Michelle Obama: America Still Racist

On Friday, First Lady Michelle Obama used the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling to lecture graduating high school seniors in Topeka, Kansas, that America is still a racist country.

Despite the fact that her husband was elected President of the United States twice, Obama said:

This issue is so sensitive, it’s so complicated, so bound up with a painful history. No matter what you do, the point is to never be afraid to talk about these issues, particularly the issue of race, because even today, we still struggle to do that.

Just how bad is America today? Obama continued, “We know that today in America, too many folks are still stopped on the street because of the color of their skin, or they’re made to feel unwelcome because of where they come from, or they’re bullied because of who they love.”

Apparently we’re still bigoted, racist homophobes. 

Obama was supposed to speak at the graduation, but families and students protested what could be the politicization of a high school graduation, so she was relegated to appearing at Friday’s “Senior Appreciation Day.” She appeared along with former Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, who was once the governor of Kansas.

Obama implied that the high school seniors were morally superior to their forebears, adding that the diversity that the students experience in today’s world was “the hope and dream of Brown. You all are the living, breathing legacy of this case.”

She even urged the soon-to-be-graduates to “drag” older generations to be more pro-diversity, citing a 2013 Cheerios commercial with a biracial couple and their child and some supposed opposition to the commercial. She claimed, “When some folks got all worked up about a cereal commercial with an interracial family, you all were probably thinking, ‘Really, what’s the problem with that?'”

She moved on to calling the older generation homophobes and lavished praise on the high schoolers, saying, “When folks made a big deal about Jason Collins and Michael Sam coming out as gay, a lot of kids in your generation thought, ‘What’s the issue here?'”

She did laud the diversity of today’s culture and those who built the path that led to it, saying, “Maybe, like mine, they came to this country in chains. Or maybe your family just arrived here in search of a better life.”

But, she repeated, we’re still racist. She said that Brown is still being “decided every single day” and all schools aren’t equal because of their “crumbling classrooms and less experienced teachers.” 

Moreover, the older generation was too lazy to do the morally correct thing in her view. She told the students, “We need all of you to ask the hard questions and have the honest conversations because that is the only way we will heal the wounds of the past and move forward to a better future.”