Michelle Obama & Race

After reading Michelle Obama's senior thesis "Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community", I didn't find it racist at all. She was trying to draw a correlation between how much time Blacks spend with what she calls "the Black community" and "Black culture" and how much those same people are interested in helping economically disadvantaged Blacks.

The paper is somewhat pedantic, well-written and rather boring. Which is interesting since Barack's autobiography was also well-written and a little to wordy and pedantic, and dare I say it? ... a little boring.

Most people that I know look back upon their senior thesis with some sort of nostalgia for their naïveté and innocence, or irony for their unsophisticated ideas. Of course, I have no idea how Ms. Obama would feel if she reread her thesis at this point in time. I would hope that she would be able to see the flaws and naïveté implicit in it's simplistic take on race in America. But who knows if some bitterness may have hardened her ideas.

Some of the assumptions Ms. Obama makes in her thesis are moral stances on what people ought to do. She does not present an argument for why skin color should determine who you do or don't help. She starts with the assumption that skin color defines culture, and that people ought to help economically disadvantaged people who have the same skin color as them.

In this picture, there are "Black" people and "White" people and no one in between. And the "White" people are somewhat stereotyped as having "the luxuries typical of the White middle class." As a person of northern European descent, I certainly don't think of myself in the terms, generalizations or stereotypes which Ms. Obama uses in this paper.

But it's not a paper about what happens when you stereotype and generalize people based on race. She was trying to prove her thesis that when "Blacks" went to Princeton, they become inculcated with the desire to have lucrative, successful careers, and they do not have an interest in helping people of the same skin color who are economically disadvantaged. And there is a definite judgment that it is bad not to help disadvantaged people who have the same skin color as you do.

There are some assumptions made that I would say don't hold up to examination. But Ms. Obama is viewing the world through a very distinct prism in this paper.

One would hope and expect that her world view has expanded somewhat over the years. I would have said that as a Christian woman one would expect her to be more tolerant and racially inclusive. But then again, her Church is not a particularly tolerant of racially inclusive Church.

Ms. Obama is an unknown entity. But there is no doubt that someone as intelligent and articulate as she was 23 years ago has grown over time, and has grown able to relate comfortably to people of all races and socio-economic backgrounds.

Perhaps she left south Chicago as a teenager from an environment that was entirely "Black", and arrived at Princeton, and experienced being the minority group for the first time at a time when the university was predominantly "White". Possibly she even went from being on of the most popular and successful people in her community to being an unknown amongst all the other most popular and successful people from their communities.

It can be a shock to get to college and find that is where all the other smart kids went. No one is as special as they think they were when they get to a good school because that's where all the other talented kids have gravitated to. And there is nothing easier than deciding that there is some generic reason why people treat you the way they do. Many a time I have thought that someone got a promotion because he was a guy. Maybe it was true, and maybe it wasn't. But it sure was easy to find the major difference and define the situation with that difference.

And to be honest, from what I have learned from my close friend who graduated from Princeton two years before Ms. Obama, there was plenty of institutionalized racism on that campus. Princeton in the 1980s was turning out the future corporate attorneys, stockbrokers and Wall St titans, not the future labor organizers and criminal defense attorneys that Oxy was incubating.

Read the thesis for yourself, and make up your own mind.

Politico.com article regarding Michelle Obama's college thesis on race

Michelle Obama thesis was on racial divide

By JEFFREY RESSNER | 2/22/08 4:20 PM EST Updated: 2/23/08 9:51 AM EST

Michelle Obama's senior year thesis at Princeton University, obtained from the campaign by Politico, shows a document written by a young woman grappling with a society in which a black Princeton alumnus might only be allowed to remain "on the periphery." Read the full thesis here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.

"My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my 'blackness' than ever before," the future Mrs. Obama wrote in her thesis introduction. "I have found that at Princeton, no matter how liberal and open-minded some of my white professors and classmates try to be toward me, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as if I really don't belong. Regardless of the circumstances underwhich I interact with whites at Princeton, it often seems as if, to them, I will always be black first and a student second."

The thesis, titled "Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community" and written under her maiden name, Michelle LaVaughn Robinson, in 1985, has been the subject of much conjecture on the blogosphere and elsewhere in recent weeks, as it has been "temporarily withdrawn" from Princeton's library until after this year's presidential election in November. Some of the material has been written about previously, however, including a story last year in the Newark Star Ledger.

Obama writes that the path she chose by attending Princeton would likely lead to her "further integration and/or assimilation into a white cultural and social structure that will only allow me to remain on the periphery of society; never becoming a full participant."

During a presidential contest in which the term "transparency" has been frequently bandied about, candidates have buried a number of potentially revealing documents and papers. In Hillary Rodham Clinton's case, there's been a clamoring for tax records, White House memos and other material the candidate's team has chosen to keep from release. The 96-page Princeton thesis, restricted from release by the school's Mudd Library, has also been the subject of recent scrutiny.

Earlier this week, commentator Jonah Goldberg remarked on National Review Online, "A reader in the know informs me that Michelle Obama's thesis ... is unavailable until Nov. 5, 2008, at the Princeton library. I wonder why."

"Why a restricted thesis?" asked blogger-pastor Louis Lapides on his site Thinking Outside the Blog. "Is the concern based on what's in the thesis? Will Michelle Obama appear to be too black for white America or not black enough for black America?"

Attempts to retrieve the document through Princeton proved unsuccessful, with school librarians having been pestered so much for access to the thesis that they have resorted to reading from a script when callers inquire about it. Media officers at the prestigious university were similarly unhelpful, claiming it is "not unusual" for a thesis to be restricted and refusing to discuss "the academic work of alumni."

The Obama campaign, however, quickly responded to a request for the thesis by Politico. The thesis offers several fascinating insights into the mind of Michelle Obama, who has been a passionate advocate of her husband's presidential aspirations and who has made several controvesial statements, including this week's remark, "For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country." That comment has fueled debate on countless blogs, radio talk shows and cable news for days on end, causing her to explain the statement in greater detail.

The 1985 thesis provides a trove of Michelle Obama's thoughts as a young woman, with many of the paper's statements describing the student's world as seen through a race-based prism.

"In defining the concept of identification or the ability to identify with the black community," the Princeton student wrote, "I based my definition on the premise that there is a distinctive black culture very different from white culture." Other thesis statements specifically pointed to what was seen by the future Mrs. Obama as racially insensitive practices in a university system populated with mostly Caucasian educators and students: "Predominately white universities like Princeton are socially and academically designed to cater to the needs of the white students comprising the bulk of their enrollments."

To illustrate the latter statement, she pointed out that Princeton (at the time) had only five black tenured professors on its faculty, and its "Afro-American studies" program "is one of the smallest and most understaffed departments in the university." In addition, she said only one major university-recognized group on campus was "designed specifically for the intellectual and social interests of blacks and other third world students." (Her findings also stressed that Princeton was "infamous for being racially the most conservative of the Ivy League universities.")

Perhaps one of the most germane subjects approached in the thesis is a section in which she conveyed views about political relations between black and white communities. She quotes the work of sociologists James Conyers and Walter Wallace, who discussed "integration of black official(s) into various aspects of politics" and notes "problems which face these black officials who must persuade the white community that they are above issues of race and that they are representing all people and not just black people," as opposed to creating "two separate social structures."

To research her thesis, the future Mrs. Obama sent an 18-question survey to a sampling of 400 black Princeton graduates, requesting the respondents define the amount of time and "comfort" level spent interacting with blacks and whites before they attended the school, as well as during and after their University years. Other questions dealt with their individual religious beliefs, living arrangements, careers, role models, economic status, and thoughts about lower class blacks. In addition, those surveyed were asked to choose whether they were more in line with a "separationist and/or pluralist" viewpoint or an "integrationist and/or assimilationist" ideology.

Just under 90 alums responded to the questionnaires (for a response rate of approximately 22 percent) and the conclusions were not what she expected. "I hoped that these findings would help me conclude that despite the high degree of identification with whites as a result of the educational and occupational path that black Princeton alumni follow, the alumni would still maintain a certain level of identification with the black community. However, these findings do not support this possibility."

W E I R E D N E W S: Karate students take out robber

Karate students take out robber. Metro.co.uk reports:

It's been a bad few days for criminals. Not only did a mugger in Germany get taken down by a blind judo champion, but an armed robber in Colombia found out the hard way that a karate academy is a lousy place to try and rob.

The thief discovered the flaw in his plans when the students at the academy didn't take kindly to being robbed, police said on Friday.

The robber is now recovering in a hospital, in Santander province north of Bogota, after the martial artists used their combat skills on him and took away his gun.

'An individual entered a martial arts school with a firearm but they managed to react, put their knowledge to use and disarmed him,' Santander police commander Col. Julio Cesar Santoyo told local Caracol radio.

Not to be missed are the comments:

Texas Rocks! With the modifications to our "Texas Castle Law" last year it would be legal to kill the robber. AND if he had any money in his pockets you could reflect that the robber paid you to terminate him! Now how cool is that?
AUSTIN – Gov. Rick Perry today signed into law Senate Bill 378, extending Texans’ rights to use deadly force for means of self-defense, without retreat, in their home, vehicle or workplace. The law takes effect Sept. 1, 2007.

- Dave, Dallas Texas

Troy -The UK is one step ahead of you guys on this. In the UK not only would the victims have been arrested, jailed and sued but the robber would have been able under EU 'yumin rights' legislation, to have demanded and received 'compensation' for his hurt 'feeling's, his hurt ribs, his hurt head, his hurt 'dignity' and all the 101 other little 'urts he suffered - poor thing. We don't play around in the UK - we give it to the victims of crime in spades. How dare they stand up for themselves?!

- John Jones, London

No kidding, how dare those kids try to defend themselves.

- Sam, Virginia, USA

Brilliant!

- Steven Klassen, United States

Columbian justice seems to have taken a turn for the better. In the US the victims would have been arrested and sued.

- Troy Lee, Sanibel Florida USA

Obama diverted by pastor detour

Now, the media has finally found some substance to dig into rather than quibble over substances with "the pastor disaster."

Seriously, how long has Obama been a declared candidate running for the Democratic nomination? A couple weeks? Wasn't there some sort of Senate race a few years back also? But now the media has discovered Reverend Wright and his extremist sermons, not to mention the Trinity United Church of Christ's website with it's Afro-centric, blacks only message.

When I first read the website of the Trinity Church, and the message it put forward, I was definitely put off. I would definitely feel unwelcome at that Church based on the tone and message conveyed. I would be intimidated to participate in a community so candid about it's bias. Perhaps there are Churches with a bias toward white people that would also put me off and offend me.

But B. was never that kind of person. He was a skeptic like many of us at Oxy. Wary of organized religion and it's history of oppression and violence. When he found Trinity Church, and he found a minister who accepted him, and a group of people who accepted him, then met at his first legal internship a woman who was most likely very much a part of the Church and the community, well it must have all made sense to him. Spiritual growth, belonging to a community, being accepted, finding love, all of those things happened to him with Trinity Church playing an integral role.

So, I don't think B. became some kind of radical bigot all of a sudden. He found a balance between the gifts and the flaws of his new life as a Christian and a member of Trinity Church.

Part of growing up is the process of finding yourself and your identity. In retrospect, I understand that B. had a greater challenge than many of us who were of the same age and social group, but he also had the greater success. That is one of the great wonders of B., that he did so much on his own. Who knew. He always made everything he did look so easy and graceful and effortless. And sometimes it did seem like the world was colluding with him, even making the sun shine and the birds sing for his benefit. And I have felt the urge to hide when I saw him coming, in order to avoid experiencing the juxtaposition of his calm, self-confidence and seeming enjoyment of life with my nearly infinite series of failings, fears and frettings.

If ever there was a living, breathing, walking, talking example of a person bringing good things into their life by having confidence, faith and hope, B. is that person. He breathes the rarefied air of the few natural born leaders.

Not that I noticed that at the time. We were teenagers. He just seemed kind of arrogant and bossy to me.

Perhaps he was simply a misunderstood Mr. Darcy of his time. Seemingly arrogant and indifferent, but actually a highly ethical and compassionate human being. Or maybe not.