"I tell this story – I mean, even as the first lady – during that wonderfully publicized trip I took to Target, not highly disguised, the only person who came up to me in the store was a woman who asked me to help her take something off a shelf. Because she didn't see me as the first lady, she saw me as someone who could help her. Those kinds of things happen in life. So it isn't anything new."
Lemme get this straight, someone asked her for help and she's thinking "How dare you talk to me or even approach me, don't you know who I am. Away with you, commoner"
I'm sorry but if that pissed off Michelle then she's got bigger problems than race.
You don't have it straight.
She says, pretty clearly, that those kinds of incidents are things that happen to everyone (e.g. white or black, short or tall, man or woman - everybody).
They just sort of happen in life.
"Excuse me ma'am, could you help me reach that can of beans?"
"Excuse me young fella, do you work here?"
They've happened to me, they've happened to you, they've happened to the First Lady.
But when was the last time you were standing outside a restaurant in a suit and tie and someone handed you their keys and expected you to park their car? Or walked up to you at a formal event when you were in a tux and just assumed it was cool to send you to fetch coffee?
Those things have never happened to me, because I'm white, and when I'm in a suit people assume I'm a guest or a boss or something, not a common laborer dressed up nice so I don't offend sensibilities with my baggy jeans and hoodie.
Not huge things by any means, but certainly small indignities.
Now, as tres borrachos very nicely and plainly explains in the third or fourth comment in this discussion, the
lack of racism the Obamas have encountered, both separately and as a couple, in this country far and away trumps the small indignities they've suffered as a result of soft racism. If anything they should be highlighting how far America has come in respect to race relations rather than pandering to the lowest-common-denominator race hustle.
But they're just trashy people.
So it's to be expected that they'd do something trashy like this.
The fact that they're trash doesn't mean that racism isn't real, and that it isn't still experienced by black folks in America today, but they're leaders who should be trying to lead us out of the recent impasse in race relations that has resulted from the police killings of a handful of black criminals rather than trying to capitalize on it for political gain.
Scumbags, the two of them.