The article on Michelle Obama's college roommate moving 'cause she was Black pisses me off to no end

[wndycty]

And its not because it happened, its because folks like to make Michelle an issue, they like to pretend that she is some ungrateful uppity Black woman who need to shut her mouth and watch her words. They can all kiss my ENTIRE UNRULY LIGHT SKINNED BLACK ASS!

Race and class are complicated issues in this country and they impact so many other issues in ways most of us can't imagine, yet whenever folks bring up these issues, especially in this election year, they are often simplified or dumbed down so that they can be viewed in a political context.

Hat tip to Pirate Smile for initially posting this. Also, kudos to Brown and Donnelly for coming forward with this story that they could have kept to themselves. This article needs to be read by everyone.

http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/stories/2008/04/12/roommate_0413.html

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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 told them we weren't used to living with black people — Catherine is from the South," Brown said. "They probably thought I was crazy."

Today both Donnelly, an Atlanta attorney, and Brown, a retired schoolteacher living in the North Carolina mountains, look back at that time with regret. Like many Americans, they've built new perceptions of race on top of a foundation cracked by prejudices past — and present. Yet they rarely speak of the subject.

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