When news broke that First Lady Michelle Obama confronted a heckler during a fundraising event, it occured to me that we had reached a new level in America.
She directly addressed the woman – a gay rights acivist who demanded Mrs. Obama tell her husband to sign an anti-discrimination executive order – and without help from the Secret Service, stopped the heckling.
Not one for being bullied, FLOTUS struck back with a surprising ultimatum and a firm stance.
“One of the things that I don’t do well is this,” she said to applause from most of the guests, according to a White House transcript. “Do you understand?”
She continued, unapologetically telling Ellen Sturtz to listen, or she was leaving the venue.
She handled it like most women I know would. Gracefully but forcefully. She is, as I would expect a woman who grew up on the South Side of Chicago with a humble upbringing, no-nonsense. She was tough. She was strong. She didn’t back down. And her voice held not a quiver of nervousness or ambiguity.
I was proud. But I was scared. Scared of the backlash that the White House would receive when the media painted the First Lady the way they paint most black women.
Angry.
And that’s not a dirty little secret. That is historically how we’ve been portrayed. And it’s a stigma that followed the Obamas to the White House as vultures couldn’t wait for either the president or the First Lady to lose their cool.
But when the world didn’t call Michelle Obama an “angry black woman,” I marveled at the idea that the Obamas, usually reserved and docile, could crank it up a bit.
Instead of being “sister-girl’d” in the media, she was praised for how brilliantly she handled the heckler.
And though I expected the comment stream to be riddled with ‘black woman’ slander about how antagonizing or forceful they think we are, I was touched to see that people were in agreeance with the First Lady. And with that support, it drove home the point that disrespect should not be acceptable, nor tolerated.
Tolerated. That’s what it’s been during President Obama’s two terms. Never in the history of this country has a president been this criticized, openly disrespected, taunted and challenged. And, as he should, Obama has remained largely unfazed by the blatant insolence.
That was evident in the way Obama handled his own heckler just two weeks earlier. During his first counterterrorism speech in his second term, Obama was met with dissent from Madea Benjamin, but instead of shutting it down, he allowed her to speak over him, citing the first amendment as grounds for not sending her out of the room.
But this is not how you get things done. This is not how you address the president. And maybe it was that show of bold disrespect that made Michelle Obama flex a little muscle when it came to dealing with her own bully.
Maybe it’s time for the president to realize his true power and understand that, just on a human level, being humiliated should not be tolerated. Maybe it’s time that he realize being polite doesn’t render you “safe” for America.
Maybe, like Michelle, he needs to learn how to turn-up, respectfully, and only if warranted.
And maybe this is the turning point to how the Obamas will handle situations from now on. If the First Lady can crush the “angry black woman” imputation in America, maybe the president can step out without being criticized for the same thing.
Maybe. Just. Maybe.
Christina Coleman is the News and Politics Editor at GlobalGrind and a Howard University Alumna. Prior to this she was a science writer. That explains her NASA obsession. She crushes on Anthony Bourdain. Nothing explains that.
