Michelle Cottle, Linda Hirshman, Leslie Morgan Steiner, Emily Bazelon and Lilith Dornhuber, et al., have no standing to assess the feminist engagement level of Michelle Obama or any other multi-generational, American woman of the African diaspora. Period.
Michelle Cottle’s article in Politico Magazine, Leaning Out: How Michelle Obama became a feminist nightmare is the penultimate example of the closeted intersection between white supremacy and feminism. In the opening paragraphs the predictable sturm und drang of white supremacy cushioned in the Mongolian cashmere of rich white women’s unearned privilege and entitlement gushes forth with catty, caustic humor. Linda Hirshman’s statement She essentially became the English lady of the manor, Tory Party, circa 1830s, presents a facile yet passionate and thinly veiled attack on Michelle Obama’s effrontery to act as the uppidity “N”-word; the jumped-up “B”. Her argument stands as the academic, lesbian, white feminist’s version of the “OMG!” Valley Girl tweet-“Why can’t I go to the Pimps & ‘Hos party in blackface?” Hirshman could be Rush Limbaugh’s speech writer proving that the aforementioned closeted intersection makes strange bedfellows indeed.
Part of the appeal of the current, yet cyclical and predictable barrage of slavery movies is tied in no small part to the horrifying yet seemingly inexplicable satisfaction many Americans feel when they see black people controlled and held immovable in their place as chattel property. Such depictions certainly fit the narrative and the optics in a more familiar and comforting way than seeing a chocolate brown-skinned Michelle Obama, with her chocolate brown-skinned parents, and a chocolate brown-skinned man she married before having a couple of chocolate brown-skinned children making independent decisions about how to conduct her life. She’s not bi-racial or light-skinned, she doesn’t even have “good hair.” Who does she think she is? How dare she not give us dysfunction and pathology? And where’s Precious?
But let’s step back from emotion and examine the crux of the opening salvo that forms the shaky foundation for the bulk of this derisive and dismissive white feminist argument. “…an issue worthy of the Ivy-educated, blue-chip law firm-trained first lady,…”
This unquestioned, yet definitive and comparative assessment of Michelle Obama’s self-determined focus is curious indeed. The value laden parenthetical phrase, an issue worthy is highly suspect. Are we to presume, based solely on Hirshman’s analysis, that Michelle Obama’s prior issues as FLOTUS are unworthy? In what context other than white supremacy and collaboration does Michelle Cottle and her contributors derive the authority to weigh FLOTUS’ issues of interest in the balance and deem them wanting? I see no other nexus for such a presumptuous conclusion because objectively, in the context of notable achievements stipulated in the article, FLOTUS has already lapped everybody writing. That cannot be surprising. The woman in question is a descendent of the Middle Passage, chattel slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, the Civil Rights Movement and neo-liberalism. If one, as a white feminist, believes in science, believes in evolution, believes Darwin was on to something, then one must recognize the lack of standing necessary to enter into a critique of the myriad methodologies of Leaning (Out or In) with the likes of Michelle Obama.
But beyond the starting point or nexus of white supremacy in this failed argument, there is the question of veracity. Are the adequacy of food supplies, the care of veterans and the academic success of children issues that truthfully can be defined as safely, soothingly domestic causes for anyone other than wealthy, white women posing as feminists? Trust and believe, for families, men, women and their children struggling to survive on minimum wage jobs, gardening is about far more than the heirloom roses and peonies in Hirshman’s fetishized English manor house unsullied by black hands except in service.
Gardening, increasing and controlling one’s independent food supply and safety, is an act of economic and political revolution, personal stability and health. The growing obesity epidemic and resulting health complications in communities of color are all too serious and too complex for the worn-out 1970’s era feminist binary arguments and tropes trotted out in this article. Perhaps if the corollary between food and gardening were couched in the more familiar rich, white woman, 1st world problem terminology of anorexia, bulimia or just plain “eating disorder” it would be more recognizable and resonate more fully with the author and her contributors.
Similarly if the scion of rich, white feminists were caught up in the failing public school to industrial prison pipeline, rather than the annual $50K+ private school to elite college pipeline (perhaps with a “gap year” in between to ease the transition) the idea of reading to school children and encouraging their academic endeavors might be deemed more worthy. And who knows, if the author and her contributors or anyone to whom they were related (under the age of 80), or closely acquainted with had any intersection with the U.S. military beyond the shockingly insincere and empty bromides of parroted patriotism, Thank you for your service, they might find the scourge of unemployment and homelessness engulfing many veterans also outside the patronizing label of safe and soothing domestic causes.
The two comforting facts I can offer the author is (a) white supremacy is not unique to white feminists in the U.S., and (b) Michelle Obama is not the single powerful woman of African ancestry targeted by it around the world. French Justice Minister Christiane Taubira and Italy’s 1st Black Government Minister, Cecile Kyenge can attest to the globalization of white supremacy and it’s weirdly virulent intersection with gender.
Amazingly white feminists frequently attempt to establish dominance, provide criticism and proffer correction in discussions of allegiance, ambition, aggression, balance, determination, perseverance and even style in conversations with American women of the African diaspora. It is a symptom of white supremacy. As an initial anecdote I recommend deep conditioning for dry hair, shea butter for wrinkled skin and reading for closed minds. An excellent start would be Anna Julia Cooper’s 1892 book, A Voice from the South. “Only the black woman can say when and where I enter, in the quiet, undisputed dignity of my womanhood, without violence and without suing or special patronage, then and there the whole . . . race enters with me.” American women of the African diaspora have been working inside and outside their homes and building win-win, rarely acknowledged or appreciated collaborations for, with and between white women and black men for generations while many rich white women were still getting a household allowance.
Michelle Obama has made a decision, either independently or in conjunction with her husband to focus her energies during his tenure as POTUS, on the safety, care and healthy development their chocolate brown-skinned, female children while living very public lives in the midst of a virulent and violent world dominated by white supremacy and patriarchy. Neither the author nor her contributors have undertaken nor appear capable of even imagining such a formidable task. But to be fair given the endurance edge of lineage and ancestral advantage perhaps one should lower the bar. Have the author and contributors currently matched Michelle Obama’s notable accomplishments before becoming FLOTUS? In the face of the inevitably deafening silence, I remain at a loss as to the individual or collective basis from which the author and her contributors rendered an assessment, much less a judgment.
Ergo I conclude as I began, Michelle Cottle, Linda Hirshman, Leslie Morgan Steiner, Emily Bazelon and Lilith Dornhuber, et al., have no standing to assess the feminist engagement level of Michelle Obama or any other multi-generational, American woman of the African diaspora. Period.