What can Michelle do? If Obama wins, she should go for it and take on a meaningful public policy role, à la Hillary Clinton's healthcare work. Just a lot more carefully. Why on earth should such an accomplished woman just arrange white-tie dinners? Until then, she should become more outspoken, building on her husband's willingness to confront dysfunction in the black community -- a black mother can get away with what no one else could. Obama has chastised blacks for apathy, for crime, for equating achievement with "acting white," for allowing their neighborhoods to deteriorate; Michelle's street cred as a churchgoing, "round the way" sister who made good makes her "ghetto pass" (her ability to operate as an insider) irrevocable. There will be no discussion of whether or not she's "black."
Since the Obamas are liberals, Michelle is bullet proof. Anyone who dares to insult her with the same level of vitriol as has been visited on Hillary Clinton and leading white Democrats like Nancy Pelosi or Dianne Feinstein will be trampled by a herd of black ministers, civil rights leaders and church ladies in big hats. (Condoleezza Rice doesn't get the same protection.) In a post-Imus world, any critiques of Michelle had best be worded very carefully. She could also build on her husband's interfaith pioneering with mainstream organizations to bring the resources of those well-endowed communities to bear on black problems.
Of course, "black" problems are really American problems; having the golden couple spearheading the fight will make it sexy to help blacks with their systemic problems (education and entrepreneurship, to name two). The two Obamas can de-race these issues (here is where she can use her fancy education) and help America understand that black progress is American progress.
Most important, though, I hope Michelle will bring feminism to black women.
Feminism is rightfully criticized for being irrelevant to black women and ignoring their issues. When it's not plain arrogant, that is. An excellent example of mainstream feminism's high-handedness is Maureen Dowd's recent petty bitching about Michelle's jabs at her husband on the campaign trail. She sounded like a 1940s white woman reprimanding a "sassy" black maid. But feminism's failure to engage with black women is only partly its own fault; black men have worked hard to reinforce the image of feminism as not just "white," not just lesbian, not just a plot to make contented black women unhappy with their lot but also (as usual) a war against black men. This black male victimology has been so successful at changing the subject whenever black women complain that, 20 years after Anita Hill was successfully demonized as a tool of white feminists for daring to "bring down" a prominent black man, here's Michelle's tortured answer to the Washington Post's F-question:
"You know, I'm not that into labels ... So probably, if you laid out a feminist agenda, I would probably agree with a large portion of it," she said. "I wouldn't identify as a feminist just like I probably wouldn't identify as a liberal or a progressive."
How difficult it must be for someone so whip smart and so famously blunt, according to insiders, to have to mouth these political pieties. But if we know nothing else about Michelle Obama, we know she's determined to live in the world the way it is, not the way it should be. But she's in a prime position to help change all that.
Now is the perfect opportunity for the movement to reach out to black women by embracing Michelle and black women's causes in general. Progressive women should be working their way toward the middle ground a political wife must occupy and politely engineer ways in which Michelle can put her postelection time, win or lose, to worthy causes important to the black community -- welfare-to-work, hiring and job training, for example.
But even as I seek silver linings, I'm still sad for Michelle. As the Times reports, "She expresses no regret about scaling down her job ... where colleagues say she excels at tackling thorny problems. But this winter, after spotting a book on the Obamas' coffee table celebrating Mr. Obama's Senate victory, her staff created a matching volume of her accomplishments. Mrs. Obama wept when she saw it."
Problems don't come much thornier than this. You've got a right to sing the blues, Michelle, so go ahead and cry. Then take action.
About the writer
Debra J. Dickerson is the author of "The End of Blackness" and "An American Story." She blogs at thelastplantation.com.
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