Keeping faith with the future
Social progress incremental but visible, says Michelle Obama
Ten years ago, when Barack Obama was elected to his first term as president, some optimistic political observers prematurely announced the dawning of new, shining, post-racial era for the United States.
Well, didn’t happen. It still hasn’t happened. Judging from the current state of American politics, American discourse and the ugly persistence of racism and race-mongering in American life, it’s not likely to happen for a while. And so, given a chance to ask Michelle Obama a single question in a small group interview following her sit-down with Oprah Winfrey at Hearst Tower in September, I opted for this one:
Do you foresee a post-racial era ever happening, and how can we get there?
“I think we’ll get there one day,” she replied, “because I think that each generation is learning something different and better. Each generation of this country is becoming, just as we all are individually, and that doesn’t happen overnight, that happens over time.”
Obama sat with a handful of Hearst journalists and observers, all gathered on an upper floor of the diagonally ribbed glass tower in midtown Manhattan. It was a Thursday afternoon in early September, and the former first lady was there to promote “Becoming,” her new memoir from Crown Publishing Group.
A few hours earlier she had delved into the book’s many topics (her childhood, her husband, his presidency, their marriage) with Oprah. Throughout she touched on the theme of “becoming,” the never-ending business of growing and learning, self-invention and reinvention, that characterizes her life and everyone’s. Now she was submitting herself to a quick fusillade of questions from a ring of people around a small conference table.
Mine was last. I had culled it from my dream list of 13, and no, whittling them down wasn’t easy. Among the questions I didn’t ask: What would it take for Obama to change her mind and run for office? How was she