Why black women can’t be ‘angry’

Laura Washington

Chicago Sun-Times

The stereotype of the “angry black woman” is back, said Laura Washington. The Obamas, a new book by New York Times reporter Jodi Kantor, portrays the First Lady as a pushy in-fighter who clashed with former presidential aides Rahm Emanuel and Robert Gibbs. The portrayal plays straight into the negative cliché of the African-American woman as “hostile, mouthy, unreasonable, hands on hips, taking on men at every turn”—an image, Michelle said, that “people have tried to paint of me since the day Barack announced, that I’m some angry black woman.”

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All First Ladies, of course, are caricatured and attacked. But the slandering of Michelle Obama has a special venom—for obvious reasons. In our culture, white males who adopt angry, indignant personas are wildly popular—consider the success of Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, and Keith Olbermann. But a highly educated, intelligent black First Lady who speaks her mind is threatening. Clearly, Michelle Obama’s critics view her as an uppity interloper who “doesn’t know how good she has it and doesn’t deserve it anyway.”