Barack Obama News Blog

Feminists Fighting…AGAIN about the Mom-In-Chief I was about to file this under “Here We Go Again” .. “Give it a Rest”…”Haven’t we heard this before,” but I have to give Bonnie Erbe credit for stepping out there yet again in this battle over the choices and decisions First Lady Michelle Obama makes related to her role in the White House.

Mellissa Harris-Lacewell did a Michelle Obama Mother’s Day column for the Sacramento Bee.

White, middle-class, gender norms in the United States have generally asserted that women belong in the domestic sphere. These norms have limited white women’s opportunities for education and employment. But the story has been different for women of color and women from poor and working-class origins.

These women have faced the requirement of employment and shouldered the extreme burden of attempting to effectively parent while providing financially for their families.

African American women were full participants in agricultural labor during slavery, the backbreaking work of sharecropping and the domestic services of Jim Crow. Even middle class and elite African American women have typically worked as teachers, journalists, entrepreneurs and professionals. At every level of household income and at every point in American history, these women have been much more likely to engage in paid labor than their white counterparts. Even Claire Huxtable worked full time.

I basically said the same thing last fall about feminism and its emphasis on leaving the home to work when Black women have always worked outside of the home. As a result, the laments of feminists about the whole Mom-in-chief debate ( y’all remember that one right) tended to reek of privilege.

However, Bonnie Erbe does not cede any ground to Melissa Harris-Lacewell on the privilege issue and I think that makes what she wrote unique as opposed to the same recycled drivel from last December. .\

I appreciate Prof. Harris-Lacewell’s perspective immensely, but still disagree with it. My white female ancestors also worked out of financial need when many women stayed home. My maternal grandmother worked her way up to become one of the first female directors of a department store’s art department in New York City in the 1930s. She and my grandfather had divorced and she worked for sustenance, as she had no other source of income.

Mrs. Obama’s “Mom-in-Chief” image was created more by Obama image-makers David Axelrod et. al. to soften her into a first lady Americans could love. I think it is a sad state of affairs that Americans are more comfortable with a non-threatening first lady than with a career woman, but it is also a stereotype that screams to be abolished. Michelle Obama is just the person who could have done it, but she decided against it. Instead, she caved into advisors’ demands.

The truth is, until that stereotype becomes history, all women will suffer less power and clout in the workplace. Bonnie Erbe

Um Ms. Erbe, the non-threatening stereotype isn’t ours. I wish Black women had a non-threatening stereotype. Our career related stereotypes are that we are independent career women who don’t need a man. In fact if you pop into any blog that even tangentially mentions African American relationships, I can ASSURE you, the dominant stereotype within the community is NOT the one you’re lamenting.

Part of this may be the fact that Erbe does not “appear” to be viewing First Lady Michelle Obama through the lense of race as Lacewell- Harris did.  So Erbe doesn’t take into account that White women and Black women might be the “victims” of a different set of stereotypes. I’m giving Erbe the benefit of the doubt (ie not castigating her as I usually do)  because I watched her every week on PBS and love. love. love her show To the Contrary.

<tangent>I can no longer watch her show however because my local PBS station made the digital transition and I refuse to buy a digital TV converter because I feel the retail outlet that sold me  this lovely television three years ago should have warned me that television as I knew it was ending and this TV would be nothing more than a jumbo sized DVD player. No, I didn’t get one of those nifty coupons and NO I am not spending . I digress..</tangent>

If the roles were reversed and First Lady Michelle Obama was President and President Obama was “First Gentleman” or whatever in the heck we are going to call the first”First Non-Lady,” I don’t know that I would want him to have an overtly public role in policy and decision making. And again, to many women, being able to stay at home is a dream and a privilege, they view it as a step forward and not a step backwards.

Does anybody think that First Lady Michelle Obama is sitting around the White House baking cookies? If she did and that made her happy, then so be it.   I think she’s the busiest First lady I can remember, but then again, I didn’t pay as much attention to her predecessors. Every time I look up, she’s planting something, walking Bo, hosting some cultural event, speaking to children….Memo to feminists, working for a large corporation is NOT the only valuable form of “work.” “Career” is in the eye of the beholder. I think she replaced the MEANINGLESS “career” with a “calling.”

But I think it’s cool that people are fighting about it because in some ways that means they identify with the First Lady and are claiming her as their own. It looks like we’ll be fighting about this for the next four years so I had to pull out the “Praying Hands”  icon.

Posted by Gina.
Previous Posts:

Laments that Michelle Obama is Throwing Away Her Achievements

CNN: “First Mom” a Demotion?

CNN: “Michelle Obama Reinventing Motherhood”-(Moms vs. Moms)

Mom Michelle accused of “letting the team down”