In the latest episode of her eponymous podcast, Michelle Obama complained that even as First Lady, she was treated by white Americans as if she didn’t exist.
“[W]hite America views people who are not like them, like we don’t exist. And when we do exist, we exist as a threat. And that’s exhausting,” the wealthy Obama whined, offering no evidence for this bigoted claim.
She later recounted the shocking tale of how a white woman cut in front of her at an ice cream shop. “There was a line, and… when I’m just a black woman, I notice that white people don’t even see me. They’re not even looking at me.” Maybe because in our well-integrated society, they don’t find anything unusual about the presence of a black woman?
“So I’m standing there with two little black girls, another black female adult… and a white woman cuts right in front of us to order. Like, she didn’t even see us. The girl behind the counter almost took her order… So I stepped up and I said, ‘Excuse me? You don’t see us four people standing right here? You just jumped in line?’ She didn’t apologize, she never looked me in my eye, she didn’t know it was me. All she saw was a black person, or a group of black people, or maybe she didn’t even see that. Because we were that invisible.”
I’m pretty sure every person in the world has had someone cut in line in front of them, intentionally or otherwise. But a black woman, whose husband was elected President twice, blames racism.