I've found Michelle Obama's thesis online. It's quite interesting. It's entitled Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community. She wanted to see how the attitudes of her fellow students changed over time with being in a mostly white college. She wanted to see if being in a mostly white college changed a black student from wanting to help other black people in their community.
She cites Van den Berghe, Billingsley, and Carmichael and Hamilton, to name a few as they name the concepts of Separationism/Pluralism, Integrationism/Assimilationism. Van den Berghe talks about 2 concepts of Separationism. 1) cultural structural pluralism where they find their own language, values and things to do together. 2) social structural pluralism where they find shared languages and values across different ethnic groups.
Billingsley believed that Blacks needed to build up their communities and define themselves differently from whites' standards and exercise power and control over their own institutions and services within their black communities.
To me, this is a scary philosophy, and would take us back to the 1960's where there was segregation. I don't want communities that are strictly black. This sounds like the black version of Governor George Wallace. Why isn't this seen as racist? If there was a white man talking this stuff, building up a white community and putting power in their services, there would be an outrage. We are talking equality, and they are talking power. They (at least those in Michelle's circle) don't want equality, they want dominance. It's disturbing to me that she uses footnotes by Black Power, The Politics of Liberation in America.
The next set of variables she looks at is how to measure benefits. How does it affect the person? She makes a good argument here. You can't help everyone, so people will rank in importance, themselves, their family, their community, their occupation, the non-white community, the black community, the black lower-class. She said you need to separate the black lower-class because some have gone to Princeton and graduated and are no longer lower-class. They may have guilt for betraying the lower class.
She also takes up for looking inside at oneself to a time-line to Pre-Princeton, Princeton and Post-Princeton for changes in attitudes. She also admits that it will be a small sampling of the black community. It makes me wonder how she picked them? Did she know them? Did she only pick the ones that she knew were radical? Which I found later on. She went to the directory and picked every 4th person and mailed a questionnaires until she got to 400. She had 89 people return their questionnaires.
She did include variables such as time spent interacting with blacks and whites, the racial make up of their schools, both primary and secondary, the race of the person they most admired, their image of God, the number of books in the home both growing up and now, and the sex and age of the person. She also wanted to look at their parents' economic level.
I have to admit she's brilliant: A racist, but brilliant. That's just my opinion, which may change as I read the thesis, but at this point, on the first section of it, it comes off as racist. I am not a separatist. It is my experience that the more you are around the different races, the more you gain an appreciation that God created a great variety. If you live with only your own, you are deprived of the great variety in life.
The first variable she explores is time. She felt that the more time the Princeton students spent with black students, the more they would feel they should help black lower class blacks.
The socio-economical status puts them more on a level with the whites, because they can afford to go to Princeton. Either way, the more the individual identifies with the black community, the more positive will be the attitude towards the black poor. The more the individual identifies with the white community, the more negative the attitude will be towards the black poor.
So, they came to Princeton willing to help themselves and their families, which is capitalist. They left wanting to help their occupations... they came out as a socialist. Gee, what does that tell you? Princeton is pumping out socialists, I guess. There was also a drop in 4% to benefit God.
Now we know why Michelle is pushing college for everyone. After leaving college, blacks didn't feel comfortable around other blacks on an intellectual level. They felt more intellectually comfortable around whites than blacks.
Michelle found that the more Blacks were separated the more they were motivated to help the black community, and likewise the more they were assimilated with the white community, the less they were motivated to help the black community. This so speaks volumes. This is behind their push to get everyone in college no matter their ability to pay for it. It would not surprise me if she didn't push for black colleges with no admittance of white students. Most racists that I've met are ignorant people. This is an example of what it's like when a brilliant person is a racist. They can twist data and make it say what they want it to say. It's funny how they can make the tea partiers out to be dumb rednecks and racists, when in reality, this is the picture of racism in America. We have people of all colors at our tea parties. They are advocating separation because blacks won't want to help the lower class blacks if they are around white people. How racist is that? And I can be depicted as a racist because I go to a tea party, but I'll bet I'll be demonized for calling Michelle Obama a racist for wanting the blacks to be separate from the whites in college. What if I called for the white people to be separate from the blacks in college like she just did in her thesis? What if I proved in a thesis that white people who were around black people didn't want to help the white lower class?
She decides at this point that the more separatist/pluralism one becomes, the more they are willing to help the black community. This basically means if they are for segregation, they will help the black community. If they are integrationism/assimilationsism, they won't be as willing to help the black community. Do you think maybe they think if I got up, they can get out of that ghetto, too? I have to ask, what does she mean by help? Does she mean keep in place all the welfare programs? Do they mean make them help themselves? They may mean give them a job, and she may mean keep them dependent on the government. Two different ways of helping.
From Michelle's conclusions, the more time black students spend with other black students, the more motivated they will be to help the black community, and the more time they spend with white students, the less they will be motivated to help the black community. The more time blacks spent with blacks, the more they became sep/plur, meaning (in my opinion) the more racist they became. It means the more they became likely to want to separate into separate communities of blacks keeping to their "own kind," and whites keeping to themselves. How sad is that? The more time blacks spent with whites, the more they became integrationists. That means they became less racist. They learned that we weren't what the left painted us as. Wow, what a concept.
She goes on to talk about the differences in black and white culture. Yes, there is a difference in the cultures, but that doesn't warrant separation of the races. We could both benefit from each other. She does add that it is not necessary to be tied to the culture to be motivated to help the lower class blacks. Gee, does it follow that you don't have to be BLACK to want to help the lower class blacks?
She then claims to have redefined how to define the concept of identification. Does this mean she has redefined how you define yourself as black? I have to wonder at that as I continue reading. President Obama has been defined as a black man, even though he is only 6% black....is it because he has been around a lot of black people and identifies himself as black, according to this thesis and as redefined by Michelle?
Because I am so naive, I have to ask the question: What is the difference intellectually between a black and a white in intellectual pursuits? When you educate a person, how does their race enter into it? When you teach someone, why does race even matter? When I look at a child, why do I have to treat a black child differently than a white child? I'm a clown, I don't treat that white child differently than I do that black child. Am I doing something wrong? Should I be treating them differently? I look in their eyes....if one child seems to need more love than another, maybe, or one seems scared of clowns, I react differently, but I don't look at skin color. According to Michelle Obama, I must be doing something wrong.
Of course, I guess that means she's doing her job. She has me thinking that my actions must be racist. She has me thinking of color, when I used to not think of color. How sad. I want my America back. Is this the change you wanted?
Lori Ann Smith
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