Revolutionary Michelle Obama

Barack Obama has said it repeatedly. His wife Michelle is off limits. Do not criticize her. Everyone is on notice. Leave Michelle alone.

Obama's orders are meant to give Michelle a pass, but she has another shield to prevent challenges from opponents. She has something else to protect her -- the color of her skin.

From Sophia A. Nelson, in the Washington Post:

There she is -- no, not Miss America, but the Angela-Davis-Afro-wearing, machine-gun-toting, angry, unpatriotic Michelle Obama, greeting her husband with a fist bump instead of a kiss on the cheek.

It was supposed to be satire, but the caricature of Barack Obama and his wife that appeared on the cover of the New Yorker last week rightly caused a major flap. And among black professional women like me and many of my sisters in the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, who happened to be gathered last week in Washington for our 100th anniversary celebration, the mischaracterization of Michelle hit the rawest of nerves.

Welcome to our world.

We've watched with a mixture of pride and trepidation as the wife of the first serious African American presidential contender has weathered recent campaign travails -- being called unpatriotic for a single offhand remark, dubbed a black radical because of something she wrote more than 20 years ago and plastered with the crowning stereotype: "angry black woman." And then being forced to undergo a politically mandated "makeover" to soften her image and make her more palatable to mainstream America.

Sad to say, but what Obama has undergone, though it's on a national stage and on a much more prominent scale, is nothing new to professional African American women. We endure this type of labeling all the time. We're endlessly familiar with the problem Michelle Obama is confronting -- being looked at, as black women, through a different lens from our white counterparts, who are portrayed as kinder, gentler souls who somehow deserve to be loved and valued more than we do.

...You name it, and black women have achieved it. The most popular woman on daytime television is Oprah Winfrey. Condoleezza Rice is secretary of state.

And yet my generation of African American women -- we're called, in fact, the Claire Huxtable generation -- hasn't managed to become successfully integrated into American popular culture.

Nelson concludes:

...With all the challenges facing professional black women today, we hope that Michelle Obama will defy the negative stereotypes about us. And that, now that a strong professional black woman is center stage, she'll bring to light what we already know: that an accomplished black woman can be a loyal and supportive wife and a good mother and still fulfill her own dreams. The fact that her husband clearly adores Michelle is both refreshing and reassuring to many of us who long to find a good man who will love and appreciate us.

...It's how so many black professional women feel. And our hope is that if Michelle Obama becomes first lady, the revolution will come to us at last.

Allow me to sum up this piece:

America is a racist country.

Black women are treated differently than their white counterparts, "who are portrayed as kinder, gentler souls who somehow deserve to be loved and valued more than [black women] do."

Michelle Obama is attacked because she's black, not because of the content of her statements and not because of her remarks or her positions on issues.

Successful white women aren't attacked the way black women are.

If you criticize Michelle, count yourself a racist.

That's a load.

Criticism isn't an outgrowth of skin color. Cindy McCain has been ripped apart by Dems, and she hasn't said anything nearly as controversial as Michelle Obama. Cindy McCain is attacked on a very personal level. Her statements aren't questioned. Her personal attributes and her appearance are being picked apart.

Of course, there are racists. There are still people caught in the past, but the racists are in the minority now.

Legitimate criticism is grounded in what an individual has to say and how an individual conducts herself.

Michelle isn't attacked for being black. She's being held accountable for what she has said. That's as it should be.

Nelson's view of reality, that white women are "portrayed as kinder, gentler souls who somehow deserve to be loved and valued more than [black women] do," is wrong.

It's an absolutely ridiculous, sweeping comment.

White women in general aren't portrayed as kinder and gentler. Does the name Hillary Clinton ring a bell? Give me a break. White woman Hillary was portrayed as a bitch.

Nelson's racial views are inaccurate, but they are how she sees things. So, she puts her hope in Michelle, that as first lady she'll bring "the revolution" to black women like her at last.

Apparently, Barack Obama isn't the only savior in the family.