Mrs. Obama Meets Mrs. Windsor

[babylonsister]

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090427/williams?rel=hp_picks

Mrs. Obama Meets Mrs. Windsor
Diary of a Mad Law Professor
By Patricia J. Williams

Reuters Photos

Michelle Obama greets Queen Elizabeth during the G-20 summit.

snip//


And so Michelle Obama represents a more comprehensive identity for all women, but particularly for black women. Even when she's just holding court at the head of the White House dinner table, she is a "black woman" performing a "white lady" role--a picture that still causes cultural confusion and anxiety. But Obama is at no risk of being sidelined as perpetual hostess; hers is a well-rounded life, one of multiple roles and layered humanity. She is powerful yet approachable, highly educated yet colloquial, bare-armed but modest, playful but consummately civilized.

If we do not always appreciate this at home, consider how she reflects upon our collective image abroad--and I do not mean whether her wardrobe competes with Carla Bruni-Sarkozy's. She projects a powerfully modern image to conservative constituencies around the globe, whether in the Muslim world; or in Israel, where ultra-Orthodox newspapers recently airbrushed out all the women from a photo of Netanyahu's new cabinet; or in China, where male children are so fetishized that each year thousands of boys are kidnapped and sold.

Then there's Michelle Obama's physical embrace of the queen of England. It may be hard for Americans to fully understand the symbolic significance of that encounter, to comprehend the extent to which traditional class hierarchies are reinforced throughout the United Kingdom by a thousand little rituals of deference and yearning. Here's an example: for many years, an elderly British friend would send me a very nice plum pudding, always purchased from the high-end London grocer Fortnum & Mason. I didn't realize the entire significance of the gesture until another British friend told me that this was the very gift the queen sent to favored subjects. One year, my Christmas pudding suddenly came from Tesco--the Piggly Wiggly of the United Kingdom. Whatever had I done to fall in my friend's esteem?

It turns out that this was after Princess Diana had been killed. The queen had been roundly criticized for being out of touch with the common people, so the palace tried to reach out to her staff by sending plum pudding from Tesco. My dear friend, a true and loyal subject, had followed suit.

This raises a further question: why did the queen feel the need for such downscaling in the wake of Diana's death? "The princess touched people," friends told me, meaning that she literally used her hands to touch people, hugging AIDS victims and pulling starving Nigerian babies onto her lap. Royals "don't do" that, and Diana was adored for her willingness to break this taboo.

The queen is old school, however. So when Michelle Obama casually put her arm around the royal shoulders, the act risked being the order of misfortune that ensued when George W. Bush massaged Angela Merkel's neck. Instead, the palace quickly issued an uncharacteristically warm pronouncement that no protocol had been breached. What was truly remarkable, however, was that the queen, for the first time in her public career, had reached out her frail, white-gloved, little-old-lady hand, the one heretofore used only for waving, and encircled Michelle Obama's waist. For many throughout the British Commonwealth, particularly in South Asia, the Caribbean and Africa, this was a mime of egalitarianism, an unexpected kabuki theater of respect and mutual regard. Michelle Obama had somehow pulled off a superlatively graceful transgression--a symbolically charged moment of the kind that quietly turns a bit of the old world upside down, yet leaves us smiling at the new world glimpsed beyond.

[BeFree]

1. Get off it, people!!

"...old world upside down, yet leaves us smiling at the new world glimpsed beyond."

This respect of the monarchy is old world bs and to give it any respect is to disrespect the torture and slavery which we as a free people will hopefully never live again.

If you are stuck in the old world with respect for an appointed hierarchy, you need to re-examine your history.

[babylonsister]

2. Wow. Must have been a good article to get you so excited.

I'm thinking this is a different pov than what we see on this side of the pond. Is that wrong to want to know how they view this meeting?

[jesus_of_suburbia]

3. That's why I was so happy that Michelle didn't curtsy to the Queen.

The Queen is no better than Michelle (and vice versa).

[ronnykmarshall]

5. Care for nice cup of tea?

[PBS Poll-435]

8. !

:rofl:

[jkshaw]

4. Thanks for this, Sister

The Diary of a Mad Law Professor is my favorite column in The Nation.

I have never understood the heat in the down-with-monarchy rhetoric. I grew up with the Windsors. The present queen's mother was well-loved during WWII, a morale builder when the island was getting the stuffing bombed out of it, walking through the rubble to talk to the suddenly homeless. Even then, the Windsors held little real power, though, and they hold less now. Queen Elizabeth is no threat to anyone.

But the strong arm of our first lady lying gently across the shoulders of the little queen of England gave me a wonderful sense of comfort, and also pride.

[whistler162]

6. Actually that would be Mrs. Obama meets Mrs. Mountbatten....

Windsor is her family name.

[Seeking Serenity]

7. Elizabeth II is not Mrs. Windsor

She would be Miss Windsor, as Windsor is not the family name of her husband. It's her family's name.

To use her husband's name, she would be Mrs. Mountbatten.

[Number23]

9. I like this snip alot better

"what's frequently missing from the discussion of black women is their role as loving mothers, beloved wives, valued partners, cherished daughters, cousins, relatives. Lord deliver us from the best of our few so-called role models: hard-working, hard-edged disciplinarians, the ultimate iron-willed church ladies. Where, for heaven's sake, is a picture of black femininity (in particular, that of darker-skinned, nontragic femininity) that might signify beauty, chic, elegance, vulnerability, sophistication?"

Someone started a thread here a month or so ago full of warm and loving words about how happy she was that the Obamas are a loving, black couple. Even though the vast majority of posters shared her enthusiasm, there were still a few people who were offended at the OP's joy and pride in "black love." Even went so far as to toss in a couple of pictures of Tiger Woods and his family as a refutation.

But I understood the OP's point immediately, and I immediately understand the author's point above. Just about every single stereotype of black women in this country is negative. We're too "aggressive, domineering, emasculating." We're either "welfare queens" or "overly assertive corporate mavens." Too "manly" and have wayyy too much "attitude." (Although I have to admit that I wear that last stereotype with unabashed pride)

I have always felt that there has never been any real understanding and damn sure no real appreciation of black women in this country. Our beauty is dismissed; our strength maligned; our intelligence and fortitude ignored. The fact that the only black women on the covers of Vogue in the last 5 years have had to be either Oscar winners (Jennifer Hudson) or First Ladies of the United States while the bland and blonde like Kate Hudson, Gwyneth Paltrow or Jennifer Aniston get REPEATED covers and exposure despite struggling careers is infuriating and speaks precisely to the author's point. (And don't even get me started on the lack of Asian representation).

In a fair world, in a truly decent world, the author's point wouldn't even need to be made. And folks wouldn't be so quick to be threatened or intimidated by black people's celebration of our own beauty and culture. Because if we know anything at all, if WE don't do the celebrating, it won't be done at all.

[Cha]

10. It was an awesome gesture on both their parts

that had so much history culminated in that moment.