While speaking in Malaysia, former first lady Michelle Obama said that America still has a racism problem — even though the country elected her husband twice.
Michelle Obama made these comments at the Obama Foundation’s leadership conference in Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia.
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“We’re still not where we need to be in the United States of America when it comes to race,” she said.
“People thought electing Barack Obama would end racism,” she added.
“That’s 400 years of stuff that was going to be eliminated because of eight years of this kid from Hawaii?”
“Are you kidding me?”
See the video in the tweet below:
WATCH: Michelle Obama speaks about racism at an Obama Foundation event in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: "We're still not where we need to be in the United States of America when it comes to race." pic.twitter.com/7Bj8dTfniv
— NBC News (@NBCNews) December 13, 2019
Her speech follows similar comments she made about migration and the phenomenon of “white flight” at the annual Obama Foundation Summit in October.
“As families like ours, upstanding families like ours who were doing everything we were supposed to do and better — as we moved in, white folks moved out because they were afraid of what our families represented,” she said.
“There were no gang fights, there were no territorial battles,” she went on. “Yet one by one, they packed their bags and they ran from us. And they left communities in shambles.”
“I want to remind white folks that y’all were running from us,” she said. “This family, with all the values that you read about, you were running from us. And you’re still running because we’re no different than the immigrant families that are moving in.”
While it’s true America has had problems with race, the public believed from the 1990s onward that we were living in a post-racial America.
It seemed that everything that would be needed for racial equality was already implemented, or being worked on. The election of Barack Obama was merely evidence of the country moving on into the genuinely bright future that Martin Luther King Jr predicted.
What happened, contrary to Michelle Obama’s words earlier, was not that Obama didn’t fix racism during his eight years of office — but that he actually exacerbated it, in our view.
Speaking in 2018, former presidential hopeful Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) said just that.
“Every time there was a controversy with someone of color [that] was involved, he took the side, many times, against the police,” Santorum argued about Obama.
“He did it over and over and over again. President Obama was to many people out there someone who could have come together — brought this country together.”
Michelle and Barack Obama should take a long look at themselves in the mirror before speaking about racism again, in our view.
This piece originally appeared on ThePoliticalInsider.com and is used by permission.
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