to you? What is so difficult about understanding Coates is a literary role model?
Is it hard for you to grasp that many children in high school as well as middle school may be assigned this article to read? Clearly, you are limited in thinking that an article of this nature from a writer of Coates generation will not have a widespread impact. There are very few writers of his ilk and this article along with his literary style will be a discussion in many classrooms across this nation.
So, again I reiterate, our children deserved better.
@ deva | January 7, 2009 2:54 PM
The problem Deva is that Coates meaning is clear and that his rationale for it is disgraceful. Those are not preconceptions on my part, but clearly in opposition to Coates having such a stereotypical view of black family life that he experienced such cognitive dissonance on hearing Michelle speak of her childhood that he went to the extreme of experiencing her as ‘white’. Those are Coates preconceptions, not mine. Point of fact, I am experessing umbrage that he thought such.
What was particularly troubling is that is writing on this blog projects him as an educated black male with a middle class upbringing so I could not fathom why he would have such a distorted self-concept of blacks given that he brings up not workingclass blacks but college educated blacks when he speaks of his relatives in sororities. Those two things simply did not match.
It is inconceivable to me that a black man, i.e. Coates, raised in a working middle class environment would think Michelle’s story of her childhood was a ‘white experience’. Makes no sense. Unless, Coates is pandering to the welfare, incarcerated, drugdealing rumpshaking image perpetuated in mainstream America.
TNC writes,
And therein is the problem. I'm a dropout. As for Dave Chappelle, man I should be so lucky
__________
Being a dropout from college is one thing. Having this distorted view of working middleclass America is another and putting it into print is quite another still. If you can read you can learn and I would expect that you would have more pride than to write such an awful statement about ‘white like’ regarding Michelle’s view of her childhood. Particularly, when your father had to have challenged you on that, and also knowing that it has been such a put down and deterrent to black children’s success.
Others believe that your meaning comes clear at the end of the article which is true in some ways, and yet it is not my focus. You wrote a wonderful article. The things you wrote about the black community and how black folks lived and prospered independent of the segregated communities was great. However, that was destroyed when you start with the perspective nevertheless that such a lifestyle for black Americans was not a reality and that furthermore, you construe Michelle as ‘white’ in order for it to make sense to you as a person of AfricanAmerican descent. That is just too powerful of a statement. Why did you drink that cyanidelacedJamestown Kool-Aid?. Where you have to be white to have it like that?
Coates, you are now a role model whether you like it or not and you do have a responsibility to our community and children not to perpetuate these types of stereotypes When you choose to address how they have impacted your own experience, that should be made clear. However, when you write as a black American about entirely false stereotypes of the black community in a manner that says they hold true it perpetuates that onto our children.
I think it is noteworthy, that you are acknowledging that it is your own false perception that you somehow unfortunately never had dispelled. Perhaps, you also bought into putting down blacks as a way of being ‘authentically’ black to think that your lede was a hook without a negative stereotype attached.
Lastly, to say you were like Chapelle was not a compliment. Chapelle had a mental breakdown for just the sort of thing you did with this article and the negative stereotypes. Chapelle labored under the false presumption that his characters and buffoonery minstrel skits would help whites she how ridiculously absurd and false they were. Until, one day he woke up and heard the laughter from the audience, and the man was laughing so hard that Chapelle realized he was being laughed AT not with.
Chapelle had an epipyhanous moment and recognized that he was not dispelling blacks as buffoons but perpetuating it. His actions were creating the very negative stereotypical views that he fought against daily in the larger society when stopped by the police, not respected at the bank and when treated invisibly at public counters or followed like a thief in stores.
Your inferring that Michelle was describing a white childhood, tells our children that is an impossibility and that is totally untrue. Instilling pride in our black children means telling them this is your past, we had it like this..and making them ponder what happened that we lost that? What happened to the stay at home black mom and the family supported by the black male working? It should be an expectation for black children to have Michelle’s childhood and not a belief that it only happens like that if you are white.
BTW, Observer gave the best correction but I would say delete it or change the lede to. Michelle defies the myth of being that having an idyllic childhood in America is exclusive to whites, and that is what makes our community PROUD. We take pride in how she represents all that we are and not some distorted negative twisted blacks have no values and black fathers do not support their families. We too, come from homes like that. We too have wonderful childhood memories like that. Michelle Obama embodies the type of life children black and white had in America. You did a great job of discussing her jarring experience having come from the black working middleclass cocoon when she got to Princeton. That would be a great angle to build on in the future.
TNC,
Loved the piece sir. I do wonder whether its time to pronounce the DuBoisian insight / paradox dead or resolved just yet, but I need more time to gather my thoughts on that assertion. It was the one place in your piece that gave me serious pause.
I also liked the allusion to BLACK METROPOLIS in naming SS Chi as a rival to Harlem as the spiritual center of Black America in the 20th C.
Puissant,
Wow. You're really spazzing out. While I agree with some of the points Observer raised to TNC, Ta-Nehisi was basically pulling a bait and switch by embodying the persistent Black stereotype of "acting white" in his OWN assumptions.
I dont know if you are denying that exists, Im going to assume you arent given the white hot fury radiating from your posts, but if you are, I assure you from personal experience that it does.
For some reason you lost the subtlety of his device and have chased him from post to post accusing him of undermining the truth of authentic, stable black middle class family life by making us look bad in public.
Whats funny is you keep saying stuff like "how could any HBCU educated brother with aunties in AKA steep SO LOW as to SMEAR and DEBASE the black family..." as if not attending Howard or not having AKA aunts or not fitting your preconception of a decent, educated, middle class vetted black man would somehow disqualify him off the bat.
IOW youre being a little elitist yourself dont you think? Among other things.
Hit it out the park. A bit upset you didn't give us a heads up; I've a thousand places you should have seen in Chicago.
As to white. That hit home like a brick upside the head. It is the I am somebody chant internalized; I don't have to think about it. It is the way Desai's, Asians, Carribean Islanders and Africans move about American. I have a self assured confidence that I know whom I am.
Acting white is the skin color priviledge most whites and Jews are not cognizant they have. They expect you can write and read because they can and have never known anyone different.
Probably one other thing that stings in acting white is that the perseption that white people's families are intact, i.e. both parents are at home married even if it is the dysfunctioanl married w/ children version. I think that is the unspoken thought unarticulated in puissants posts.
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.
Puissant,
what have you been eating, drinking or smoking? you made your point, which is YOUR point. now go get a life, and leave shorty alone. you actually could go to another blog and find some more good s... to demonstrate your righteousness.
great article TC. i knew your dad back in the day and enjoyed seeing him interviewing his son.
TNC - really enjoyed the piece and the key for me was its focus on the 'radical normalcy of Michelle Obama', as the subtitle of the article reads.
I'm the same age as MO and the life in the 1970's the article described evoked memories of Mt. Baker, the neighborhood where I grew up in Seattle. It had been developed in the 1920's and 30's and overlooked Lake Washington. By the 1960's, the area was in flux. Upwardly mobile Black and Asian families were moving in, older Whites were passing on and only a few younger White families were swimming against the tide pushing out to the glistening Bellevue suburbs. My parents were among those choosing to live in the city.
Our local elementary school (this was pre-busing) was a mixture of Black, White and Asian - probably 1/3 each. I remember teachers talking about the Civil Rights movement and Martin
Luther King, about how storekeepers used to advantage of or oppresse Black customers, how people weren't allowed to vote, how housing had been ill-kept with lead paint poisoning babies. But the message conveyed was that by the early 70's this had changed - the bad old days were past and our neighbors were part of the Black middle class who were able to live where they wanted, send their kids to good schools, enroll them in music and ballet lessons, and generally lead uneventful middle class lives.
Part of what resonated for me in reading your piece about MO and her mom's experience as a young mother/housewife in that period were the descriptions of their 'normal' life.
Over the years, my sister and I heard stories from our friends about how things had been 'back in the day' for their parents. How one neighbor couple where the husband was particularly light-skinned, had been pulled over by the cops driving in Virginia because he was in a car with a Black woman (his wife) and how he had had to convince them he was Black and it was okay for them to be together. How when our next-door neighbors bought their house, the White neighbor behind both our houses, had tried to block the sale of the house to them.
One of the girls I went to high school with, Miriam Pratt, was the daughter of Edwin Pratt, the director of the Urban League in Seattle who had been murdered in his suburban home in 1969. Not in the American South, but in 'moderate'
and open-minded Seattle. But coming up, these events were from the bad, old days. In our day, neighbors had parties and invited everyone to them. Folks combined fireworks on the 4th of July and the kids played kickball in the street on the warm summer days.
As we grew older, we came to realize that the world was not in fact as gleaming as we thought. The Union had not been perfected. By the time I was an adult, the subtext of pain carried within the joking stories we had heard as children had become more apparent to me, the ironic horror of liberal Seattle's having its civil rights leader slain, the agony people reported having felt when Dr. King had been assassinated (one of our neighbors who had attended the same Catholic girls high school I attended recalled how the Black students had locked them inside the church next door, in despair and fury over his murder) - it all sort of seeped in and my sense that I had been fortunate to grow up in a passing glimpse of something better, something idyllic in its prosaic normalcy, became stronger.
This is the sense your article captured, asserting both a (not 'the') reality that indeed existed and the yearning for it to be that way again. And, I echo MO's sense that I am (again) proud of my country - we did the right thing on November 8 and let's hope this change will have all sorts of impacts - big and small - on our society in the coming years.
This is a great piece. And I think that these negative responses to the lede are wrong. I feel like people have been watching cable news too much, reading too many (bad) blogs, and feels as if they themselves have to carry the banner of the professionally and perpetually outraged. Sure, taken out of context, it sounds bad. But so what? That's the same nonsense behind gotcha politics, the same sort of thinking that convinced people of the relevance of a few clips of Rev. Wright or a few quotations from Bill Ayers.
Nuance is good. Thought-provoking writing is good. To have an interesting, meaningful conversation about race in the United States, we need both.
I thought it was provocative - and it could have been cheap (it certainly got me wondering "so what's he saying here?") But you did a tremendous job with the piece, and I think the lede and the way the piece comes full circle were very effective. I see that others disagree, but I really liked it.
@ Nate,
I share your recognition of the allusions and nuances, but not your thinking about them. I think they're exactly right.
Coates readers keep longing for footnotes and discovering that they don't need them after all.
What's the substance of the Atlantic article? Michelle Obama is mysterious by being familiar. Be surprised, oh suburban America: she watched the Brady Bunch. Be stunned, oh white middle class: Marian Robinson stayed home, and her family played board games. You've never been to a place like this, because it's so much like your hometown.
What's the form of the article? Some of the words confuse me by their ability to make sense. I missed something, but I got it anyway. It isn't exactly the vocabulary and code I use at home, but it isn't as alien as it seems at first glance.
"Took her for white" felt to me like standing in the ocean and being caught by a big wave I wasn't expecting. At one level, surprised. At another level, knowing I drove to the ocean, ran down the beach, and waded out that far exactly to let the waves push me over.
That sense of losing your footing and getting it back again isn't a flaw in how T-NC writes: it's the best thing about how he works.