Michelle Obama: ‘White Folks’ See Black People As Invisible

Former first lady Michelle Obama has a real chip on her shoulder and has ever since her husband, former President Obama, left the White House.

In a recent episode of her “Michelle Obama Podcast” on Spotify she went on a racist rant against white people who, she said, treat her and other black women as if they are invisible, The New York Post reported.

“When I’ve been completely incognito, during the eight years in the White House, walking the dogs on the canal, people will come up and pet my dogs, but will not look me in the eye. They don’t know it’s me,” she said during her show.

“What white folks don’t understand, it’s like that is so telling of how white America views people who are not like them. You know, we don’t exist. And when we do exist, we exist as a threat. And that, that’s exhausting,” the former first lady said.

Has she considered that the dog may just have simply been more approachable?

“What the white community doesn’t understand about being a person of color in this nation is that there are daily slights, in our workplaces where people talk over you, or people don’t even see you,” she said.

She continued talking in the episode to her friends Danielle Pemberton-Heard, Kelly Dibble, and Dr. Sharon Malone about a story where she and her daughters, Sasha and Malia, went to get ice cream at a soccer game with Pemberton-Heard when she was first lady.

“We were stopping to get ice cream, and I had told the Secret Service to stand back because we were trying to be normal, trying to go in,” she said.

“When I’m just a black woman, I notice that white people don’t even see me. … I’m standing there with two little black girls, another black female adult, they’re in soccer uniforms. And a white woman cuts right in front of us to order. Like ― she didn’t even see us,” the former first lady said.

“The girl behind the counter almost took her order. And I had to stand up because I know [Pemberton-Heard] was like, ‘Well, I’m not gonna cause a scene with Michelle Obama,’” she said. “So I stepped up and I said, ‘Excuse me? You don’t see us four people standing right here, you just jumped in line?’”

She said that the woman “didn’t apologize, she never looked me in my eye, she didn’t know it was me. All she saw was a black person, or a group of black people, or maybe she didn’t even see that. Because we were that invisible.”

This sounds like the story of a woman who is, in spite of all of her privilege and riches, determined to be a victim.

This is the same woman who said she was never proud of the United States until her husband became the president.

It is more likely that she is not seen as invisible but as pushy, rude and entitled which leads to her negative experiences with “white people.”