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March 30, 2008
Racist? Or simply Clueless?
The very traditional New Yorker boasts it receives too many e-mails from readers to acknowledge and selects only three or four a week for publication on the single page (print edition only) it allots to “The Mail.” What follows is the first of three published for the week of March 31.
THE AMERICAN DREAM
Michelle Obama, while on the stump for her husband, the Presidential candidate Barack Obama, makes the assessment that, as Lauren Collins writes, "life in America ... is not good.... We're a country that is 'Just downright mean,’ we are guided by fear,’ ‘we're a nation of cynics, sloths, and complacents" ("The Other Obama," March 10th). What remains unexplained is how she came to make these dark assessments, notwithstanding her privileged life, which may culminate in becoming First Lady. Can she really believe that coming from a black blue-collar family, going to Princeton and Harvard, making a six-figure income, and living in a $1.6 million home is an anomaly, accident, or exception that says nothing about opportunity and social mobility in American society, and that her accomplishments and way of life have no relevance whatsoever to her harsh judgments about America?
Paul Hollander
Professor Emeritus of Sociology
University Massachusetts
Amherst, Mass.
I’ve answered Hollander’s question in an e-mail to The New Yorker; however, based on previous experience, and knowing how few readers’ letters they publish, I'm also posting it here.
Doctor Tom
The rhetorical question Paul Hollander saw fit to ask about Michelle Obama on the basis of Lauren Collins’ profile, requires an answer; if for no other reason than she may soon be America’s First Lady. In essence, Hollander is annoyed that an intelligent and professionally successful black woman with degrees from Princeton and Harvard dares to criticize the nation in which she and her husband have prospered beyond the dreams of most of its (white) citizens.
I’ve had a unique opportunity to study another population this nation is treating unfairly (albeit considerably less savagely and over a shorter interval than Michelle Obama’s forebears) and have learned first hand how emotional trauma, particularly if associated with shaming during childhood, can be a potent source of long term emotional distress.
Although Collins makes it clear that Obama and her brother had exceptional parenting, I can also be certain that they, as well as her husband and parents, have been frequently snubbed or worse, simply because of their appearance. I’m equally certain all are more aware than Professor Hollander of the details of this nation’s shameful racial history from 1787 onward. That it’s less overt now must be small consolation to its victims; particularly when they are pointedly reminded of it every day.
What I find even more distressing than a professor of Sociology asking such a question is your decision to select his letter as one of three published this week. Because I’ve been a New Yorker subscriber for well over twenty years, I wanted you to know exactly why I will not be renewing.
Tom O’Connell MD
Redwood Shores California
Posted by tjeffo at March 30, 2008 07:14 PM