Thread: Michelle Obama Would Like Students to Monitor Family Members for Racial Insensitivity

This brings back warm memories of the Stalin era, where children were encouraged to denounce their parents if they made any remarks critical of the State.

-- Dixon Diaz

Michelle Obama Would Like Students to Monitor Family Members for Racial Insensitivity


May. 19, 2014 9:57am
Pete Kasperowicz

First lady Michelle Obama is encouraging students to monitor their older relatives, friends and co-workers for any racially insensitive comments they might make, and to challenge those comments whenever they’re made.
The first lady spoke on Friday to graduating high school students in Topeka, Kansas, and in remarks released over the weekend, Obama said students need to police family and friends because federal laws can only go so far in stopping racism.


First lady Michelle Obama is encouraging students to patrol their family members for racially insensitive comments. (AP Photo/Jonathan Bachman)

“[O]ur laws may no longer separate us based on our skin color, but nothing in the Constitution says we have to eat together in the lunchroom, or live together in the same neighborhoods,” she said. “There’s no court case against believing in stereotypes or thinking that certain kinds of hateful jokes or comments are funny.”
To address these limitations in the law, Obama asked students to take steps to “drag my generation and your grandparents’ generation along with you” in the fight against racism.
“Maybe that starts simply in your own family, when grandpa tells that off-colored joke at Thanksgiving, or you’ve got an aunt [that] talks about ‘those people,’” she said. “Well, you can politely inform them that they’re talking about your friends.
“Or maybe it’s when you go off to college and you decide to join a sorority or fraternity, and you ask the question, how can we get more diversity in our next pledge class?” she added. “Or maybe it’s years from now, when you’re on the job and you’re the one who asks, do we really have all the voices and viewpoints we need at this table?
“But no matter what you do, the point is to never be afraid to talk about these issues, particularly the issue of race,” she said.
Obama’s remarks focused on race because they were meant to highlight the 60th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision, which said it was unconstitutional for states to establish separate public schools for black and white students.
While Obama praised the student body for being racially diverse, she said segregation is happening again in some parts of the country, as some people are moving away and leaving city schools. She said that is leading to segregation that is as bad as it was decades ago.

“So today, by some measures, our schools are as segregated as they were back when Dr. King gave his final speech,” she said.
Obama originally planned to speak to students on the graduation day, but in late April the White House agreed that she would speak at a “senior recognition day” after students protested her arrival. Many students argued that the first lady’s speech on graduation day would overshadow their graduation and make it harder for students to bring their own families to the ceremony.

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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014...insensitivity/

Michelle Obama: America Still Racist



Video at the Page Link:

by William Bigelow 18 May 2014 512 post a comment

Michelle Obama: Racism Still Alive 60 Years...

Michelle Obama: Racism Still Alive 60 Years After Desegregation






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.”

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Governm...a-Still-Racist