Former First Lady Michelle Obama came clean Friday in an interview with CBS This Morning‘s Gayle King, saying that she fears her daughters, Sasha and Malia, will be unjustly targeted by the police because of their race.
It’s a claim some critics are finding hard to take seriously.
“Fear in our hearts”
According to Breitbart, Obama declared at one point during her talk with King that many in the Black community “still live in fear as we go to the grocery store, or walking our dogs, or allowing our children to get a license.”
Asked if her daughters were driving yet, Obama confirmed that they were, but said that “every time they get in a car by themselves, I worry about what assumption is being made by somebody who doesn’t know everything about them.”
“The fact that they are good students and polite girls, but maybe they’re playing their music a little loud, maybe somebody sees the back in their head and makes an assumption,” the former first lady said, according to Breitbart.
Obama went on to insist that she, “like so many parents of Black kids,” has to worry, because “the innocent act of getting a license puts fear in our hearts.”
“Taking to the streets”
Interestingly, a 2016 study from Harvard economist Dr. Roland G. Fryer found that when it came to police shootings, there were “no racial differences in either the raw data or when contextual factors are taken into account.”
However, that didn’t stop Obama from telling King that Black Lives Matter-aligned protesters are “taking to the streets because they have to.”
According to Breitbart, Obama insisted that activists are “trying to have people understand that we’re real folks, and the fear that many have of so many of us is irrational, and it’s based on a history that is just — it’s sad, and it’s dark, and it’s time for us to move beyond that.”
Dumb, evil, or both
Brandon Tatum, a police officer turned political commentator, who is also Black, was quick to criticize Obama in a video released shortly after she made her remarks. Tatum was incredulous at the fact that Obama would “include” her family within the community of “Black people that are afraid of what police officers will do to their children.”
“Either she’s dumb, or she’s evil, or both,” Tatum complained. “There is nobody on planet Earth that has a connected brain stem, that’s genuine to any degree, that will lie and say that their children are in fear of being profiled.”
The pundit said the well-connected Obamas have no reason to fear that their children will die at the hands of police, asserting of the former first lady: “If she were a genuine person, she wouldn’t be talking like this.”
The post Critics balk at Michelle Obama’s claim that she fears her daughters will be targeted by police first appeared on Conservative Institute.
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