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FLOTUS: Museums Not Welcoming to ‘Someone Who Looks Like Me’
New York’s elite dedicated a $420 million building for the Whitney Museum on Monday. The event featured various luminaries and politicians, including Mayor Bill de Blasio, celebritect Renzo Piano, and Michelle Obama. [Editor’s note: Welcome, Rush listeners! if you’re reading this article, you ought to be a Ricochet member. Join up here today].
Instead of merely congratulating the museum staff and praising their mission, the First Lady decided to lecture them about diversity. One of her claims struck me as quite odd:
“You see, there are so many kids in this country who look at places like museums and concert halls and other cultural centers and they think to themselves, well, that’s not a place for me, for someone who looks like me, for someone who comes from my neighborhood. In fact, I guarantee you that right now, there are kids living less than a mile from here who would never in a million years dream that they would be welcome in this museum. And growing up on the South Side of Chicago, I was one of those kids myself.”
In a story on her speech, public radio station WNYC identified the vast majority of American museums as “white spaces” that are inherently unwelcoming to minorities.
I have been to several Chicago museums on many occasions. Whether I was at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Field Museum, Adler Planetarium, or the Museum of Science and Industry, the bustling crowds were made up of every ethnicity and socioeconomic status. Buses brought in schoolkids from each neighborhood in Chicago and every ‘burb surrounding it. I’m sure a young Michelle Obama participated in similar field trips many times.
And it’s not as if she grew up in poverty, relegated to the South Side’s infamous housing projects like some of my friends. The First Lady had a thoroughly middle-class upbringing in a stable, nuclear family. Her excellent grades got her into Chicago’s superb Whitney Young Magnet High School where she was given one of the finest secondary educations in the state.
Did this smart, successful student actually think Chicago’s many popular museums were closed to “someone who looks like me, for someone who comes from my neighborhood?” Did she “never in a million years dream” she would be welcome in these cultural centers, even though her school must have had field trips to most of them? I find this very hard to believe.
Michelle Obama has had a remarkably successful life. From all accounts, she was a happy, high-achieving child, earned degrees at Princeton and Harvard, was the wife of a U.S. Senator and now lives in the world’s most famous mansion. She graces magazine covers, is lauded on television shows, and even gets invited to speak at the dedication of high-end art museums.
So why does she continue to identify herself and “people like her” as oppressed, aggrieved victims rather than strong, capable winners? I know it’s de rigueur to make every issue a “teachable moment,” but is there any indication that America’s many museums are “off-limits to people of color?”
Published in Culture
She’s awfully long on accusations and innuendo with this sort of race-baiting garbage, but very short on evidence. Was she ever actually told she wasn’t welcome in a museum? Because this middle-class white girl was very publicly told just that on a visit to a museum in Tulsa, as a kid. (To be fair to the society matron who snubbed me, I was not on my best behavior at the time – and got a lot worse from my own mother for it, later.)
I also remember some excruciatingly embarrassing visits to upscale stores, over the years, when I was completely ignored by sales people as they practically trampled me in order to assist better-dressed clientele. (In Oprah’s famous “racist incident” the sales person spoke to her, at least. In my case, they looked right past me to greet someone who came in after I’d been waiting for 20 minutes.)
A “bitter clinger” like Michelle would have us believe that these sorts of things never happen to white people but in my experience, it’s nearly always “classism,” more than racism, in play, when anyone is made to feel “unwelcome” (and by that I mean actually so – -not just in one’s own fevered and defensive imagination).
She’s completely graceless.
She has an embarrassment of riches and so seeks to alleviate her success guilt (a common trait among the liberals who are successful but feel successful people are undeserving). If she can remove herself from the spotlight of success and focus instead on that thin strand of connectivity with the poor by claiming minority status (poor whites need not apply), she can then continue living the life guilt free, after all the skin color is what she now judges herself by, not the content of character. The fault will always be with someone else.
Black “leaders” get air time, liberal plaudits, votes, and donations for convincing poor black children that they have no hope of climbing out of poverty by their own efforts. Michelle is just jumping on the gravy train. If her success requires the failure of thousands of black children, well…, that’s how omelets are made.
So many broken eggs, so few omelets.
I’m actually going to defend the First Lady’s comments here, which comes as quite a surprise to me. (Flamers, prepare thy napalm nozzles for your replies.)
I think that Jon’s comment about observing crowds of every ethnicity in museums does not factor in the comfort level of the members of those crowds themselves. I speculate that most of us on this thread come from backgrounds where we knew from an early age that everyone (including us) was welcome at museums, and therefore we never felt like outsiders, nor imagined non-existent stares from staff or other visitors who felt we did not belong, nor worried about being wrongfully accused of carving our initials into the Mona Lisa. For the persons on whose behalf Mrs. Obama is speaking, that confidence does not exist.
My interpretation of the First Lady’s remarks is not that there is a reality of exclusion of the lower classes from our nation’s museum, but rather a PERCEPTION of it, and I think that she may be right. Does that make sense?
If it’s true that black children think they would be unwelcome in a museum, who is making them think that? Is it their own experiences with white people, or is it that black adults tell the kids that white people dislike them?
I don’t know if she was speaking to the exclusion of lower classes (having worked on farms in the Appalachian Hills I can safely say I qualified), or rather she was speaking to race which of course excludes anyone except people like her skin color but not like her (she is not of the lower classes, never was, so it is doubtful she is aware of what that means. Or, its a front to create that pseudo connection between her and the lower classes who happen to be African American. Pure speculation of course.
Wait a minute. You mean to tell me that a whole bunch of elite New York millionaires dropped $420 million on a museum, only to get lectured by Michelle for not catering to minorities?
That’s hilarious. Awwwk–ward.
Would it be a violation of the CoC [redacted for C-of-C]
[Editor’s note: Yes, it would be.]
Beat me to it. One of the absolute failures of Obama as president so far–and unlikely to change–is his refusal to be the drum DAILY that blacks without the athletic ability of LeBron or the singing ability of Beyonce are going nowhere if don’t drop the entrenched belief that middle-class virtues are “acting white.” As a middle-aged WASP, I’m not insulted. Indeed, to some extent I grieve over their willful ignorance. But I’m also fed up, and I really do feel that the conservative response should be, “Not one dime more.”
BTW, the dude on the left looks like his fun meter is pegged.
Watch closely, this is probably the only time you’ll see me put these letters together: the FLOTUS is a ninnyhammer. (Now there’s an ‘n-word’ for you, Simon.) Further, I can’t believe What. Total. Foolishness. constantly flows from this woman’s mouth…(Grinding my teeth in frustration, while trying to ward off nausea.)
Hence my annoyance with her pointless remarks. She seems determined to inculcate a readiness to perceive racism, regardless of reality.
A black actor once told me how going down south on tour confirmed for him, that people are more racist there. His evidence? “The first guy I asked for directions just ignored me and kept walking.” That’s it?” I asked him. “What if he was hard of hearing? Or didn’t speak English? Or maybe he’s just an equal-opportunity jerk who’s rude to everybody.” I have no choice but to consider all such possibilities when someone’s rude or hateful to me, because I wasn’t taught to trot out one lone catch-all, pat accusation for every last instance of unpleasantness in my life.
Michelle Obama may believe she’s being some sort of champion to black youth with her ministry of marginalization but I think she’s closing minds, hampering judgment and poisoning young hearts.
What a self-satisfied empty dress. There’s little difference between Ms. Obama’s attitude toward museums and that of the archetypal ill-bred urchin who’d never “act so white” as to visit one.
The role of First Lady is taking quite a beating these days, between Hillary and Michele. What is it about the left, that marital proximity to power inspires such deference and worship? Vulgar thronesniffers.
And please, can we desist from that horrid “FLOTUS” invention? The role is not an office, it’s merely a social duty. It wouldn’t merit the borrowed bureaucratic significance if Dolly Madison were living in the White House. Not that she’d tolerate such misplaced adoration for a second – it isn’t dignified.
Further to Klank’s point, the FLOTUS comments were a dog whistle on the topic of white privilege, a drum the far left has been beating since at least the mid 80’s but now is something surfacing almost daily. The fact that this thread exists would be proof enough to a lefty that white privilege is alive and well at Ricochet.
To learn another perspective on Baltimore, I listened this week to “The Read”, a left wing black podcast in the respective iTunes and Stitcher top 100 rankings I was introduced to through the Cracked website. Although economically conservative entrepreneurs with websites, sponsors, and day jobs like our Ricochet founders, they are very strident in their belief that “history” is “his story” and that “white folks” are completely oblivious to the fact that everything about the culture in the US is white centric and built on a legacy of violence with any people of color starting with the Indians. Privilege comes from thinking something is normal when it’s really just comfortable because it was by whites, for whites. BTW, this privilege extends to you even if you just got off the boat today completely alone – your whiteness itself gives you the benefit of comfort in the society.
HOA’s point illustrates the movement towards making everyone feel more comfortable in the museum due to their identity.
I don’t know how long it will take to make everyone in the museum comfortable if the message isn’t “this is a place where all people come together” but “this place symbolizes the oppression we are fighting against”. To me, the museum is where I see dinosaur bones, science exhibits, or art from around the world – but that is perhaps just my white privilege talking as I don’t realize these are bones, science and art from a white perspective.
The only solution I see is to cut through the BS to the economic core and convince people that conservative economic policies are the answer. The challenge is who will be the messenger? Although not a representative sample, that podcast mirrors the MSM storyline that conservatives are white republicans that hate people of color and are scared to lose their privilege. We live in interesting times.
So, is anyone else now remembering all the black people they’ve seen in museums? I honestly don’t know what Michelle is talking about. Museum goers are always a diverse bunch.
Actually, I think this is all just an exercise in vote-getting. It doesn’t matter the setting. She could be standing in front of a mall and say the same thing, and you’d get nodding heads, and votes.
Just because. That doesn’t make her any less of a crapweasel than a Sharpton, though, because nothing she says or does moves the ball forward one inch. It simply cements the status quo and puts the day where we leave all this crap behind one more day farther out, in the future.
I have watched the entire speech, so the rest of you don’t have to.
I don’t think the message of the speech, in total, is bad, but, wow, she is a flat, graceless, and uninspiring speaker who manages to make even the ‘dream your dreams’ sorts of phrases, and the ‘thank yous’ and acknowledgements sound aggrieved and indifferent.
Nancy Pelosi. Michelle Obama. Hillary Clinton.
Can the Democrat party not find a single articulate woman? One who could even read a speech and sound intelligent and convincing?
Wow – way to take one for the team.
FLOTUS is absolutely right. I grew up just outside NYC in a mixed neighborhood and my dad had actually grown up on those very streets. He was largely self educated, to stay out of trouble, he went to museums and libraries after school, so he knew every little museum the city had. When he became Pack Leader of our Cub Scout troop, he organized trips that would sometimes take in 3 museums in a day. He made it clear though, that these were not places for minorities and refused to allow any children of color to come with us, even though they made up about a third of our Pack. Our schools did the same thing when we took class trips. And if you believe that……..
Yep. That’s it. I didn’t quite know how to put it, but you summed it up perfectly. Those are “white spaces” because there’s a group of people out there who think it’s wrong to associate with white people.
And how much you want to bet that the “solution” to this non-problem involves giving bureaucrats more money?
Racial grievance-mongering. It’s what FLOTUS her boat.
If you fight back, you’ve only confirmed for them that you’re a racist.
When accused of racism, you’re supposed to do what liberal white people do, which is curl up into a fetal ball and mutter your agreement in the hopes that you’ll survive the pogrom.
Yes. That makes perfect sense. In that case, she should go to inner city Chicago/Detroit/Mpls/etc and lecture the minority fathers and mothers to overcome their sheepishness and do what’s best for their kids.
It’s been far less than a million years since Mrs. Obama was a child. Presumably she still can’t even dream that a museum would welcome her in. Or she’s just full of you know what.
Well I was thinking about that, too. If we accept that there is a problem with a significant portion of our population forgoing the educational and other benefits of museums because they perceive a hostility there that does not truly exist, how do we disabuse them of that notion?
1) Go to the leaders of the affected population (as you suggest) and work with them to eliminate the sensation of “not belonging.” Bear in mind, however, these same leaders are going to have other priorities on their minds that will push this down the list.
another option:
2) Go to the curators and other leaders of museums, bring the problem to their attention, and encourage them to innovate solutions. As museum directors, they 1) have an interest in maximizing attendance at their venues, 2) may be in a position to do outreach to bridge this gap of perception (i.e.: the sensation of exclusion vs. the reality of welcomeness).
I agree and that is not the only place. I just left a Whole Foods and at least 15-20% of the people shopping in there were black. FLOTUS and POTUS are just staking out their community activist claims to justify shaking down the elites. Think of a domestic version of the Clinton Foundation.
Agreed. We can ignore the complaints of people who claim widespread racism is alive and well and as prevalent in our country as it ever was, but we do so at our peril.
The riots in Baltimore and Ferguson, and Mrs. Obama’s comments are but symptoms of a greater problem: a huge number of black people do not feel like they are valued as human beings or Americans. This perceived rift manifests itself in a million ways large and small on a daily basis, and undermines the fabric of our society. Finding ways of bridging that gap is in our collective best interests.
In a police state those kids can be forced to enter the museum and walk past the exhibits.
An essential first step to having others value you as a human being and an American is to value yourself as a human being and an American.