Michelle Obama has led an undeniably charmed life. After graduating from Princeton University, she went on to earn a law degree from Harvard. Following a successful legal career, her husband was elected to the U.S. Senate — and, just a few years later, to the presidency. By any measure, hers has been a life of exceptional privilege and advantage.
Yet despite the many opportunities life has afforded her, she often comes across as one of the least grateful and most entitled public figures of her generation. And that impression was on full display in a preview clip from an upcoming interview with Good Morning America host Robin Roberts, set to air Sunday night.
“You said we were all too aware that as a first black couple, we couldn’t afford any missteps. And you also say as a black woman, I was under a particularly white, hot glare. Did you feel that?” Roberts asked.
“For sure,” Obama replied. “You can’t afford to get anything wrong because you didn’t get the — at least until the country came to know us.”
“We didn’t get the grace that I think some other [first] families have gotten,” she added.
Barack Obama’s election as the first black president was a historic moment for America, and I recall the media coverage being overwhelmingly positive. The press often portrayed him in near-reverential terms — at times even as a political “messiah” — and that tone carried well into both his presidency and post-presidency. Michelle Obama, meanwhile, was an exceptionally popular first lady and remains highly admired in liberal circles.
This was far from the first time Obama has portrayed herself as a victim of racial bias. Perhaps her greatest hit of all time came in June 2020. Because graduations throughout the country had been canceled due to the COVID-19 lockdowns, she decided to honor all 2020 graduates via a virtual commencement message. Her address came one week after the death of George Floyd and the disingenuous, self-serving, former first lady had race on her mind.
Within 90 seconds, the topic turned to race. Not only have we had to deal with the pandemic, she told graduates, “but also by the rumbling of the age-old fault lines that our country was built on. The lines of race and power that are once again so nakedly exposed for all of us to grapple with.”
With one of the most sour expressions I’ve ever seen, she said, “What’s happening now is the direct result of decades of prejudice and inequality.”
“The truth is, when it comes to all those tidy stories of hard work and self-determination that we like to tell ourselves about America,” she said as she shook her head to indicate this was a lie, “the reality is a lot more complicated than that. Because for too many people in this country, no matter how hard they work, there are structural barriers working against them that just make the road longer and rockier.”
Rather than offering a message of hope and inspiration, Obama chose to reinforce the notion that minorities in America are helpless and that the odds are irreversibly stacked against them. In doing so, she fanned the flames of racial division at a moment when the country was already a tinderbox.
In a surreal May 2021 interview with CBS’s This Morning host Gayle King, she shared one of her biggest worries as a black mom. “Every time they [her daughters] get in a car by themselves, I worry about what assumption is being made by somebody who doesn’t know everything about them.”
She continued, “The fact that they are good students and polite girls, but maybe they’re playing their music a little loud, maybe somebody sees the back of their head and makes an assumption.”
“I, like so many parents of black kids, the innocent act of getting a license puts fear in our hearts.” Yes, she actually said that.
Um, Michelle. I’m pretty sure that those Secret Service agents who follow your kids around 24/7 would be on that pretty quickly.
Then she delivered another whopper about “all those Black Lives Matter kids.”
“Many of us blacks still live in fear as we go to the grocery store, walking our dogs. So, I think we have to talk about it more, and we have to ask our fellow citizens to listen a bit more and to believe us, and to know we don’t wanna be out there marching. I mean, all those Black Lives Matter kids, they’d rather not have to worry about this. They’re taking to the streets because they have to. They’re trying to have people understand that we’re real folks, and the fear that many have of so many of us is irrational, and it’s based on a history that is just — it’s sad, and it’s dark, and it’s time for us to move beyond that.”
Does she really think she’s fooling anyone with this level of dishonesty?
I would argue that Obama has, in fact, benefited from the color of her skin. While it’s impossible to know whether she would have been admitted to Princeton had she not been a minority applicant, her own remarks in an October interview suggest that affirmative action may have played a role in her acceptance.
She said, “I wasn’t good on SATs, so all the scores said ‘you don’t belong at Princeton’ … and there were people that saw me, saw my skin color, and they said ‘you are aiming too high.’”
Although Obama did not disclose her SAT scores, if a white applicant had scores as low as Obama implied hers were, they probably would have been rejected.
Her admission to Princeton set the stage for all that followed.
As privileged as this woman is, as much as she’s been given, she harbors a visceral resentment toward whites that will never be erased. Given her extraordinary fortune, a touch of gratitude and grace, rather than perpetual bitterness, would be a welcome change.
Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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