In a much-anticipated interview with Oprah Winfrey, First Lady Michelle Obama tackles a plethora of topics including the very racist label she acquired during her husband, President Barack Obama’s, run for office in 2008.

An Angry Black Woman

Like many other well spoken and outward Black women, Michelle Obama was labeled “an angry black woman” during campaigning for her husband’s run for president, and though she has always disavowed hate speech as ridiculous and trivial, she couldn’t help but be slightly hurt by the comments. Mrs. Obama stated:

“That was one of those things where you just sort of think, ‘Dang, you don’t even know me.’ That’s the first blow-back because you think, ‘That is so not me.’ But then you think, ‘This isn’t about me.’ This is about the person or people who write it, you know? That’s just the truth. [And] you start thinking, ‘Oh wow, we’re so afraid of each other.'”

Judge For Yourself

But this cruel attack on the First Lady’s skin color and personality didn’t set her back even one step. Mrs. Obama took that event and turned it into a lesson for her, and women all across the country. She explained saying:

“I thought, ‘Okay, well let me live my life out loud so that people can then see and then judge for themselves.”

A Message For The Future

Continuing with the interview, Mrs. Obama expressed her dislike for negative labeling and pushed on the fact that as Black women there needs to be a source of strength and togetherness that situations like these move them to. She told Winfrey:

“We as black women better be able to do it, because there’s so much that comes at us … every day in subtle ways that could tear your soul apart if you let it. But my mother always taught me, girl, you’d better brush it off.”

With the current political situation spreading hate and fear across this country, Mrs. Obama’s words ring truer and louder than ever before. She is a woman of class and respect that any person, regardless of skin tone, should respect and idolize.

Hold her words close in the coming days and push forward as Michelle Obama has done, and will continue to do, even as her husband, President Obama, leaves office.

Featured image via Rolling Stone.

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