Michelle Obama claims black women need permission to 'articulate pain'



Michelle Obama has taken the uncommon path of a former first lady and started a podcast where she talks about the important issues like how black women think they need permission to express pain.

And it’s every bit as insufferable as one might expect.

“We grew up with women who weren’t voicing the pain and the burden,” Obama told her brother, Craig Robinson, and Taraji P. Henson. “They made it look easy. And when you make stuff look easy, people assume that you must like this, it’s okay with you.”

“We don’t articulate as black women — our pain — because it’s almost like nobody ever gave us permission to do that,” she continued, before Henson interrupted, asking, “And does anyone care?”


“If we knew, I think we would care,” Robinson answered, before Obama continued waxing poetic.

“We have to ask ourselves, the men in our lives, is ‘Why wait to be asked?’ It seems like what we go through is pretty obvious. I mean, maybe we’re not complaining, but we’re actually living life out loud.”

Obama went on to lament that black women are “so easily labeled as angry and bitter” while white women are viewed as “lightness” and have “an ability to be in this world and see what’s going on.”

“Are black women struggling to talk about their pain? Are they not free to do that in America?” Jason Whitlock of “Jason Whitlock Harmony” asks co-host Shemeka Michelle.

“Initially I thought, ‘This is so stupid,’ because that’s all we hear and see is the pain of black women. That’s all they talk about. And I found it ironic that she was sitting there talking to Taraji P. Henson, who has complained over and over again. She pretty much tanked ‘The Color Purple’ because all she was doing was complaining,” Michelle says.

“Maybe black women aren’t articulating ‘their pain’ in the correct way, because everytime I turn around I’m seeing some type of video where they’re tearing up the McDonald's, or trying to run over their baby daddy, or fighting in a Walmart in their pajama pants and their bonnets,” Michelle continues.

“So maybe she has a point that they don’t ‘articulate’ their pain, because they’re busy showing out and acting like untamed gorillas,” she adds.

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Michelle Obama claims she's 'terrified' for upcoming election. Here's why



Michelle Obama is very concerned about the 2024 election, and it’s starting to sound like the former first lady might have something in store herself for 2024.

“The things that keep me up because you don’t have control over them, and you wonder where are people, where are we in this, you know, where are our hearts, what’s going to happen in this next election,” she told Jay Shetty on the "On Purpose" podcast.

“I am terrified about what could possibly happen, because our leaders matter. Who we select, who speaks for us, who holds that bully pulpit — it affects us in ways that sometimes I think people take for granted,” Michelle added.

Sara Gonzales is not amused.

“Yeah, we know, which is why it’s a problem that we have a walking vegetable that is apparently controlling the bully pulpit,” she comments.

Entrepreneur and investor Carol Roth thinks Michelle has something else up her sleeve.

“I watched this and the first thing that popped into my head is, ‘She’s running,’” Roth tells Gonzales. “All of a sudden they’re trotting out Michelle Obama, who we haven’t seen in a very long time.”

“If she keeps popping up, that’s going to terrify me,” she adds.


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Michelle Obama says white America views black women like her as 'invisible'



Former first lady Michelle Obama said on her podcast Thursday that white America views black people as invisible — unless they're seeing those black people as a threat, according to the New York Post.

Obama recalled times when she was in public and treated with disrespect because when she wasn't surrounded by Secret Service, white people didn't pay her any attention.

"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," Obama 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.

"All she saw was a black person, or a group of black people, or maybe she didn't even see that," Obama concluded. "Because we were that invisible."

Obama also said that white people don't understand how black people feel being dismissed or viewed with hostility by the white people around them. From excerpts courtesy of the Post:

"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," the former first lady said in "The Michelle Obama Podcast."

"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," Obama continued.

"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 in the episode, which also featured pals Danielle Pemberton-Heard, Kelly Dibble and Dr. Sharon Malone.

The former first lady has become arguably more popular since leaving the White House than she was while Barack Obama was president. Her book, "Becoming," has sold more than 10 million copies, and she has the top-ranked podcast on Spotify.