Moore: Michelle Obama sprinkled a little South Side magic

When Barack Obama shouted out to the First Lady during his final speech as president in Chicago last week, most of my friends said they lost it emotionally and wiped away tears. Especially when he said her full name.

“We all know a South Side girl like Michelle LaVaughn Robinson, girl of the South Side,” Obama bellowed. FLOTUS mouthed back “South Side,” in the way that we South Siders do, full of pride, full of love. A little cocky.

“You took on a role you didn’t ask for and made it your own with grace and grit and style and good humor,” Obama said. “You made the White House a place that belongs to everybody. And a new generation sets its sights higher because it has you as a role model. You’ve made me proud. You’ve made the country proud.”

This South Side girl has long felt a South Side kinship with Michelle Obama. Her path is all too familiar and relatable. She grew up in South Shore, attended public schools and perfected code switching, maneuvering between black and white worlds with aplomb. Part of the distinction of being a South Side girl is being comfortable in all sorts of milieus — from the cliched “streets to the suites.”

Yet FLOTUS had to defend the South Side while in office. She couldn’t escape the “inner city” stereotype.

In 2015, Michelle Obama spoke to the graduating class of King College Prep in the Kenwood neighborhood. Her message was a truth known to South Siders: “So too often, we hear a skewed story about our communities — a narrative that says that a stable, hardworking family in a neighborhood like Woodlawn or Chatham or Bronzeville is somehow remarkable; that a young person who graduates from high school and goes to college is a beat-the-odds kind of hero.

“Look, I can’t tell you how many times people have met my mother and asked her, ‘Well, how on Earth did you ever raise kids like Michelle and Craig in a place like South Shore?’ And my mom looks at these folks like they’re crazy, and she says, ‘Michelle and Craig are nothing special. There are millions of Craigs and Michelles out there.’… And I’m here tonight because I want people across this country to know that story — the real story of the South Side.”

That speech is my favorite FLOTUS moment. But there are so many to smile upon. She opened the White House and referred to it as the People’s House. She championed the arts, healthy eating and advocated for military families. She was a cool mom who could dance and didn’t appear to ever embarrass daughters Sasha and Malia. And of course her sense of fashion, from J. Crew to Tracy Reese, inspired cardigan wearing, sheath dresses and glamorous state dinner gowns.

The mirror image I and other African-American women and girls see in her is always shared. Some white women have criticized her for not being graceful enough as First Lady. Some white racists — men and women — have actually described her as a man or an ape in heels.

I always thought Obama deliberately tried to make her image palatable to the mainstream. She stayed away from political policy and said being mom-in-chief was her number one priority. Nothing wrong with her agenda; I’m not critiquing. But if not all of America was ready for the first black president, that means some weren’t ready for a black woman in pearls leading the East Wing.

During a speech at Tuskegee University in 2015, Obama revealed how the negativity impacted her. “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? 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,” she said. “And over the years, folks have used plenty of interesting words to describe me. One said I exhibited ‘a little bit of uppity-ism.’”

Uppity — a term used by white folk when black folk don’t know their place. Nothing wrong with being uppity. I’ve learned to embrace uppitism.

Recently, some of my WBEZ colleagues and I recorded roundtable discussions at Whitney Young Magnet High School, Obama’s alma mater. We talked to black female students and alum about FLOTUS’ impact. What she meant for black womanhood, motherhood and sexuality when stereotypes about black women infiltrate mass media. Affronts against her felt personal. We agreed Michelle Obama made us all proud. We smile knowing she sprinkled Black Girl Magic on the White House.

Sun-Times columnist Natalie Y. Moore is a reporter for WBEZ and author of “The South Side: A Portrait of Chicago and American Segregation.”

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