One of the biggest obstacles to the Left’s never-ending quest to portray America as a nation beset by “systemic racism” has been the presidency of Barack Hussein Obama. What other country has elected a member of a minority that once faced daily discrimination to the highest office in the land? But former First Lady Michelle Obama has come up with an imaginative new way to perpetuate the Leftist myth: she’s claiming that she didn’t wear her hair in braids while she was living in the White House because the American people, those stupid, hate-filled racists who twice gave their votes to her husband, just weren’t “ready” for the spectacle of her natural hair. Apparently, Mrs. Obama is laboring under the impression that the American people thought she was Swedish.
The Washington Post reported Thursday that as First Lady, Michelle Obama “considered wearing her hair in braids,” but “then she thought of the American people.” Back in 2009, it was impossible to avoid media gushing about the First Black President, who was the recipient of breathless adulation and even the Nobel Peace Prize before he actually did anything at all. But apparently, Michelle Obama thought that the American people had somehow failed to notice that the First Couple was black, and she opted not to upset the poor yahoos by appearing to be what she actually was.
The American people, Mrs. Obama said, “were ‘just getting adjusted’ to having a Black president in the Oval Office and a Black family in the White House, so she decided to keep her hair straight.” This was not her actual preference; it was a concession to the limitations of the benighted Americans over whom Barack was ruling: “It would have been easier to keep her hair in braids, Obama said, but ‘nope, they’re not ready for it,’ she added, recalling her thinking at the time.”
It’s a pity that no one who was present at the Warner Theatre in Washington on Tuesday when Michelle Obama made these remarks asked her exactly why she thought Americans were not ready for the prospect of the First Lady in braids, or what she thought would happen if she had worn them. Would KKK members have burned a cross on the White House lawn? Would blond-haired racists have descended upon the White House with pitchforks? Would Bull Connor have set his dogs on the Secret Service agents guarding the Executive Mansion?
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Whatever the reason, Meesh “sacrificed” — sacrificed! Oh, how much these people have given up for us! — “doing her hair as she would have liked so her husband’s administration could focus on achieving its goals instead of sinking political capital into putting out a hairstyle-induced firestorm. ‘Let me keep my hair straight,’ Obama said of her mind-set at the time. ‘Let’s get health care passed.’” So we wouldn’t have the rolling disaster that is Obamacare if Michelle had worn her hair in braids? I would have braided her hair myself at the time if I had known that.
But it was all she could do to survive in a racist society: “Obama said her dilemma was an extreme example of the decisions Black women make daily to navigate the politics and sensibilities of their workplaces. They often find it easier, healthier and safer to wear braids, dreadlocks or Afros, but feel the pressure from White beauty standards and workplace norms to chemically straighten their hair for a more professional, ‘clean-cut’ appearance.”
She claimed: “We deal with it, the whole thing about, ‘Do you show up with your natural hair?’” Yeah. It must be tough to be First Lady of the United States and the subject of universally adoring coverage and still feel oneself subject to “white beauty standards.” But Obama nonetheless leaned into the pose, claiming that if she had worn braids, the reaction would have been “Remember when she wore braids? Those are terrorist braids! Those are revolutionary braids!” Yeah, if there is anything that leaps to my mind when I think of terrorists and revolutionaries, it’s braids.
This nightmare story of imaginary racism and harassment suffered by one of the nation’s cosseted elite class has a happy ending: Obama happily showed off her current hairstyle to the crowd, proclaiming: “Braids, y’all!” Apparently, America, as racist and evil as it is in the view of Michelle Obama, is ready at last.
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