Inside My Head

“People in this country are ready for change and hungry for a different kind of politics and for the first time in my adult life I am proud of my country…”. In case you haven’t heard, these were the words spoken by Michelle Obama. 31 words are all it took for her to make national headlines, but my question is would her words have mattered any less if she was a white man?

The point of my previous question is to question our own stance on the words of others. Whether we admit it or not and whether it’s consciously or subconsciously, there are a few buzzwords that another race or another sex can utter before we quickly pigeonhole them in the proper category we already assumed they should be in. There are women who have already sized up a man as a male chauvinist pig just like there’s been a man who has felt someone else was a nigger, a beaner, a camel jockey, a chink or a cracker, and all they needed was just the right amount of words to prove their opinion right. Based on what Mrs. Obama said, her words could be taken as someone who didn’t feel “American” until after her black husband won the U.S. democratic presidential nomination, or as commentarymagazine.com has put it, ” the pseudo-messianic nature of the Obama candidacy is very much a part of the way the Obamas themselves are feeling about it these days.” Even though I’m just hearing about her words this week, what strikes me as odd is that she said this on Monday…February 18th.

Without praising or condemning Mrs. Obama’s words, I can safely ask, can we ignore race and sex when it comes to the words of others? Yes, she just like everyone else, should be careful in the words they speak, but we also must get the whole story and not just the part we want to criticize. “…because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback.” This is the end of her statement, but does it make more of a headline to talk about a woman who is happy that people are doing more to show support for a man they want for president or to talk about a woman who feels she and her husband are near a god-like status? At this point, I simply “hope” that we can get over ourselves and work harder at not judging people for what they are, but for who they are.

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