Don’t lose hope: Michelle Obama

TO AFRICAN-AMERICANS: BEING ‘THE OTHER’ IN US

The first lady was speaking about race in the wake of recent cases of alleged police abuse of black US citizens.

Michelle Obama says she had to fight mispercept ions because she is Afr ican- American during the 2008 White House campaign that saw her husband become the first black president of the US.

The first lady, who grew up in humble circumstances and became a successful corporate lawyer, has rarely discussed race during her husband’s two terms in office. But a string of recent cases of alleged abuse of police force against African-Americans, and related unrest in Baltimore, made it hard to avoid.

“As potentially the first African-American fi rst lady, I was also the focus of another set of questions and speculations, conversations sometimes rooted in the fears and misperceptions of others,” Obama said on Saturday in an address at historically black Tuskegee University in Alabama.

For the first magazine cover featuring Obama in 2008, The New Yorker parodied her as a radical and a terrorist. “It was a cartoon drawing of me with a huge afro and a machine gun,” she recalled. “It was satire, but if I’m really being honest, it knocked me back a bit.”

She also recalled other racially insensitive comments, including when Fox News television said she was her “husband’s crony of colour” and “Obama’s baby mama” – the latter is US slang for an unwed mother.

“I had to ignore all of the noise and be true to myself,” she said. “And at the end of the day, by staying true to the me I’ve always known, I found this journey has been incredibly freeing.”

Frustration “can make you feel like your life somehow doesn’t matter”, the first lady added. “Those feelings are playing out in communities like Baltimore and Ferguson and so many others.”

But while being a minority in the US can be tough, she said, it was no reason to lose hope. –