For Michelle Obama, 2014 Has Been A Year Of Racial Stirring

If you were inclined to sympathize with Michelle Obama and conclude that her recent comments on racist behavior in Target were misconstrued, you’d be wise to consider the First Lady’s history.

Michelle Obama’s complete u-turn when describing an interaction with a white lady asking for her help reaching groceries is not the first time she has used her status to misguidedly cry racism. Indeed, in May, the Inquisitr reported how Obama urged high school students to monitor their family and friends for racial insensitivity.

“As you go forth, when you encounter folks who still hold the old prejudices… it’s up to you to help them see things differently… You all can make a difference every day in your own lives simply by teaching others the lessons you’ve learned… Maybe that starts simply in your own family, when grandpa tells that off-colored joke at Thanksgiving, or you’ve got an aunt talks about ‘those people.’ Well, you can politely inform them that they’re talking about your friends.”

This statement, if taken at face value, appears a sensible viewpoint, merely encouraging racial awareness and sensitivity. But Mrs Obama has her own dubious history when it comes to using insensitive racial language. Speaking to ABC’s Robin Roberts in June at the White House Summit on Working Families, the First Lady used a term considered extremely derogatory to Roma Gypsies.

“The first thing I tried to do, which was a mistake, was that I tried the part-time thing… I realized I was getting gypped on that front. What happened was I got a part-time salary but worked full time.”

Surely somebody in Mrs. Obama’s position could have chosen to use a more considered phrase, being that the term gypped is a slur that is regarded to be ethnically offensive? Indeed, to put Michelle Obama’s recent racist grabbing headlines and gaffes into perspective, it is necessary to consider her historical obsession with race.

While attending Princeton, Michelle Obama was one of the leaders of a black student organization that invited onto campus the Palestine Liberation Organization leader Hassan Rahman, an advocate of terrorism. Rahman, a controversial figure, reiterated the PLO’s position that the “Palestinians deserve a homeland and that they are entitled to use terrorism to achieve their goal, just as American revolutionaries did against the British.”

“We have the right to kill them if they are traitors and negotiate with the Israelis.”

The campus group led by Obama, named the Third World Center (TWC), had a board membership exclusively reserved for minorities. An example of the TWC board’s obsession with race can be found in the reaction to a Princeton editorial penned in 1981, titled “Rebuilding Race Relations.”

The group dismissed and labelled the article aimed at building bridges between the divisive TWC group and other students as “racist, offensive and inaccurate.”

“The word RE-building implies that race relations once existed and, for some mysterious reasons, fell apart. We, on the other hand, believe that race relations have ?never? been and still are not at a satisfactory level. We are not RE-building. We cannot RE-build something that never existed in the first place. The bottom line is that white students on this campus are racist, but they may not realize it.”

In fact, the Princeton administration actually seemed to view Obama’s and the group’s activities as counterproductive to combating racism. The general consensus being that self-segregation by black students was harmful to reform.

As a board member of the Third World Center, Michelle Obama also joined in a racially-charged statement lambasting the college for not doing enough to hire “Latino administrators.” In a letter, the TWC attacked Princeton’s administration for not replacing Hector Delgado, a minority dean of students.

“This search needs to produce another experienced individual who is of minority background, preferably Latino, and who will be responsive to the concerns of Third World Center as well as the student body at large.”

Yet others on the campus also expressed concern that Delgado and the TWC’s focus on race was actually the main cause of racial tensions within Princeton.

“[Delgado’s] penchant for drawing campus issues along racial lines—a penchant shared by the TWC and The Daily Princetonian—is the chief cause of racial strife on campus.”

Unfortunately, the group’s aim of increasing diversity and crushing racism did not extend to helping black students who disagreed with their incessant race-baiting. Dissenters were made to feel like “sellouts” by TWC members, who sought to maintain and propagate a racial war.

Although it is not clear exactly how many of these initiatives were instigated by Mrs. Obama, or indeed which terrorist leaders she was responsible for bringing to the campus, it is clear that she was very much complicit in the racially divisive activities of the group.

And with her recent Target shopping trip comments, along with other racial statements made by Mrs. Obama in 2014, the question of her suitability to preach on such matters remains debatable.

[Photo: Bet.com]