(AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)
Everyone in life faces disadvantages of one form or another. Almost all children get called an unpleasant name or two in grade school. Some are oppressed by a drunk, abusive, or absent parent. Others may be trapped in horrific schools or extreme poverty. Still others are simply not gifted with high IQs or the ambition to work hard and succeed. The list of reasons why most people don’t go to Ivy League schools and then on to lucrative careers is long, and “oppression” comes in many forms.
If you are the first black White House family, oppression takes the shape of having only two exclusive island waterfront mansions in which to spend your days. Sometimes, you simply must jet to the Greek isles to vacation with your Hollywood besties at their Aegean private island manse. People covered the former first family’s sad exile these past few weeks:
Barack Obama and Tom Hanks can’t turn down a holiday in the sun together.
The 44th president, 61, as well as former first lady Michelle Obama, 59, and their daughters, Sasha, 22, and Malia, 24, met up with some famous friends for lunch on the Greek Island of Sifnos, as captured in photos obtained by theDaily Mail.
The family were spotted dining seaside with Tom Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson while both parties enjoyed a summer outing on the Aegean Sea.
[…]
The group were reportedly shuttled to the picturesque restaurant from a yacht docked nearby, according to the Mail. And it’s not the first time the famous friends have met up aboard a luxury ship.
Barack, Michelle and Hanks previously enjoyed a vacation outing aboard billionaire music mogul Dave Geffen’s personal yacht in French Polynesia in April 2017. At that glamorous meetup, they were also joined by Oprah and Bruce Springsteen.
Geffen’s 450-foot vessel, The Rising Sun, was the 11th largest yacht in the world at the time and valued at an estimated $300 million.
----
TWEET
Sewuese Bem @SewuBem
Longtime friends?
Michelle starts off strong by enunciating one of the many evils inherent to the practice of affirmative action:
Back in college, I was one of the few Black students on my campus, and I was proud of getting into such a respected school. I knew I’d worked hard for it. But still, I sometimes wondered if people thought I got there because of affirmative action. It was a shadow that students like me couldn’t shake, whether those doubts came from the outside or inside our own minds.
That right there is reason enough to outlaw the pernicious practice. It’s now impossible to see a black woman in a prominent position without suspecting that she does not merit it. This is destructive to her authority as well as her own self-confidence. And it harms the people affected by her decisions if, in fact, she is not the best person for the job.
Does Michelle imagine that her family would ever have seen the inside of the White House if they were white? That a first-term senator — with zero executive experience and enough serious ties to known communists and domestic terrorists to make him unlikely to get basic security clearance — was an attractive candidate otherwise?
(As an aside, if I ever need a serious operation, I will choose an Asian or white male doctor because I know he must be an absolute wizard if he was able to get into medical school.)
Mrs. Obama goes on to decry the advantage kids with rich parents have, to which we utter a collective, “No sh*t, Sherlock.” By the way, how did Sasha and Malia enjoy their one-percenter vacation, Michelle?
“Today is a reminder that we’ve got to do the work not just to enact policies that reflect our values of equity and fairness, but to truly make those values real in all of our schools, workplaces, and neighborhoods,” intones the island girl. Perhaps she should blaze an equity trail by selling one of the high-end properties in her family’s portfolio and sponsoring some promising scholars whose skin color she judges worthy.
