100 Days: A Window into their World

Love this picture of the first family (above) released on Flickr today. Aside from the family time, note the pictures waiting to be hung in the President's private office: a photograph of King, a painting of Thurgood Marshall, and a poster of Muhammad Ali among other things. The photo of the President alone (below) shows this in even more detail.


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100 Days: A Family History

Yesterday, Michelle Obama and others unveiled the Sojourner Truth bust at the Capitol Visitor's Center. She noted the special nature of the moment: "I hope that Sojourner Truth would be proud to see me, a descendant of slaves, serving as the first lady of the United States of America."

Barack Obama has called Michelle "the most quintessentially American woman I know." Sheryll Cashin, a Georgetown University law professor, concurred, remarking that, unlike the family history of Barack Obama, there is nothing unique about the Robinson family. Michelle Obama’s paternal family descends from men and women who worked South Carolina’s low country rice plantations and then joined the migration North between the two world wars, slowly, through hard work, perseverance, and education, landing in the American middle class. While much has been focused on the social uplift and bootstraps story of the Robinsons, what is more important is the tale it tells of slavery, sharecropping, and migration that is similar to that of many African American families.



The earliest records of the Robinson family place them on the Fairfield plantation, which utilized the labor of over 300 enslaved men and women to raise and harvest rice. After emancipation, like many freedmen and women, Michelle Obama’s oldest known ancestor, Jim Robinson, remained on the plantation, likely an African influenced space as South Carolina claimed a black majority through much of its history. While the first major migration of black men and women began following the Civil War, as individuals relocated primarily to southern cities but also to western lands, black families, in particular, often found it difficult to move.

It was not until the 1930s that members of the Robinson family moved North -- faced with economic decline in the South and perceived opportunity in industrialized northern cities. Like other migrants during this era, Fraser Robinson Jr., Michelle's grandfather, followed informal kinship networks to Chicago; a family friend had relocated first. Robinson settled on the South Side of Chicago and found work with the United States Postal Service, not a great paying job, but one that would provide some protection from the whimsy of white employers and, likely, a pension.

By the time Michelle's parents were married, her paternal grandfather and his wife, LaVaughn, whose family had roots in Mississippi, were living in a public housing project. While these buildings may raise images of squalor today, housing projects in the 1940s and 1950s, especially in Chicago, were lauded as a progressive response to substandard housing. Ultimately, their failure, evident by the 1960s, was hastened by race-based discrimination, overcrowding, and a lack of public funding -- hmm, doesn't that all hint of race-based discrimination? (Interesting aside, Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett’s grandfather Robert Taylor, a housing activist, was the first chair of the Chicago Housing Authority, and to honor him, the city named the now demolished Robert Taylor Homes after him.)

Michelle's father was born in Chicago and spent his career working for the city. Again, rather than a union factory job, Michelle’s family relied on stable, though low paid, government positions, to move into the strivers class. This steady income, the family’s ethos of hard work, and an obvious commitment to education combined to launch Michelle and her brother Craig into much bigger opportunities. Returning to Chicago, with Ivy League degrees in hand, Michelle gained access to the city's black elite, becoming friends with Valerie Jarrett and others whose families had a longer history of financial and social distinction within the city's African American community.
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Another First Lady

Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Nancy Pelosi will honor abolitionist and women's rights advocate Sojourner Truth at the Capitol today with the unveiling of a statue in her honor. The statue will be on permanent exhibit in Emancipation Hall.

The statue is made even more poignant by historical facts. The Capitol was built with slave labor, only recently noted broadly, but not incredibly evident on the building's website; a monument to women's rights advocates previously installed in the Capitol omitted Truth, instead including the three most recognized white crusaders for equal rights: Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Lucretia Mott; and this will be the first bust of an African American woman in the Capitol.

Truth was born in New York two years before the gradual emancipation process began in 1799. Gradual emancipation, which was announced in many northern states following the Revolution, maintained slavery for at least another generation through indenture and then led to a system of segregation, which the South borrowed from following the abolishment of slavery nationwide. Truth, nee Isabella Baumfree, had been promised freedom a year before the 1827 emancipation deadline "if she would do well and be faithful," but her owner, further abusing his power, reneged. She stayed with him for another year before leaving on her own volition: "I did not run off, for I thought that wicked, but I walked off, believing that to be all right." The rest of her life illustrated the precarious state of freedom for African Americans as she found herself indebted to her former owner and susceptible to the arbitrary power employed by white Americans all the while advocating for the rights of women and free people of color.

Truth is most well know for her statement in 1854: That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud puddles, or gives me any best place, and ain't I a woman? ... I have plowed, and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me -- and ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man (when I could get it), and bear the lash as well -- and ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children and seen most all sold off to slavery and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me -- and ain't I woman?
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Who is Michelle Obama? White People Want to Know

Hoodwinked and Bamboozled, Part II: One theme of the one hundred days coverage seems to be image making. As I wrote the other day, the LA Times published a cynical piece about the White House message machine. Today the NY Times writes about Michelle's carefully constructed image in its above the fold front page (at least online) article. A bit more sympathetic, Rachel L. Swarns wonders when Michelle will stop packaging herself and be her real self in front of the public.

It has me thinking about DuBois' double consciousness and veil and Paul Lawrence Dunbar's mask. Haven't black people always had to manage their image in front of white people? And doesn't the role of President and First Lady require responding to the broadest of constituencies? The difference now: white people want to know what black people are thinking. And the black people in question are the President and First Lady.

In the nation's mind, Michelle went from proto-black nationalist on the cover of the New Yorker to a cardigan wearing garden grower. Her office is obviously on top of the image making much to the despair of writers, like Swarns, who want to see the "real" Michelle. But would wearing a natural and fatigues or, more realistically, publicly engaging in regular policy debates and responding to the Republican attack machine be as subtly subversive as inviting black and brown children to the White House and visiting them where they go to school, booking Sweet Honey and the Rock to perform, or dancing to Earth, Wind, and Fire at the Governors' dinner?

In conversation with a cultural critic/novelist friend a few weeks back, she remarked at the subtle black nationalism of the O Magazine cover with Michelle -- two incredibly powerful, and rich, black women wearing Easter egg hued dresses on the cover of a magazine largely read by white women. These images change the reader without her even knowing, but I venture to guess that both Oprah and Michelle know. Black women and men have for decades massaged their images in order to appease the fears of white Americans all the while getting where they need to go.

Michelle and her office have crafted an agenda that seems to balance all the requirements of her position. Outreach to public school children and working people amidst the arm holding responsibilities of the G 20 meetings. Throughout all of this, I hope Michelle still has those private spaces -- with her mother, her girlfriends, Valerie Jarrett and others in the Chicago crew -- where she can let it all go and be the brown girl she wants to be. I'm sure there's a lot this white girl doesn't know, and isn't that the way it should be?
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Calling "First Ladies" Near and Far

Poet E. Ethelbert Miller, who blogs about all things political and literary, wrote a post the other day about his friend Edwidge Danticat, terming her "another First Lady." It has me thinking. What does this First Lady thing mean? Ethelbert implied that because Danticat's writing pulls him and informs him of all things Haiti she serves as an ambassador of sorts. I, too, have learned from Danticat's writing, especially her recent memoir Brother I'm Dying, which sings of both beauty and despair. Likely one of the reasons I want to learn all things Haitian right now.

I love this new formulation. How many First Ladies can there be? Women who symbolize and reveal the possibilities, the depth, and the history of places. Michelle, of course, fits this definition. Beyond being married to Barack, she moves through her new position with grace and wisdom, an eye towards the future but a firm hand on the past. Who are the other First Ladies out there?
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Food Frenzy

Is the agribusiness lobby really this out of touch? Or is it me? According to The Times Online, the Mid-America CropLife Association (Maca) responded to the new White House garden with horror. They alleged that the small plot o' land just wouldn't be as productive as it needed to be without pesticides and fertilizer, arguing that most families just don't have the time to tend a garden without these enhancements. The gloves came off in an email to supporters. The group's executive director wrote, “The thought of it being made organic made (us) shudder.” Really? Shudder? Wow.
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Hoodwinked and Bamboozled?

Are we being hoodwinked? Peter Wallsten and Faye Fiore of the LA Times seem to think so. Their article, illustrated with this photo released by the White House immediately after the inauguration, contends that the White House image machine is managing and inspiring the popularity of the First Family through outreach to entertainment and fashion magazines. They're going low culture to get in with the public.

While I don't doubt the White House is employing some sophisticated media strategies, I also don't doubt that there are more substantive reasons for the focus and fanfare surrounding the First Family. First, as Young Jeezy might say, "My president is black!" He is also young, attractive, smart, and a huge breath of fresh air following eight years of neglect, not to mention stolen elections.

As I said early on, I willingly admit that I drank the Kool-Aid, and what I mean by this is that I believe in Barack and Michelle, worked hard to get him elected, and allow them room to err before I get my panties in a bunch. But, maybe I am hoodwinked. That very picture that Wallsten and Fiore chose to illustrate their article made me feel happy about who I had worked so hard to elect when I saw it in the papers. It made me believe that Barack and Michelle were people who loved each other. A stable and successful love affair and marriage requires humbleness, humility, and compassion. Characteristics that I have to suspect would make a fine President and First Lady.

My feelings were further cemented by the First Couple's first dance. In that moment, I saw two people in love, who had triumphed in a two year saga, and who sought to redirect the country, all while representing the hopes of white, and yes, I must suspect, to an unprecedented degree, black Americans, in addition to all sorts of other people.

For old times' sake:


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A Tree Grows Along the Anacostia

Michelle and Barack Obama, in addition to a coterie of important people, joined volunteers and DCPS students at Kenilworth Park in Northeast, DC to celebrate Earth Day and national service. A mix of the well-heeled, Senator Kennedy and former President Clinton in addition to the Obamas, and the just plain regular, DCPS students and AmeriCorps volunteers, planted trees along the Anacostia River. Not only do I love the continued involvement with DCPS, visiting the SEED School earlier in the day in addition to this outing, but I also have to laud the First Couple's steady commitment to moving beyond the federal city. They have quickly put their mark on the White House, orchestrating public events that shine a light on their shared personal and political commitments.

The connection between the First Couple was apparent as they rolled up their sleeves for the hard work:

"We have the biggest tree," Michelle informed Barack.
After he planted his own tree, the President asked Michelle, if she needed help.
"Well, not now," she shot back, having finished most of the digging.
"All right, you done good, sweetie," Barack continued the banter.

It seems likely that Michelle, with Barack in tow, has done more earth digging and dog walking in the last month than in her earlier incarnation as a hospital executive and outreach coordinator. Regardless, she seems to be growing into the job nicely and looking fierce doing it. Good people, good times, and a good cause.
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No Kidding About It

I traveled down the California coast over the weekend for a little R&R. With friends, husband, and visiting sister in tow, I attended the monthly barn dance at Pie Ranch in Pescadero. Pie Ranch is this great working farm that seems to have figured it all out: working the land amidst a beautiful natural environment, satellite retail operation -- the yummy Mission Pie -- in San Francisco, and a great outreach program to San Francisco high school students. The students from Mission High School have been volunteering at the farm, working in the store, and learning about all things yummy for several years now. Out of cell phone range (Verizon, where was that network?) and away from the computer, I learned this interesting nugget of news. When a new goat was born recently on the farm, the folks at Pie Ranch asked their student helpers to name the kid, literally. The top two choices: Rafique (a former classmate who inspired them as she transitioned genders) and, you guessed it, Michelle Obama. Well, Rafique took the prize in the end, and rightfully so, but as consolation, the new goat was christened "Rafique Michelle Obama." I think Michelle would be proud on all accounts.
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Disney's Black Princess

The Washington Post reported today that Tiana will star as its first African American princess in an animated film. She has fuller lips and darker skin than most animated "black girls" and hails from New Orleans. Between yesterday's post and the prominence of Michelle Obama, the First Daughters, and a new black Barbie the black image in America may be changing faster than we think. The question, of course, becomes so now will we have black and white girls aching to be skinny and unattainably pretty?
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Princesses Aren't Black

High School student Kiri Davis began her film project A Girl Like Me (2007) to investigate whether the results of the doll tests conducted by Kenneth and Mamie Clark in the 1950s still rang true. The unsettling news for post-racial America: Her experiment, like that of the Clarks, revealed that black children continue to believe that white dolls are better and nicer than black dolls. Fifty years after the Clark experiment, which was used as evidence in Brown v. Board, Davis found that 15 of the 21 children that she interviewed preferred the white dolls to the black dolls.



While the First Family can't change a centuries old valuing system, their presence does matter. When visiting a preschool class in North Carolina last month, Michelle Obama asked the students if they knew who she was. One girl called out, "I know Sasha!" "I know Malia!" Discussing the comment with reporters later, Michelle refected, "I just think 'How sweet,' you know? . . . . That little girl knows that there are two little girls like her living in (the White House), so I think for her it creates a connection." In today's Washington Post, Ellen McCarthy found similar anecdotal evidence of the steady attraction of the First Daughters, noting that they have inspired the imaginations of both white and black children, especially in the District, where the potential of a random meeting -- and ensuing friendship-- seems higher. Caprice Humphries, a fifth-grader at Beers Elementary in Southeast Washington, who is black, shared a poem about the First Daughters. In "My Inspiration," Humphries wrote, "Malia inspires me to be proud of myself." Not far away, a white fourth grader from the Maryland suburbs admitted, "Sometimes I go up to my room and I just think, 'I want to meet them, I want to meet them, I want to meet them.'"

While real change can't be measured quickly, it seems like Michelle and her daughters matter in big and unquantifiable ways. Student filmmaker Kiri Davis, explaining to an interviewer why she made her film, noted that growing up she had to come to terms with being told, "Princesses aren't black." Well, for the next four years, at least, that is no longer true.
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Office of the First Lady

Over the last year or so, I've joked about wanting to be like Michelle Obama when I grow up. The irony, of course, is I'm grown. During the campaign, when others talked about wanting jobs in the administration, I thought I'd like to work in the Office of the First Lady. I figured if you got this gig, you had to be bad, meaning fierce. Smart, stylish, and able to move in all sorts of company. So, who got my gig?Reading about Jackie Norris, Michelle's chief of staff, left me feeling that maybe, just maybe, I could do it too. She's a veteran high school teacher and longtime Iowa Democrat. Then the dream died. Norris was Al Gore's Iowa political director in 2000, and she's "half of one of Iowa's premier political couples," according to the Washington Post's 44 blog. The leading man in the Office of the First Lady, Deputy Chief of Staff David Medina, has a long list of political credentials. The most interesting to me -- He was a legislative assistant in Carol Moseley-Braun's Senate office.
The star of the show, of course, is Desiree Rogers. When her appointment as White House social secretary was announced in November, the headline of the New Orleans Times-Picayune announced "Former Zulu Queen Named" and noted that this detail had not been mentioned in the White House's press release. Not only is Rogers a high powered Chicago executive and longtime friend of the Obamas, but also she is New Orleans through and through. Her father was a past president of the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club, a renowned black Mardi Gras krewe, and she twice served as the krewe's queen. In an interview last year, Rogers said her favorite color is black, her favorite food is chicken, and her favorite saying is "laissez les bon temps rouler." Sounds like the Office of the First Lady is where it's at, and I'm missing out.
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Leader of the Pack

Bo, the Portuguese Water Dog adopted by the Obamas, looks like a handful. As a neophyte dog owner who struggled to teach my dog how to walk on a leash (check) and return on command (no check), I can't imagine the pressure of training a puppy on the White House lawn-- news crews, Midwestern tourists, and downtown workers galore. I'm thinking screaming baby in a movie theatre or obstinate toddler at the mall times ten. I predict Cesar Millan will be called in any day now to inform Bo of what all of us already know -- Michelle is the leader of the pack.
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School Days

I hate to be a downer, but we have to keep it real. Aside from news about their heavyweight donations, the Obamas’ tax returns revealed how much it cost to send their daughters to the University of Chicago Lab School last year: $ 47,488 combined. Now, the two girls are attending the prestigious Sidwell Friends School. Tuition for the 2008-2009 school year: $57,884 for two. That’s a lot of money. And while I understand their choice, I, a DCPS graduate, can’t help but bristle. Based on their donation to UNCF and their own educational histories, it, of course, makes sense. Michelle attended a magnet high school in Chicago that required a long bus ride across town, reflecting both an individual and family commitment to quality education. Then, on to Princeton and Harvard Law. Barack attended the private Punahou School in Hawaii before heading to Occidental, Columbia, and Harvard Law. Education matters. And, a good education should be transformative. I don’t begrudge them, but I do think about the students in the District of Columbia Public Schools where over $15,000, allegedly the highest per pupil spending amount in the country, funds each enrolled student. Admittedly a large amount, it’s still a good $10,000 less than what an education costs for the elite. Money isn’t the only answer, but it’s definitely one of the answers.
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A Cause for Celebration

The Obamas made $2.6 million last year, largely from sales of Barack Obama's two memoirs. They donated 6.5% of their income to charity, choosing CARE International and the United Negro College Fund as the greatest beneficiaries. These two charities highlight the differences and similarities that is the union of Barack and Michelle Obama. They share a combined commitment to alleviating poverty, supporting and believing in the possibilities offered by education, and a strong identification with the African American experience, while acknowledging the importance of nurturing a global perspective.
During the campaign, Barack's "blackness" was regularly debated. In Dreams for my Father he wrote about relocating to Chicago's South Side and finding a connection with the African American community there as well as inspiration from the recent election, through broad coalition, of Harold Washington. Raised by a mother who dreamed big and lived daringly, his story is so outside the American tale, white or black, that we regularly tell ourselves.
With Michelle, and their full integration into the social and political worlds of Chicago, Barack found a home in the black community. Michelle represented and still represents the most iconic stories in African American history, a family that descends from the American slave past, with relatives still living in what remains of South Carolina's Gullah communities, and migrates to the urban industrial North. This history, to me, is the beauty and the great symbolism of Michelle as First Lady.
Their donations fund both the broader vision of a global community that is wrestling with its own tangled history and imagined futures and a recognition that domestic injustices remain unaddressed, special, and a point of importance. CARE's tag line reads, "Defending Dignity, Fighting Poverty." The UNCF reminds us all that "a mind is a terrible thing to waste." The Obamas chose to endorse both.
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East of the Anacostia

Michelle Obama visited the Department of Homeland Security today. The most exciting aspect of this visit is the reminder that many DHS employees will be headed east of the Anacostia River soon. I guess this planning started prior to the Obamas' move into the White House, but it's still exciting and perhaps more powerful under their watch. Regardless, this is huge for the residents of the District, a significant federal presence in one of the city's least economically developed Wards. Growing up, kids joked or jeered about the people at "St. E's" -- we were young and not so P.C. The DHS move remaps the west campus of the mental hospital in a whole new, albeit not untainted, way while also shifting the federal city's gaze.
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The Nation On Point

The Nation has published two great articles about Michelle Obama. Patricia J. Williams ties Michelle Obama and how she has been perceived to historian Deborah Gray White's work on recovering and retelling the story of enslaved black women. Williams writes, "She defies the boxes into which black (as well as many Latina, Asian and white) women have been caged; she expands the force field of feminism in ecumenical and unsettling ways." A week earlier Katha Pollitt also wrote on why Michelle matters. She maintained, "Some days I think just being a highly visible admirable black woman is a social cause all by itself, given how little of that side of black life most white Americans see." Enough said.
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An Outfit A Day

New York is keeping track of the First Lady's public outfits. This one's maybe not her best or her most appropriate for the occasion, but it is what she wore when she broke ground on the new White House garden with students from Bancroft Elementary School, my alma mater. Since moving to the White House, Michelle Obama has done more than any other First Lady I can remember in reaching out to the city and its residents. Students from Bancroft returned to plant the garden. She arranged for prominent women from around the country to visit DC area public high schools. She and Barack ran away to the Capital City Charter School one afternoon. And, she has visited tutoring programs and homeless shelters. So check out her outfits, but also note her social conscience as she bridges the federal city and the lived city.
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Easter Monday

We always talked about Easter Monday growing up in the mighty District. The zoo was packed, and the lucky few came back to school the next day having gone to King's Dominion, the closest full blown amusement park to the city. All of a sudden it seems like folks are talking about Easter Egg Rolls, me included. The First Family hosted 30,000 visitors on the White House lawn in one of the first "opening up of the White House" events. A few generations ago, the event was segregated, black families went to the National Zoo while white families headed to the White House. Obviously integration happened well before the Obamas arrived, but the buzz seems to be new. This year there was a clamor for tickets across the board, and the White House invited gay families to openly join in the festivities. The first family seemed perfect in their elegant everyday-ness. This picture of the First Family, especially Michelle, just makes me smile.
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