"For the first time I'm proud"

To those who say Michelle Obama is angry, I have a few questions to ask. Since when did white people earn the right to judge black people?

Do white people know the history of black people? Do most white people know that black people have spent over five (>500) hundred years at the bottom? Do most white people know that Africans were kidnap victims of Arab slave traders? That they were forced on a death march to the Slave Coast? That they were put in a dungeon? That they were next crammed on slave ships like sardines, chained together, not allowed to get up to urinate or defecate? That sometimes when slop ran short excess "cargo" was thrown overboard still in chains unable to swim? That their first experience of America was being led off ships naked and put into pens? That they were sold like animals or beaten in workhouses often to the accompaniment of a hypocritical preacher reading from the Bible? That they had to walk to the plantation, there to be worked to death? That they were killed for reading the Bible or any other book? That if they rebelled, they were skinned and used for leather? [That’s how the Nazis got the idea to turn Jewish skin into leather] That if they escaped to flee to Canada and were caught, they might lose a body part? That they had to endure humiliation and half pay at the hands of racist white officers when they fought for freedom in the US Colored Troops during the Civil War? That after the Civil War, the Red Shirts would surround their houses and demand they come out? That if they refused, they would burn the house down and if they came out, they would be shot? That next came the Klan who doused them in kerosene and burned them alive or lynched them and took body parts as souvenirs that some Southern white families have pickled in jars to this very day? That photo postcards of lynchings used to be a popular hobby? That entire Southern communities (men, women and children) participated in these "picnics"? That the Klan was once in all fifty states and several foreign countries? That the United States federal government has been integrated and re-segregated several times in history? That state governments in the South nullified the right to vote for blacks? That "states rights" was the right to discriminate against blacks? That even after blacks served in every war from the Revolutionary War to World War Two, returning veterans were often lynched for returning to their home towns wearing their uniforms? That fire hoses and dogs were used on children during the Civil Rights Movement? That burnings of black churches only recently stopped? That lynchings have taken place since the year 2001? In the Twenty-First Century? That in Florida black people were classified as felons and stopped by police roadblocks to prevent them from voting against Republicans? That ballot boxes were thrown away? That this is common knowledge among foreign reporters but American reporters didn't investigate? That not one US Senator, Republican or Democrat, would sponsor an investigation of the irregularities of the Florida count in 2000? That not one member of the US Senate was black? [before Obama]

Tell me that the Irish-American experience of the coffin ships means nothing. Tell me that the Jewish-American experience of the Holocaust means nothing. Tell me that the Japanese-American experience of being stripped of their homes and businesses and put in concentration camps means nothing. Tell me that the Native-American experience of genocide means nothing. Tell me that the experience of Chinese-Americans who built the transcontinental railroad and then were denied being allowed to send for their wives or children because of the hysteria of 'Yellow Peril' means nothing. Tell me all this and then I won't say a thing when you criticize Michelle Obama for saying that this is the first time she has been proud of this country. I won't say a thing because I wouldn't have anything to say to a person who lacked both brain and heart.

But some people are more interested in style than the substance of our lives. And even here too, Mrs. Obama has been compared to Jackie Kennedy. This is rich irony considering that McCain has more houses than he can count while the Obamas come from the working class. Only in America can you struggle for centuries (half a millennium), overcome obstacles (which all too often are us white people), lose a father (both Barack and Michelle), work and get into Harvard, go to work for poor people instead of piling up the money at a Wall Street law firm, and then hear idiots who don't know what the hell they're talking about criticize you.