CNN: A different Obama speaks up on race

By Nia-Malika Henderson, Senior Political Reporter, May 11, 2015, CNN

Washington - (CNN)Democrats looking for a leader on racial issues are suddenly finding one: Michelle Obama.

The first lady is grabbing the attention of the political world after a commencement speech this weekend in which she spoke in strikingly personal tones about her experience of being viewed -- and judged -- through racial prisms.

In a 30-minute commencement address delivered at Tuskegee University, a historically black school in Alabama, Obama talked about the "nagging worries that you're going to get stopped or pulled over for absolutely no reason" along with "the fear that your job application will be overlooked because of the way your name sounds."

"As potentially the first African-American first lady, I was also the focus of another set of questions and speculations -- conversations sometimes rooted in the fears and misperceptions of others. Was I too loud, or too angry, or too emasculating? Or was I too soft, too much of a mom, not enough of a career woman?" she said. "Then there was the first time I was on a magazine cover -- it was a cartoon drawing of me with a huge Afro and machine gun. Now, yeah, it was satire, but if I'm really being honest, it knocked me back a bit. It made me wonder, just how are people seeing me."

WATCH THE FULL SPEECH

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