FLOTUS: As First African-American First Lady I Faced Fear, Misperceptions

This weekend while addressing the 2015 graduation class of Tuskegee University, first lady Michelle Obama said as the first African-American first lady, she has had to deal with “questions and speculations, conversations sometimes rooted in the fears and misperceptions of others.”

Obama said, “As potentially the first African-American first lady, I was also the focus of another set of questions and speculations, conversations sometimes rooted in the fears and misperceptions of others. Was I too loud or too emasculating? Or was I too soft? Too much of a mom and not enough of a career woman?”

“All of this used to really get to me,” she continued. “Back in those days, I had a lot of sleepless nights, worrying about what people thought of me, wondering if I might be hurting my husband’s chances of winning his election, fearing how my girls would feel if they found out what some people were saying about their mom.”

“But eventually, I realized that if I wanted to keep my sanity and not let others define me, there was only one thing I could do, and that was to have faith in God’s plan for me. I had to ignore all of the noise and be true to myself – and the rest would work itself out,” she concluded.

Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN

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