The Bushes welcomed the Obamas to the White House on Monday where the Obamas will reside 71 days from today.
First Lady Laura Bush and First Lady to be Michelle hugged each other; the President and President-elect shook hands, smiled with each other and did not seem uncomfortable with each other at the South Portico.
They all went through the doors at the South Portico and shortly after Bush and Obama emerged and strolled along the colonnade to the Oval Office. This was the first time Obama has ever visited the Oval Office.
The men had their face-to-face session in the Oval Office while the ladies held their own meeting in the White House residence. Mrs. Bush was to give Mrs. Obama a tour of the first family’s living quarters, including the bedrooms used by children of past presidents. The two women were expected to talk about what it is like living in one of the world’s most famous building, from family life to the help provided by executive staff.
It was the President-Elect’s first visit to the White House since his victory.
Earlier in the day, the Obamas climbed into a black limousine with tinted windows, instead of the normal SUV; the limo looked just like the one that the president rides in, without the seal or flags. The entire motorcade was upgraded from campaign mode to presidential-level, with a second identical decoy limousine, a black haz-mat truck, a communications truck and the counter-assault team hanging out the back of an SUV.
Let’s work together and rebuild America and make it even greater than it was. UNITY!
Michelle Obama (nee Robinson) was born on January 17, 1964 – she’s 44 years old. She was raised by her parents. Her Father suffered from Multiple Sclerosis (MS). MS is an autoimmune condition in which the immune system attacks the central nervous system (CNS). MS can cause numerous physical and mental symptoms, and often progresses to physical and cognitive disability. Despite suffering from MS Mr. Robinson worked and supported his family and rarely took a day off. Her Mother Marian Robinson stayed home and nurtured her family.
Michelle was raised in a one-bedroom apartment on Chicago’s South Shore, a predominantly black neighborhood. The South Side has mostly single-family homes and has endured a reputation as being poor and crime-infested. The neighborhood ranges from impoverished to working class mostly blue collar residents.
Michelle shared a “bedroom” with her brother Craig, but it wasn’t much of a bedroom. It was actually the living room with a divider down the middle since the family could not afford a larger apartment.
Michelle’s parents demanded academic excellence and Michelle and her brother excelled in school. After high school Michelle received a scholarship to Princeton where she majored in sociology.
Princeton was Michelle’s first step into a diverse America since before then her life was centered around Chicago’s South Shore.
Michelle arrived at Princeton before her roommate. When her roommate, a white southerner, arrived on campus her roommate’s mother was in shock and angry that her daughter would have a black roommate and immediately requested that her daughter get a different roommate.
I was not at Princeton with Michelle Obama but I can imagine some of her experiences at blue blood Princeton. She must have been shunned too many times to remember, most likely wasn’t asked to join a sorority and was most likely excluded from most social activities. But she persevered and graduated with cum laude honors in 1985.
From there she attended Harvard where she earned her law degree in 1988, one year ahead of her husband-to-be, Barack, whom she hadn’t met as yet even though they attended the same law school.
Tim Wise, a most eloquent and well-respected anti-racist, posted this piece on his blog today:
June 19, 2008
So, I’m just wondering…
Ain’t Michelle Obama a woman?
The reason I ask is this: During the Presidential primaries, there were numerous examples of sexist media commentary aimed at Hillary Clinton, from comments on her cleavage, to her pantsuits, to her laugh (described as a “cackle”) to her voice sounding like “the voice every husband knows” when being asked to take out the trash. Messed up stuff for sure. And white women, by and large, rushed to her defense, angrily (and correctly) denouncing the misogyny that was so commonly on display these past few months.
And yet, as Michelle Obama has come under fire (much of it also blatantly sexist in nature) these white women, many of them self-proclaimed feminists, have said virtually nothing. So when commentators have called her aggressive, or “angry,” or “hard-edged” (just a few of the words I’ve heard used to describe her)–and indeed, these are sexist in nature because they imply that women should be passive, sweet and soft, almost as an archetype–white women by and large say nothing in her defense. And worst of all, when FOX News recently displayed their infamous on-screen caption about Michelle Obama, describing her as “Obama’s Baby Mama,” there was little if any outcry from nationally prominent white women and/or feminists, including the ones who were so animated in their defense of Hillary Clinton.
Where is the New York state chapter of NOW, whose leader Marcia Pappas absurdly and grotesquely compared Obama and John Edwards’s treatment of Clinton during the primary debates to a “gang-bang?” Why no words of feminist outrage for the black woman, being attacked by white men? Hmmm…inquiring minds want to know.
Ain’t she a woman (to borrow from Sojourner Truth)?
Or do black women scare white feminists, just as much in 2008 as they did in Truth’s day, by challenging the way in which womanhood has been racially-constructed as white, and white women typified as the prototypical woman, the norm, the ideal, the standard?
To continue the thought I was trying to begin with the Open Letter to white women who, despite being progressive, are threatening to vote for McCain…once again, their whiteness is showing.
Well, ain’t she a woman?
Heather
Let Us Talk 