Former First Lady Michelle Obama appeared in Chicago this week to recall the “scarring effects” of “white flight” on her community growing up, according to USA Today — but one pundit says Obama has no room to talk.
Breitbart’s John Nolte slammed the former first lady in an op-ed Thursday for complaining about white people moving out of more diverse neighborhoods just weeks after she and the former president bought an expensive home on the 95% white Massachusetts community known as Martha’s Vineyard.
“You ran from us”
Obama’s comments came during an appearance alongside her husband Tuesday at the Obama Foundation Summit in her hometown of Chicago. The former first lady opened up about a topic she first discussed in her hit 2018 memoir “Becoming,” according to USA Today.
“Upstanding families like ours, who were doing everything we were supposed to do and better — as we moved in, white folks moved out, because they were afraid of what our families represented,” Obama recalled Tuesday. “I always stop there when I talk about this out in the world because I want to remind white folks that y’all were running from us. This family, with all the values you read about: you ran from us. And you’re still running.”
According to Obama, the deterioration of the South Side in the 1970s was obvious — even to her young peers.
“We grew up with friends of all races when we first moved in. We played together. There were no gang fights, there were no territorial battles. And yet one by one, they packed their bags and they left us and they left communities in shambles,” she said. “You know this when you’re young. You know people are running from you.”
Obama’s talk about what she called “white flight” resonated with many on the left. Outlets like CNN and HuffPost lauded Obama for “reprimand[ing] white families for fleeing urban areas of Chicago — during her youth and now.”
But not everyone was convinced the former first lady’s feelings were genuine. Breitbart’s Nolte slammed Obama for herself moving to a neighborhood that he said is “almost as white as an Elizabeth Warren rally.”
“Former first lady Michelle Obama condemned white people for fleeing minority neighborhoods just weeks after she and her husband purchased a $15 million estate in Martha’s Vineyard,” Nolte reported. “Martha’s Vineyard is 95[%] white and just [2%] black.”
And that’s not all, he says. “[T]he Obamas own a second home, an $8 million mansion, in the exclusive D.C. neighborhood of Kalorama, which is 80[%] white and just [4%] black,” he wrote. “Oh, and did I mention the Obamas have a third home, a $5.3 million mansion, in Rancho Mirage, California, which is 89[%] white and just 2.6[%] black[?]”
But Nolte wasn’t the only one to call out Obama for her remarks. Conservative commentator Glenn Beck blasted Obama for attacking “all white people,” according to Salon. He quoted the former first lady’s speech — “I can’t make people not afraid of black people,” she said Tuesday — before he offered a suggestion to her:
You can help by not attacking all white people, by not saying that all white people are bad.
Better yet, she could help by building up the minority communities she’s so apt to praise — instead of buying pricey houses in some of the least diverse parts of the nation. She should put her money where her mouth is.
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