Monday, April 14, 2008
Michelle Obama at Princeton
At dinner a few weeks back, a couple of my companions cited the thesis that Michelle Obama wrote as an undergraduate at Princeton in the mid-1980s as evidence of her attitudes on race. I had not read the thesis, but I did respond that, first, very few people would want to be held accountable for opinions they spewed as undergraduates and, second, it is in any case easy to forget how very far the country has travelled in the short time since Obama's time there (1981-1985, overlapping me by two years).
As it happens, Obama's Southern white roommate has written an interesting account of that time, including that her mother paid a visit to Princeton's housing office on hearing that her daughter was assigned to share a room with a black person.
Catherine Donnelly shopped at Kmart, settled into her dorm room and soaked up the Gothic stone buildings where, over the next four years, she would grow into her own woman.
But her first day at Princeton held a surprise, too. And Donnelly knew it would mean confronting the past.
She walked into the historic Nassau Inn that evening and delivered the news to her mother, Alice Brown. "I was horrified," recalled Brown, who had driven her daughter up from New Orleans. Brown stormed down to the campus housing office and demanded Donnelly be moved to another room.
The reason: One of her roommates was black.
I was a junior that year.
There is a lot in the linked story that reflects underlying truth -- while politically liberally and striving mightily to integrate in thought, word, and deed, Princeton of the 1980s was not an entirely comfortable place for blacks. Indeed, it is intimidating for anybody who is not raised in a highly educated family with embedded Ivy league assumptions, but it must have been especially so for blacks.
That said, experiences differ. I was also assigned a black roommate -- it was a suite, actually -- freshman year, but he hung in my social circles, joined the same eating club, and remains a friend to this day.
The article mentions the eating clubs:
Donnelly was surprised to find something familiar – segregation – alive and well on a prestigious campus in the Northeast. The university's private eating clubs, host to frat-style parties, were largely white.
Again, a true statement, but the entire university was "largely white." The "bicker chairman" of our club was none other than notorious TigerHawk comment troll Christopher Chambers, and perhaps as a result we had a fair number of blacks in the Glorious Tiger Inn.
This is all nuance, though. Yes, it was possible for blacks at Princeton in that period to participate fully in the community of the majority, but it cannot have been comfortable for most of them. There may be many reasons to worry about Michelle Obama's opinions on the subject of race in America, not least of which is that her husband might share them (or he might not). Her Princeton thesis, though, is hardly a basis for measuring her today, almost no matter what it says.
CWCID: Andrew Sullivan.
16 Comments:
By 
, at
Mon Apr 14, 10:29:00 AM:
"...few people would want to be held accountable for opinions they spewed as undergraduates..."
True. But, but the standard has already been established. The test must be, "how would the majority members of the Senate Judiciary Committee address this fact if it was associated with a person nominated by President Bush to be a federal judge?"
In that context, we should also know who Michelle had lunch with every day, their race and whether she harbored the same anti-white, anti-American beliefs then as she does now.
Rev. Wright has clearly demonstrated a black racism in this country that I did not know existed. A great weight has been taken from my shoulders; I have always believed that racism in this country was a white problem. Wright proved otherwise. It is now as important to abhor black racism as it is white racism. The evidence suggests that the Obamas are black racists. It is incumbent upon them to prove that they are not!
By , at
Mon Apr 14, 11:44:00 AM:
I'm surprised your friends can't find more current Obamania to discuss over dinner. There's so much!
By 
Escort81, at
Mon Apr 14, 01:45:00 PM:
How could CC participate in and direct such an overtly misogynistic activity as bicker (membership selection akin to rush at a frat) at an all male club? Why would he want to be a part of something so discriminatory? Did his egalitarian feelings surface only later, as a kind of penance for this sin? Or was he a mole for the Sally Frank legal team all along? /sarc
Across the street at the Cottage, which had a more southern flavor in its membership, I am as sure as I can be that no non-white student who bickered during that era (late 70s / early 80s) was denied a bid because of race. That said, the membership was overwhelmingly white, and I can imagine that it could not have been completely comfortable for the few minority members we did have, particularly given the fact that most of our staff (meals were served there) was African-American.
I had close friends who were from the Deep South who harbored no racist attitudes, but whose parents, like Catherine Donnelly's mother, may well have had race-based fears left over from the bad old days (a product of their environment, not that that excuses it.) I don't hold people accountable for the sins of their fathers (or mothers), so I am not sure how relevant it is that Michelle Robinson Obama had a freshman roommate whose mother had cracker tendencies. It strikes me that Michelle is a strong enough and bright enough woman to realize that such attitudes reflect poorly on the person holding them and not on her, and that in no way has it limited her success, either at Princeton or since graduation. There is a substantive difference between Selma in 1955 and Princeton in 1985.
Michelle's experience as an African-American on campus was probably not all that unusual for that period of time, although the Class of 1985 was known as the "hosed class," as memory serves, since it was caught in the transition to underclass residential colleges, and dorm arrangements were poor for that class. She did have the benefit of having an older brother there for her first two years, and he was somewhat of a celebrity as a two-time Ivy League player of the year in basketball. I didn't know Craig (the new head coach at Oregon State), but by all accounts he was a great teammate and captain, and while being berated by coach Pete Carril, wouldn't have had the time contemplate why the coach was yelling at him or if it had anything to do with race (it didn't.) Anyone who knew Coach Carril knew that the only players he was prejudiced against were kids who came from schools with "The" or "Country Day" in the names, because he thought they'd be soft.
Certainly, a casual observer would note a fair amount of segregation on campus during that era, both with respect to dorms and dining at tables in Commons. As to whether that was self-segregation or some other form, I don't know, but clearly there were no kinds of overt or codified discrimination barring non-whites from certain dorms, Commons tables or eating clubs. Far from it. Princeton tried to work hard to overcome the perception that it was not a friendly place for African Americans as compared to other Ivy League schools (Princeton would lose out to other schools in terms of admitted African-American students matriculating elsewhere, which really disappointed the administration.) While it is more than twice as difficult overall to gain admission as it was 30 years ago, my sense is that the tag of "unfriendly to minorities" has diminished to a large extent, though I do not say that on the basis of any good data.
By the way, there was a period of time when Princeton was perceived to be (and indeed was) unfriendly toward Jews. One of my close friends joined Cap & Gown, despite the fact that his father had been denied admission there by the graduate board (after receiving a bid) during the "dirty bicker" of the 1950s. I think that era is over with as well, thankfully.
I agree that Michelle's senior thesis is hardly a basis for measuring her today, and that her performance on the campaign trail is much more relevant, assuming for the moment that judging a potential first lady informs one’s choice for president to any great degree. Maybe Michelle is a strong-willed and opinionated woman who is occasionally impolitic, but whose personality make-up has little to do with her skin color. I suspect most of that stuff filed away in the Mudd Library would be quite soporific. By way of example, my thesis was on an application of the Capital Asset Pricing Model in the context of a large bankruptcy litigation case. You can judge me on that, ZZzzzzzzz.
By ScurvyOaks, at
Mon Apr 14, 02:20:00 PM:
Christopher Chambers may be the first recorded case of a tree becoming a troll. :)
Re Michelle Obama's senior thesis, I'll just repeat what I posted at Rod Dreher's blog back in February:
"I'm quite sympathetic to Michelle Obama concerning her senior thesis. I graduated from Princeton in '84, one year ahead of her. (No, I didn't know her.) It was easy to feel like an outsider at Princeton. That was true even for me -- a male WASP who went to a private school and grew up with money. My only outsider attribute was that I was from Texas, so there was a lot of East coast stuff that I didn't understand when I showed up there. By my senior year, I had found my niche and felt very much at home at Princeton, but that process took quite a while. Obviously, she started from the position of being an outsider in ways I can barely begin to understand.
One other thing to bear in mind: the process of writing a senior thesis involves a lot of interaction with the professor who is your thesis advisor. A saavy senior writes what her thesis advisor will want to read. I have no idea who Michelle Obama's advisor was, but there's certainly the possibility that she was encouraged in the direction of the sentiments expressed in her thesis.
I cut her very little slack for her recent comments, btw."
By , at
Mon Apr 14, 02:51:00 PM:
Interesting post. From it I draw the conclusion that Princetonians say that Michelle Robinson Obama could find reason for feeling alienated at Princeton, but hers was not the only category that could feel thusly.
I downloaded her senior thesis in sociology and read some of it. I agree with those who state that what she says in 2008 is much more important than what she wrote in 1985. From what I recall, she found out that her initial hypotheses were not supported from her surveys of black alumni from Princeton. It is to her credit that she stated this disagreement between her initial hypothesis and the results of her surveys, instead of changing her storyline to say that what she set out to prove had been proved.
I confess to a prejudice against sociology and sociologists, perhaps the result knowing the sociologist father of a childhood friend. A town that he had studied repaid his attentions by displaying his effigy on a manure truck during one Fourth of July parade. As a result, I hold my nose when reading anything emanating from the sociology field, including senior theses.
By D.E. Cloutier, at
Mon Apr 14, 03:06:00 PM:
By Eric, at
Mon Apr 14, 08:29:00 PM:
Orson Scott Card, author of the much loved Ender's Game and a liberal hawk on the Long War, had an interesting take on and positive reaction to Michelle Obama's senior thesis (concurrently with a very negative view of Hillary Clinton). Card doesn't hold Obama's college-age assumptions against her; instead, he believes her senior thesis reflects a sound intellect in the prospective First Lady.
Scroll down to "Michelle vs. Hillary: The Senior Thesis Smackdown" in Card's Answers about Obama.
By , at
Mon Apr 14, 08:55:00 PM:
Orson Scott Card, author of the much loved Ender's Game
Eric, have you read Empire by Orson Scott Card? It is a near-future civil war novel and the main hero character is a soldier and Princeton grad.
By Christopher Chambers, at
Mon Apr 14, 09:08:00 PM:
PS, I doubt anyone posting or commenting on THIS blog saw it, but Pete Williams hosted an MSNBC special presentation of a rather cheezy though interesting documentary called "Meeting David Wilson." Then he mc'd a "National Conversation on Race."
It was hooey. Indeed, it seems that corporate America has pre-empted this whimsical "national conversation" the way they have commercialized anything "green." Now it's marketing pitch. The Ford and Proctor & gamble commercials were especially dumb.
Oh and by the way, the actual forum was at Howard University. The august panel included Chris Rock's wife (not Chris Rock) and Michael Eric Dyson. The only white people there seemed to be Mike Barnicle of the Boston Globe and...surprise...MSNBC pundit. And Williams, of course. Some conversation. Sad, sad, sad...even Fox News would've done better. It would have been a racist carnival, but at least it'd have watchable!
By Elijah, at
Mon Apr 14, 10:14:00 PM:
oh christopher,
"I doubt anyone posting or commenting on THIS blog saw it"
what exactly are you implying with the above comment?
i viewed the special and enjoyed the Howard professor (toward the end of the broadcast) who wanted his seat on the panel.
what is the percentage enrollment of "white people" at Howard one wonders? That inclusive, diverse student body?
"Michael Eric Dyson"
The same individual who stated April 6th on Meet The Press that Jeremiah Wright was today's Martin Luther King.
"even Fox News"
Have you read Cone? Have you read Cone?
- Jeremiah Wright
Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community.... Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in........the destruction of the white enemy.
What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love.
- James Cone in Black Theology and Black Power (1969)
A racist carnival indeed
By davod, at
Mon Apr 14, 11:37:00 PM:
Elijah:
In the general spirit of most writers to this post, how can you hold something written in 1969 against a person.
My answer - Maybe if they exhibit the same tendencies now that they exhibited then.
By Elijah, at
Tue Apr 15, 12:03:00 AM:
show the readers davod ...precisely, exactly... where Cone refutes and disavows his previous writings and ideology (or Dwight Hopkins for that matter)
or conversely, demonstrate where Wright qualifies the time frame for the reading of Cone's writing
written words have meaning, as much as one might wish to escape them
By RhondaCoca, at
Tue Apr 15, 03:36:00 PM:
Elijah says:
"I viewed the special and enjoyed the Howard professor (toward the end of the broadcast) who wanted his seat on the panel.
what is the percentage enrollment of "white people" at Howard one wonders? That inclusive, diverse student body?"
People of all races can attend!! It is a historically black college, it case you did not know.
"Michael Eric Dyson"
"The same individual who stated April 6th on Meet The Press that Jeremiah Wright was today's Martin Luther King."
Yes. He has a point if only you knew anything.
"even Fox News"
Have you read Cone? Have you read Cone?
- Jeremiah Wright
"Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community.... Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in........the destruction of the white enemy.
What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love.
- James Cone in Black Theology and Black Power (1969)
A racist carnival indeed"
So are you and Hannity going to orchestrate a genocoide of anyone who does not adhere to your brand of religion. You dont understand black Libertaion theology or the history behind its emergence. Please stop talking about things you know nothing about.
By Elijah, at
Tue Apr 15, 04:21:00 PM:
the only religion advocating ...genocoide as you write, is black liberation theology
why don't you explain the deeper meaning of killing white people or destroying white oppressors
Hannity has advocated genocoide as well-could you link that news for the readers
By Elijah, at
Tue Apr 15, 04:29:00 PM:
Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy.
- Change we can believe in
clinging to a religion due to bitterness, how ironic
By Eric, at
Tue Apr 15, 09:16:00 PM:
space commando: Eric, have you read Empire by Orson Scott Card?
I haven't. I'd prefer the hero to be a soldier and a Columbia grad, but still an interesting premise. I'll look out for it.
