Michelle Obama in Her Own Words Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Introduction

  Michelle Robinson Obama: A Brief Biography

  The Quotes

  ON AFRICAN AMERICANS

  ON AMERICA

  ON AMERICANS

  ON BALANCING CAREER AND FAMILY

  ON BARACK AS A FATHER

  ON BARACK AS A ROCK STAR

  ON BARACK’S CHOICE OF JOE BIDEN AS VICE PRESIDENT

  ON BARACK’S CIGARETTE HABIT

  ON BARACK’S COLLEAGUES

  ON BARACK’S HOUSEHOLD CHORES

  ON BARACK’S SAFETY

  ON BARACK’S SHORTCOMINGS

  ON BEING A MOTHER

  ON BEING COMPARED TO JACKIE ONASSIS

  ON HER CAREER PATH

  ON HER CHILDHOOD

  ON HER CHILDREN

  ON HER COLLEGE YEARS

  ON HER CRITICS

  ON DATING BARACK

  ON THE DECISION TO RUN FOR PRESIDENT

  ON DISAGREEMENTS WITH BARACK

  ON DISCIPLINING HER KIDS

  ON DIVERSITY

  ON THEIR ECONOMIC STRUGGLES

  ON HER EDUCATION

  ON THE ELITIST TAG

  ON EXERCISE

  ON HER FAMILY

  ON FAMILY TIME

  ON FAMILY VALUES

  ON HER FASHION SENSE

  ON HER FATHER

  ON FEEDING HER FAMILY

  ON FEMINISM

  ON HER “FIRST TIME I’M PROUD ABOUT AMERICA” QUOTE

  ON THE FIST BUMP

  ON THE FUTURE

  ON GETTING A DOG

  ON HER GREAT-GREAT-GRANDFATHER, A SLAVE

  ON HEALTH CARE

  ON HILLARY CLINTON

  ON HER HUSBAND

  ON HER HUSBAND’S PRESIDENTIAL ABILITIES

  ON HOW HER FAMILY’S LIVES WILL CHANGE

  ON HOW SHE DEALS WITH STRESS

  ON HOW SHE INFLUENCES BARACK

  ON HOW SHE MAKES DECISIONS

  ON IMMIGRATION

  ON THEIR IMAGE AS A COUPLE

  ON IRAQ

  ON LAURA BUSH

  ON HER LAW CAREER

  ON HER LEGACY

  ON LIFE IN THE WHITE HOUSE

  ON HER MARRIAGE

  ON THE MEDIA

  ON MEN

  ON MICHELLE AS ROCK STAR

  ON THE MILITARY

  ON HER MOTHER

  ON MOVING TO WASHINGTON

  ON MUSIC

  ON OBAMA GIRL AND BARACK’S FEMALE GROUPIES

  ON OPRAH

  ON HER PARENTS

  ON PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES

  ON HER PERSONAL PHILOSOPHY

  ON HER PERSONAL TIME

  ON POLITICS

  ON THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN

  ON PUBLIC EDUCATION

  ON PUBLIC LIFE

  ON PUERTO RICO’S FUTURE

  ON RACISM

  ON REVEREND JEREMIAH WRIGHT

  ON BEING A ROLE MODEL

  ON THE ROLE OF FIRST LADY

  ON SARAH PALIN

  ON THE SECRET SERVICE

  ON HER SENSE OF HUMOR

  ON HER TALENTS

  ON TERRORISM

  ON WHAT DRIVES HER

  ON WHAT SHE’D LIKE TO CHANGE ABOUT BARACK

  ON WHETHER SHE’LL RUN FOR PUBLIC OFFICE IN THE FUTURE

  ON THE SUGGESTION THAT SHE COULD RUN FOR BARACK’S U.S. SENATE SEAT

  ON WHO SHE IS

  ON WINNING THE ELECTION

  ON WOMEN TODAY

  ON YOUNG PEOPLE

  Acknowledgements

  About the Editor

  Copyright Page

  To David Porter and John Willson

  Introduction

  NOW THAT BARACK OBAMA has become the forty-fourth president of the United States, the world is focused not only on what he will accomplish, but also on what kind of First Lady Michelle Obama will be. Throughout the long campaign season, Michelle Robinson Obama garnered a large amount of attention, kudos, and criticism about her words, actions, and even her appearance, but few people know what kind of role she’ll play once she settles into the White House.

  One clue is to examine her words and statements of the past. This volume aims to collect the most memorable of Michelle Obama’s words for readers who are eager to learn more about America’s new history-making First Lady. What is certain is that she’s an incredibly accomplished woman in her own right, holding down high-powered executive jobs in the Chicago mayor’s office and at the University of Chicago. She was determined to follow a fast-track powerful career of her own years before she met the man who would become her husband. Some have said that while Barack has greater drive and ambition, Michelle possesses a more brilliant intelligence.

  Despite her successes, she still tells anyone who asks that her most important job is mother to the presidential couple’s two children. “My first job is going to continue to be mom-in-chief, making sure that in this transition, the girls are settled and that they know they will continue to be the center of our universe,” she said only hours after the election.

  Time will tell what role Michelle will play as First Lady. In the meantime, this book will help you to gain a clearer picture of this history-making woman.

  Michelle Robinson Obama: A Brief Biography

  MICHELLE LAVAUGHN ROBINSON was born on January 17, 1964, to Fraser Robinson, a city water plant employee, and Marian Shields, a secretary. She grew up in a one-bedroom apartment on Chicago’s South Side, sharing a bedroom with her brother Craig, who was sixteen months older. People on the street often commented on the “twins.”

  Michelle’s paternal great-great-grandfather, Jim Robinson, was a slave in South Carolina, and her grandfather moved to Chicago during the Great Migration of the early 1900s to escape the blatant racism of the South. Throughout her childhood, Michelle watched as white families left her inner-city neighborhood for a quieter life in the suburbs, known as the white flight of the 1960s and 1970s. Fraser and Marian instead turned their sole focus to helping their kids become well educated.

  Michelle’s natural intelligence was obvious very early. She learned to read by the age of four and skipped the second grade. By the sixth grade, she had enrolled in classes for gifted students, where she learned French and took accelerated courses, and she attended Whitney Young High School, the city’s first magnet high school for gifted children. She was on the honor roll during all four years of high school, took advanced-placement classes, was a member of the National Honor Society, and graduated in 1981 as salutatorian of her class. Her future was bright.

  After high school, Michelle attended Princeton University, graduating with a degree in sociology and cum laude honors in 1985. She attended Princeton during the height of the national debates over affirmative action. Her honors thesis was “Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community.” Michelle then went on to attend Harvard Law School and earned her JD in 1988. She was one year ahead of Barack Obama but didn’t meet him until a year after she graduated.

  After Harvard, Michelle accepted a position at Sidley Austin, a prestigious Chicago law firm. In 1989 she mentored a Harvard law student summer intern named Barack Obama. He asked her out, and she initially declined because she was his supervisor. But he was persistent and she was attracted to him, so she reluctantly gave in. On their first date, they saw the Spike Lee movie Do the Right Thing, after which he took her to a community organizing meeting. They married on October 18, 1992.

  Shortly after the wedding, Michelle left the law firm and became executive director for Public Allies, a nonprofit leadership-training program in Chicago. Barack also worked for a community nonprofit while pursuing his political ambitions
on the side. He was elected to the Illinois State Senate in 1996. That same year, Michelle became the associate dean of student services at the University of Chicago and developed the university’s first community service program. She left to work in city government for a few years, taking a position as staff assistant to Chicago mayor Richard Daley and as Assistant Commissioner of Planning and Development.

  Barack and Michelle waited almost seven years before having children. Their first daughter, Malia Ann, was born in 1999. Natasha (often called “Sasha”) followed two years later in 2001.

  Before the kids arrived, Barack and Michelle agreed that they would aspire to a dinner-together-every-night kind of life for their family. Once his political career took off, however, he spent many nights away from home, and his ideal family life fell by the wayside. This generated a certain amount of resentment for Michelle, who felt that her husband wasn’t living up to his end of the bargain, and it created a good deal of friction between them for a couple of years. Michelle wondered what she’d gotten herself into. But once she recruited her mother and girlfriends to help out with the kids, the stress on both Barack and Michelle eased considerably, and their marriage settled down.

  In Michelle’s world, discipline reigns when it comes to her husband and her kids. Every day, she fills out to-do lists for Malia and Natasha, making sure to schedule in time for play. Michelle is in bed most nights by 9:30 P.M. and rises each morning at 4:30 A. M. to work out for at least an hour.

  To the casual observer, even to many friends, the Obamas’ marriage is a bit of a mystery. While some say she wears the pants in the family—both have publicly admitted that he refers to her as “The Boss”—others say that it is an equal partnership, and that the presidency would not have been within reach if it weren’t for Michelle.

  In 2004, Barack Obama’s star began to rise quickly with his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention when he was running for the U.S. Senate. His speech may have introduced him to the nation in one fell swoop, but it was Michelle’s professional relationships that were vital to helping him win the election. He was supported by influential black business leaders, though overall they were closer to Michelle, because of her previous positions, than they were to him. When Barack won his seat in the U.S. Senate, she didn’t pull back on the reins of her own ambitions. The couple decided it was best if he lived in Washington during the week and she remained in Chicago with the kids. After all, she was still dedicated to her own career; in May 2005, she became the Vice President of Community Relations and External Affairs at the University of Chicago Medical Center.

  Initially, Michelle hated the idea of her husband’s running for president. Not only did she not want the intrusiveness into her and her family’s life that running for the highest office in the United States would bring, but she privately worried about the chance that some racist madman would tear her family apart with a single bullet. However, once the decision was made, Michelle fell into the task with a great passion, and she was fully committed to helping Barack win the nation’s highest office.

  The Quotes

  ON AFRICAN AMERICANS

  We are still struggling as a people with what is black.

  Chicago Sun-Times, August 5, 2007

  What minority communities go through still represents the challenges, the legacies, of oppression and racism. You know, when you have cultures who feel like second-class citizens at some level, there’s this natural feeling within the community that we’re not good enough, that we can’t be as smart or as prepared, and it’s that internal struggle that is always the battle.

  New Yorker, March 10, 2008

  One of the things I hope happens is that this country and this world see yet another image of what it means to be black.

  Chicago Tribune, April 22, 2007

  We know what we need to do, but without that empathy, that core sense of mutual obligation, we don’t get the right answers. We need that first, and then we can go through the issues that are affecting the Black community, from health care, to education, to an ineffective criminal justice system, to the dwindling of blue collar jobs. Everything that we are lacking as a society, right now today, is hitting the Black community hard. But we don’t get to those answers until we get to our souls.

  Chicago Defender, November 5, 2007

  The thing that I worry most about is not what [the question if we’re black enough] says about me and Barack. What does it say to our children? That somehow Michelle Obama is not black enough? Well, shoot, if I’m not black enough and Barack’s not black enough, well, who are they supposed to be in this world?

  Chicago Sun-Times, August 5, 2007

  The black community has to shake off our fear because change doesn’t happen without risk. Rosa Parks wasn’t supposed to stay on that bus, and Martin Luther King wasn’t supposed to speak out. We have a whole history of people who have taken risks far greater than anything that we’re doing; this is nothing compared to the history we come from.

  MSNBC, November 13, 2007

  Black America will wake up and get it, but what we’re dealing with in the black community is just the natural fear of possibility. The stuff that we see in these polls has played out my whole life. I’ve always been told by someone that I’m not ready, that I can’t do something, my scores weren’t high enough. There’s always that doubt in the back of the minds of people of color, people who have been oppressed, that you believe that somehow someone is better than you. Inside you doubt that you can really do this because all you’ve been told is No. I would not be where I am, I wouldn’t have gone to Princeton, I wouldn’t have gone to Harvard, I certainly wouldn’t be a practicing attorney, neither would Barack if we listened to that doubt.

  MSNBC, November 13, 2007

  As we’ve all said in the black community, we don’t see all of who we are in the media. We see snippets and distortions of our community. So the world has this perspective that somehow Barack and Michelle Obama are different, that we’re unique. And we’re not. You just haven’t seen us before.

  Good Morning America, May 22, 2007

  We’ve got to show people of color a different possibility. And I think that once they see what’s possible, then they own it, they believe it.

  MSNBC, November 13, 2007

  The most important message we can send out is to show that we are a solid family with love and respect for one another. So many times you don’t see that in the African American community.

  Newsweek, January 28, 2008

  ON AMERICA

  This country is suffering from an empathy deficit. If you don’t have it in you to be able to walk in another person’s shoes, it’s going to be difficult for us to move through these problems. What we need as a country is to start caring for one another in a very deep and fundamental way.

  All Things Considered, NPR, July 9, 2007

  Family in this country means different things. There are many different renditions of families and not all of them are recognized in ways that are successful.

  Naperville Sun (IL), October 18, 2004

  Divided . . . cynical . . . a nation that is just too mean. Mean has become a sport, a source for entertainment. We are a nation guided by fear. The problem with fear is that it clouds our judgment, it shuts us off.

  Chicago Defender, December 10, 2007

  ON AMERICANS

  Despite any differences we may have, there is so much that unites us as Americans.

  U.S. News & World Report, October 17, 2008

  The American people can handle the truth. They just need to know what it looks like.

  Boston Globe, February 21, 2008

  It has been a blessing for us to have this opportunity to spend this year traveling the country. We’ve been in almost every state in this nation, in people’s homes, in their kitchens, in their community centers, and just having the opportunity to be reminded of how decent the American people are and how our values are so closely linked, that gives me hope.

/>   Ebony, September 2008

  When people are worried about heat and gas and college they can’t think clearly about immigration or race or gay and lesbian issues or our role in the war because people are afraid and they’re panicked and they’re subject to being manipulated by those who want to go a certain way, so I think when our country feels stable and whole again then hopefully we can talk honestly about what we really need to do to fix some of these broader issues.

  MSNBC, November 13, 2007

  ON BALANCING CAREER AND FAMILY

  Every other month since I’ve had children I’ve struggled with the notion of “Am I being a good parent? Can I stay home? Should I stay home? How do I balance it all?” I have gone back and forth every year about whether I should work.

  Washington Post, May 11, 2007

  I realized that I needed to focus on what kept myself sane instead of looking to Barack to give me the answers and to help fulfill me. I need support. It doesn’t always have to come from him, and I don’t need to be angry because he can’t give me the support.

  USA Today, May 11, 2007

  I’ve spent 20 months traveling around the country, having conversations with working women and families. I hear, how do I manage a career or a job, and ensure that my kids are healthy and have what they need, and make sure I’m not losing my mind in the process of juggling it all?

  What I’ve found is that these families don’t have the resources they need to make the balance work. It’s very difficult to make this work if you don’t have a strong family-leave policy.