Michelle Obama said that when her family moved to Chicago’s south side there was a “white flight,” an attitude that persists to this day in response to immigrants.
The former First Lady made her comments at an Obama Foundation Summit, held at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago on Tuesday.
“We were doing everything we were supposed to do – and better,” Obama said regarding her family at that time. “But when we moved in, white families moved out.”
“I want to remind white folks that y’all were running from us,” she then accused. “And you’re still running.”
“Because we’re no different from the immigrant families that are moving in today.”
Recent studies do indeed suggest that “white flight” is a phenomenon that persists to this day, though attributing it to the sole factor of ethnicity seems to be a bit of tunnel vision.
In fact, Newsweek in 2018 published a column that explained: “Since the ’70s, blacks have been fleeing some cities at higher rates than whites.”
‘One by one, they packed their bags and they ran from us, and they left communities in shambles’ — Michelle Obama reflected on the pain that white flight caused her family pic.twitter.com/5hb7QyKGtz
— NowThis (@nowthisnews) October 29, 2019
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Blames Whites For The Community Falling Apart
Remarkably, Michelle Obama suggested it was this notion of ‘white flight’ that caused the south side of Chicago to fall apart, not the infinitely more provable fact that cities wholly controlled by Democrats turn into veritable wastelands.
(See Detroit, Baltimore, San Francisco).
“There were no gang fights, there were no territorial battles,” she said, citing the harmonious nature of the neighborhood when the Obamas first moved in.
“Yet one by one, they packed their bags and they ran from us,” she continued. “And they left communities in shambles.”
Which, if one projects off of that, seems to suggest the minority families left behind contributed to the gang violence in Chicago. But she couldn’t have meant that since it’d be a racist thing to say.
RELATED: 5 Times Michelle Obama Embarrassed Herself This Year
Former First Lady Michelle Obama on the upcoming Obama Presidential Center to be built in Jackson Park: “Barack and I wouldn’t bring some crap up in our neighborhood.” https://t.co/yt2DXQfAP3
— Chicago Sun-Times (@Suntimes) October 29, 2019
Not Done With the Racial Grievances
Complaining about white people leaving her neighborhood wasn’t the end of Michelle Obama’s racial grievances. No, she was just getting warmed up.
Obama then launched into a diatribe in which she lamented that she can’t figure out what to do to make white people less afraid of the black community.
“I can’t make people not afraid of black people,” she groused. “I don’t know what’s going on. I can’t explain what’s happening in your head.”
Michelle Obama: “I can’t make people not afraid of black people. I don’t know what’s going on, I can’t explain what’s happening in your head, but maybe if I show up every day as a human, a good human … Just maybe that work will pick away at the scabs of your discrimination.” pic.twitter.com/DBo169sN0Y
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) October 30, 2019
As one-half of the first black occupants of the White House, she then complained that her entire life has been littered with racism.
“As people doubted us coming through — ‘Are you Princeton material? Can you really make the grade?’ Can you cut it?’ — What do you do in those instances?” Obama questioned. “All you can do is put your head down and do the work and let the work, your truth, speak for itself.”
Michelle noted that the only way to combat racism is to continue presenting herself as the “good human” who does “wonderful things” that she is.
“Maybe if I show up every day as a human, a good human, doing wonderful things, loving my family, loving our kids, taking care of things that I care about — maybe, just maybe that work will pick away at the scabs of our discrimination,” she sighed. “Maybe that will slowly unravel it.”
Or, you know, maybe stop blaming every little thing that happened in your life on racism. That might help.
