In Becoming, Michelle Obama describes how the racism and sexism that she experiences as a black woman in America have shaped her life. Seeing these forms of discrimination both personally and on a larger societal scale allows her to give the reader a full view of how discrimination shapes both individuals and America’s institutions. She demonstrates how racism and sexism affect her everyday life as well as the lives of other black women in America, and she argues that they influence America’s entire society as well. Throughout, Michelle shows how these forms of discrimination are pervasive forces that demand an incredible amount of resolve to withstand—and to fight back against.
At the societal level, Michelle highlights how slavery left residual racism in many of society’s institutions, and how that racism oppressed the generations before her. Michelle describes the backstory of her older relatives, starting with her grandfather Dandy, born in 1912 in South Carolina. The grandson of slaves, Dandy was intelligent and dreamed of going to college, but because he was black and from a poor family, he was unable to find a path to get there. He moved to Chicago in what became known as the Great Migration, in which “six million southern blacks relocated to big northern cities over the course of five decades, fleeing racial oppression and chasing industrial jobs.” Not only was Dandy unable to find a path to college, it was also hard to find a well-paying job in Chicago without a union card (which was nearly impossible for black people at the time). Michelle notes that this form of discrimination “altered the destinies of generations of African Americans” by limiting their income. Michelle’s great-aunt Robbie was also discriminated against based on her race. Robbie sued Northwestern University for discrimination because she had registered for a workshop there but was denied a room in the women’s dorm, barring her from getting an education and entering an elite community. Michelle writes about how the South Side in Chicago began as a co-op, meant to ease the World War II housing shortage for black working-class families. But Michelle describes how, in her youth, “the word ‘ghetto’ got thrown around like a threat.” This word, she says, implies that a place is “black and hopeless,” and this threat caused wealthy and white families to depart for the suburbs, leaving the South Side to be forgotten in poverty and gang violence. Thus, even the implication that a place was primarily black led to significant disadvantages for those who lived there.
Michelle goes on to explore how racism continues to affect those in her own generation, and how it forced her and her peers to develop an extra degree of resilience. For example, when Michelle’s brother, Craig, gets a new bike, he is immediately picked up by the police because they don’t believe that a young black boy would have gotten a new bike in an honest way. Similarly, when family friends move out of the South Side and into a suburb, Michelle and her family go to visit them. While they are having fun with their friends, neighbors key her father’s car, which he cherished. Michelle’s exploration of how racism affected her upbringing becomes particularly pertinent at Princeton, a university which she describes as being, at the time, “extremely white and very male.” People view Michelle, a black woman, as if she doesn’t deserve to be there; they think that she was only accepted because of affirmative action, and not because she was extremely bright and worked extremely hard. In each of these examples, the family’s reaction to racism is not to complain or call out injustice, but simply to understand that they are subject to an extra level of scrutiny and hatred born of centuries-old prejudice.
The wide reach of racism and prejudice becomes especially clear during Michelle’s husband Barack’s presidential campaign and election. While many people view Barack’s election as a sign that America has moved past its racist history, the Obamas’ experiences with racism during the campaign and then also in the White House tell a different story. During Barack’s first campaign, rumors swirl that Barack had been schooled as a radical Muslim; that he was sworn into the Senate on a Koran; and that he wouldn’t recite the Pledge of Allegiance or put his hand over his heart during the national anthem. Even more extreme, during Barack’s campaign for reelection, Donald Trump feeds a conspiracy theory that Barack’s Hawaiian birth certificate was a fake—a conspiracy that Michelle calls “crazy and mean spirited […] its underlying bigotry and xenophobia hardly concealed.” These criticisms are deeply racist because they stem solely from the fact that Barack is black and has a name that sounds unfamiliar to many white people.
Michelle herself also deals with prejudice based on her race, but she also faces an extra level of discrimination because she is a black woman. As Michelle starts to read criticism of her behavior during the campaign, she thinks to herself: “It was as if there were some cartoon version of me out there wreaking havoc, a woman I kept hearing about but didn’t know—a too-tall, too-forceful, ready-to-emasculate Godzilla of a political wife named Michelle Obama.” The criticism she cites reeks of both racism and sexism, playing on the trope of the “angry black woman.” Michelle is criticized for everything from her choice of dress, to how she acts and speaks. Comparing herself to previous First Ladies, she describes how “if there was a presumed grace assigned to my white predecessors, I knew it wasn’t likely to be the same for me.” Throughout, however, Michelle thinks of her need to dodge these criticisms as analogous to “dodging punches.” That is, she maintains that no matter how often racism and sexism are used to attack her, the fact that she has experienced them all her life also gives her an extra fortitude to fight back.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Race, Gender, and Politics ThemeTracker
Race, Gender, and Politics Quotes in Becoming
He’d been promptly picked up by a police officer who accused him of stealing it, unwilling to accept that a young black boy would have come across a new bike in an honest way. (The officer, an African American man himself, ultimately got a brutal tongue-lashing from my mother, who made him apologize to Craig.) What had happened, my parents told us, was unjust but also unfortunately common. The color of our skin made us vulnerable. It was a thing we’d always have to navigate.
At one point, one of the girls, a second, third, or fourth cousin of mine, gave me a sideways look and said, just a touch hotly, “How come you talk like a white girl?”
The question was pointed, meant as an insult or at least a challenge, but it also came from an earnest place. It held a kernel of something that was confusing for both of us. We seemed to be related but of two different worlds.
As I was entering seventh grade, the Chicago Defender, a weekly newspaper that was popular with African American readers, ran a vitriolic opinion piece that claimed Bryn Mawr had gone, in the span of a few years, from being one of the city’s best public schools to a “run-down slum” governed by a “ghetto mentality.” Our school principal, Dr. Lavizzo, immediately hit back with a letter to the editor, defending his community of parents and students and deeming the newspaper piece “an outrageous lie, which seems designed to incite only feelings of failure and flight.”
He toured the country, mesmerizing crowds with thundering calls for black people to shake off the undermining ghetto stereotypes and claim their long-denied political power. He preached a message of relentless, let’s-do-this self-empowerment. “Down with dope! Up with hope!” he’d call to his audiences.
I had never been one to hold city hall in high regard. Having grown up black and on the South Side, I had little faith in politics. Politics had traditionally been used against black folks, as a means to keep us isolated and excluded, leaving us undereducated, unemployed, and underpaid. I had grandparents who’d lived through the horror of Jim Crow laws and the humiliation of housing discrimination and basically mistrusted authority of any sort.
None of this was his fault, but it wasn’t equal, either, and for any woman who lives by the mantra that equality is important, this can be a little confusing. It was me who’d alter everything, putting my passions and career dreams on hold, to fulfill this piece of our dream. I found myself in a small moment of reckoning. Did I want it? Yes, I wanted it so much. And with this, I hoisted the needle and sank it into my flesh.
Crazy rumors swirled about Barack: that he’d been schooled in a radical Muslim madrassa and sworn into the Senate on a Koran. That he refused to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. That he wouldn’t put his hand over his heart during the national anthem. That he had a close friend who was a domestic terrorist from the 1970s.
And yet a pernicious seed had been planted—a perception of me as disgruntled and vaguely hostile, lacking some expected level of grace. Whether it was originating from Barack’s political opponents or elsewhere, we couldn’t tell, but the rumors and slanted commentary almost always carried less-than-subtle messaging about race, meant to stir up the deepest and ugliest kind of fear within the voting public. Don’t let the black folks take over. They’re not like you. Their vision is not yours.
“On this day,” he said, “we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.”
I saw that truth mirrored again and again in the faces of the people who stood shivering in the cold to witness it. There were people in every direction, as far back as I could see. They filled every inch of the National Mall and the parade route. I felt as if our family were almost falling into their arms now. We were making a pact, all of us. You’ve got us; we’ve got you.
