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• Tuesday, November 18, 2008 09:48 AM

  If Only if Were this Simple

  "Many comparisons have already been made between Michelle and Jackie Kennedy. While I appreciate the spirit, I beg to differ. To put it bluntly, Jackie had no back."

  But Jackie was an American. But Jackie was a style icon. But Jackie was educated, a breath of fresh air in the White House, strong and poised in the face of adversity...

  Michelle can't be Jackie because she has back? There are so many reasons to compare them and just one for you to reject such comparisons. You are siting the same difference that has been used to separate Jackie's and Michelle's throughout history. I have patience for ideas like this, but its running thin.

  Allow me to congratulate you, and myself, for finally having a first lady who looks like us and for living in a United States that has accepted her as beautiful. That, however, is all that I get out of your article; Michelle looks like you, and other people like it, so you are happy. That is painfully inadequate in describing what she is and what she will be to all Americans. Remember, after all, that that is who the Obama's are attempting to represent... all of us.

  I am glad that Michelle thrills you as a black woman but she is a multiplicity and should thrill you on several more levels. For me, Michelle does not just share my skin color. If that were all we shared she would not strike me as that special, in fact, she wouldn't strike anyone as special and her booty wouldn't even be worth talking about. For me Michelle is a fellow Ivy Leaguer and public servant, a woman of power and intelligence, for others she shares the bond of motherhood. I look like her, but why can't she share things with others that do not? Why are you objectifying her again? Why can't you just let her be a woman, no, a person?

  Perhaps it is because you recognize that our society is still checking out her booty and labeling it as "other". Perhaps it is because her hair is still "white" to some people. Lucky for us, however, we, and you especially as a columnist, have the power to change language and discourse and thus change ideas. In fact, we, and you especially, have the responsibility to do so. Changing the way we talk about race goes a long way in changing the way we think about it. I believe with my whole heart that it is time to start a new discussion about who we are; Not "we" black people but "we" Americans. With all due respect, I don't think you, Reverend Wright or Jesse Jackson are helping much.

  You are still talking about booty like its something exotic to Americans when in reality it is as American as apple pie and certainly as American as Rock 'n' Roll. White kids can rap along to Lil' Wayne, but it is an affront to blackness to straiten your hair? It seems that we are happy with the "exotic" heading into the "normal" but not vice versa. If Barack Obama has taught us anything it should be that all that is American mixing together into one is what is normal in this nation. Embrace it! It is, after all, a new day so let us reflect that in our discussions about everything, even booty.

  —lopez.linette Read lopez.linette's other letters
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