Michelle Obama's Hair and Pot Shots at Single Barren Black Women

How about I come out of my post-braid blogcation with a story about hair; Michelle Obama's hair. Rikyrah, a devoted Michelle Obama Watcher posted this link called The Politics of Michelle Obama's Hair. It ends up being Patricia J. William's convoluted superficial critique of Condoleezza Rice, political spouses and UNMARRIED BARREN BLACK WOMEN (oh the horror). So what the heck does hair have to do with it? I mean was it necessary to create an analogy between Black hair and the monsters of Greek mythology? Seriously, comparing our hair to Scylla and Charybdis?

Scylla was a creature who dwelt in a rock, and regularly ate sailors who passed by too closely. Her appearance has varied in classical literature; she was described by Homer in The Odyssey as having six heads perched on long necks along with twelve feet, while in Ovid's Metamorphoses, she was depicted as having the upper body of a nymph, with her midriff composed of dogs' heads. Charybdis had a single gaping mouth that sucked in huge quantities of water and belched them out three times a day, creating whirlpools.Source

I think this is one of those cases where this writer wanted to be DEEP and whatnot and went off into left field.

She seems unbothered by hair hang-ups, make-up issues, clothing crises. She always seems minimally but perfectly made up; she isn’t afraid to wear flats; she lends a certain class to the most inexpensive of outfits. And even her hair—usually such a politically fraught subject for women of color! Between the Scylla of Condoleezza Rice's good-little-girl page-boy, and the Charybdis of Angela Davis's 1960's Afro, Michelle Obama’s looser style provides a breezy, refreshing kind of Golden Mean..... Iconic black female faces in public life are few and far between, and they’re usually not married. They’re widowed, like Coretta Scott King and Betty Shabazz; or they’re single and childless, like Condoleezza Rice. It’s hard to be seen as a trophy wife, or a beauty queen, when you’re simultaneously figured as strong as an ox, epically tragic, and pious enough to curdle the promiscuous streak that supposedly runs hot in the blood of “your kind.” Patricia J. WIlliams, The Politics of Michelle Obama's Hair

First of all, I am single and childless.A whole LOT of Black women are. So what is this woman trying to say? Just what Black women need.--- To have our uteri, ring fingers and ringlets pitted against each other. It's like six flat-irons of separation. Condoleezza's and Michelle's hair have more to do with the hair stylist than the hair styl-ee. Let's get one thing straight. No matter how many husbands and children women have, women will be taking care of women. Uteri and ring fingers, notwithstanding. Look around your churches and your neighborhoods. The Black men that stay around tend to die early. In the end when we are all old and scooting around in our walkers, women will be taking care of each other. Kids, no kids. Widowed, divorced, spinsterhood, we all end relying on a family of women in the end. Aunts, nieces, cousins, daughters, mothers. Women will be taking care of women. Second, honest to goodness, for a whole lot of Black women our hair is serious business, but IT AIN'T THAT DEEP! I tend not to ascribe any political meaning at all to Black women's hair. I used to, but you can't tell a great deal about politics based on natural vs. relaxed. It's hardly a "political" contrast to pit one Black woman with a relaxer against another Black woman with a relaxer. Where is the contrast? Michelle gets and Affirm and Condoleezza get a box perm? Michelle forgoes spritz? Condoleezza likes a roller set? It's relaxed hair. How it looks is greatly dependent on the one wielding the flat iron. It ain't that deep. I want to go natural because chlorine and relaxer are just a bad combination and if given the choice between my heart and my hair, I'm going to lean on the side of reducing stroke risk by sticking with water aerobics. It's not political. Its convenient. Third, Condoleezza has plenty to be taken to task for based on her job performance. And yes, on more than one occasion during the "terrible flip" years I wanted to send her a short email to let her know that the students at Dudley's Beauty College on Rhode Island Avenue do wonderful work, but somehow ascribing Michelle Obama status for being married with kids by comparing her to the and barren Condoleezza Rice seems to undercut your lament that Black women icons in the political realm are few and far between. Are the only Black icons we can have married Black women with relaxed flat-ironed hair? Of course the author selected Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice because she didn't expect anyone to take exception to her broadside against single barren Black women by hiding behind the skirt tails of Condoleeza Rice. The author would hope that an aversion to Rice's politics and policy and horrific job performance as National Security Adviser would make us tap dance with glee at her hair being described as some horrific beast. Black women love Michelle Obama for many reasons. She ought to be given a lifetime achievement award for putting herself out there and acting as a foil last week on Larry King Live and the Daily Show to undo the damage of the premiere of "Real Housewives of Atlanta" . Please don't try to separate the sisterhood based on marital status and flat irons. There are so many other substantive differences between Michelle and Secretary Rice that this superficial analysis sounds like something Vanessa Grigoriadis would write.

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"Ghetto" and Ghetto-er: "The Racial Politics of the Obama Marriage" ( Their words NOT MINE!)

Even if Obama is the kind of black politician that middle-American white voters can get behind, the secret fear is that he could be a black Trojan horse with all sorts of passengers like Wright—or onetime compadres Bernie Mac and Ludacris—peeping out from under the canvas. He could be ... Michelle. Or at least what Michelle represents: a smart, angry black person in the White House. Vanessa Grigoriadis, NY Magazine

While still feeling the reveberations from yesterday's post about Jeremiah Wright's nonexistent publishing deal I probably shouldn't cite anything published in New York Magazine for about a month, but this was too good to pass up. I mean who, BUT a liberal media outlet would feel free to equate Black with "Ghetto."

It was before the advent of MTV, so ghetto-speak wasn’t ubiquitous, and kids who liked to slum it with language played with pidgin. NY Magazine

The article is called Black and Blacker: The Racial Politics of the Obama Marriage, Oh yes and it is a doozy. The article is premised on the idea that Obama ain't as "BLACK" as Michelle. I gave an interview that might be coming out in October and I said something to the effect that it has to be horrible to use a spouse against another spouse in an attempt to snuff out both of their dreams. Talk about psychological warfare on a marriage.

The description of the Obamas’ life together displays no evidence of their connections to black culture, especially now that it’s not prudent for them to join a new church before the election. They take pains to make sure their lifestyle is as boring as possible. ....Michelle tells us. “We also love a busy house, which means potluck dinners with our close friends and family as often as we can.” We have little idea of the racial makeup of such potlucks. ...“Michelle can get a little more tense. Before she goes on-camera for interviews, we’d have to give her a couple of minutes to compose herself. She’ll sit down, raise her hands over her head, and go, ‘Ugh, God!’ ” That’s a mask she’s wearing in public, most of the time, and we aren’t sure what is underneath. ...On a rope line, Michelle is boisterous and playful—“You a real sister!” one woman tells her, holding her hand for too long—whereas Obama tends to zip through crowds, with no hand held for more than a couple seconds at a time (to be fair, his Secret Service detail is said to be large and twitchy, owing to concerns that harm may come to him because of the color of his skin). ...But black people realize that Obama is doing what every successful black man in America has to do: flip the script. ...As a black comedian put it, jarringly, at an Obama fund-raiser and comedy workshop I attended recently, “His mom screwed the darkest n*gger she could find in 1969.”NY Magazine

Yes, the title is Black and Blacker and you can thank the President of the SCLC for the title with his "Slave Blood" foolishness. Sisters, let's be clear the message the article is sending when you break it down like a fraction is that Michelle is "Blacker" than Barack and that might not be a good thing.

He moved easily in circles at school where Michelle wasn’t as comfortable, becoming the first black student to helm the Harvard Law Review. NY Magazine

Everything Michelle does in the article is "suspect." Has there ever been a presidential race in your lifetime where the candidate has been pitted AGAINST his own wife? Read this little tidbit about the conclusion of the movie Do the Right Thing, the Obamas' first date:

Do we want to know which side Obama would have been on, outside that pizza parlor in Brooklyn? He likely would’ve tried to talk Sal and Mookie out of a rash act, though there wouldn’t have been time for that. Michelle doesn’t mention the side he favored on their first date. It’s too loaded a question for a transcendental, post-racial candidate. NY Magazine

Now that we are getting closer to Labor Day, these liberal publications are coming out guns blazing. Tell us what y'all are really thinking. I mean how much clearly can you say "Obama might take Black folk's 'side' if he is elected?" Or how to you say "You should be suspicious of Michelle because Black people like her too much"?

To black people, Michelle represents authenticity. It’s hard to overstate black love for her: “The fact that, as a successful black male, Barack did not choose a lighter-skinned woman, as most of them do, sends a message to me,” says a black female supporter at the Pontiac rally. “Michelle is highly sophisticated, yet she comes from the most humble background possible—no one can say she grew up in Martha’s Vineyard and she’s not really black,” says supporter Alicia Nails, a lecturer at Wayne State University, standing nearby. “I’ll tell you my personal philosophy about people: If I want to know who you are, I look at who you sleep with, and who you give your name. When I look at Michelle, Barack doesn’t have to be any blacker for me.”NY Magazine

You have to read the ENTIRE article because it gets worse as you read along to this writer's ultimate conclusion: "White people can't trust Barack because he married a BLACK woman". Because THAT's the main idea consciously or unconsciously from this article. Don't marry a SISTAH or she'll bring to down! Check out the magazine cover at the top of the post. There is Michelle hanging over Barack's shoulder on the "Black" side of the cover. I told y'all it wouldn't be the Republicans pulling the most foolishness between now and November. It's going to be liberal media and they keep proving me right. What's that saying, "A smart enemy is better than a foolish friend" or something to that effect. People who are too ignorant to even understand what they are doing are far more dangerous than those with malevolent intent. Ignorant people don't know what they don't know for someone who opened her article speaking about what white people don't know about the Black middle class, that should have been a sign. Gee thanks for reminding us that to many, a BLACk woman is not a suitable mate for a successful Black man. Thanks a bunch Vanessa Grigoriadis.What a convenient conclusion Vanessa to reach, I didn't say a word y'all. I didn't say a word. So you can't say I said it, I just offered you some additional information and you can draw your own conclusions But really you have to read this entire article. It is 6 pages and please read the entire thing twice before you comment. If FOX NEWS had run this as a segment or if the National Review had printed this, y'all would already be marching.

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