CLEO BROWN OP:ED – “MICHELLE OBAMA” : WHEN SEXUAL RACISM TURNS ABUSIVE
By HHR | March 8th, 2010 | Category: Featured, General, HHR Contributors | No Comments »WHEN SEXUAL RACISM TURNS ABUSIVE
BY
Cleo E. Brown
Michelle Obama is a beautiful woman. She is tall with a good-figure; a fair face; and well-groomed hair. She dresses nice and wears clothes well. She is intelligent. She is poised. She is professional. She is confident. It concerns me significantly, therefore, that in our enlightened, sophisticated, and chic Nation that the members of the press corps focus only on her arms. If the world in which we live in had been revolving around Barrack and Michelle Obama as well as around their inner-circle fifty years earlier, when African-American people, technically, still were not free, then I would automatically expect main stream American culture to engage in the sexual denigration of Michelle Obama and other Black Women like her by speaking almost exclusively, about her arms.
This denigration of which I speak is an attempt to cover-up the centuries old abuse and sexual exploitation of African-American Women in the United States. For historically, in the United States, Black Women as they were being raped and debauched at night by their slave owners and oppressors were being told during the day that their White counterparts were the epitome of and symbol of female beauty. African-American Women, consequently, were told that they were too fat, smelled bad, had bad breadth, and were not graceful. African-American Women have also been told for centuries that they were athletic like men. They have been stereotyped into one of two categories: that of the Jezebel or the Mammy. To say only, therefore, that Michelle Obama has “beautiful arms” is a tame comparison.
Far more offensive, however, are the more recent comments of Nashville, Tennessee’s Walt Baker. Baker’s comments are reminiscent of this mentality of mainstream America which was en vogue fifty years ago and earlier. Baker, who is the head of Tennessee’s Hospitality Association sent an email to Nashville’s Metro Council members on March 4th, 2010 (Thursday) stating that Michelle Obama resembled a Chimpanzee. Hardly! I find Baker’s email to be as offensive and as archaic in substance as the political cartoon by Sean Delanus which appeared in The New York Post last year. In the Sean Delanus’ cartoon President Obama was also depicted as an Ape!
When will black and white men stop abusing African-American Women by dehumanizing and desexing them? It is time to stop discussing the first ladies’ arms as her only charm and, if her physique is discussed at all, to record the totality of the human being that she is and her obvious physical beauty as well as her innate intelligence and her dignity.
About The Author: Cleo E. Brown has a Master’s Degree in Contemporary African-American History from The University of California at Davis in Davis, California. She also has a B.A. Minor Degree in Political-Science and has completed course work towards a Ph.D. in Education from The University of San Francisco in San Francisco, California. She is a Free Lance Writer and a Senior Editor at HHR
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