The Biggest Insult I've Ever Received: "You're like Michelle Obama..."

The year was 2017,  which means it was pre-2020, pre Covid. Which means it was before most people felt comfortable even admitting that "Black lives matter". Which means it was before companies even performed the empty gesture of leaving a black square on their social media feeds. In that year, a former private school classmate of mine was feeling bold and slid into my DMs for a discussion on racism that I would never forget.

If you don't know me, I am a Black American woman in my mid thirties. I grew up in a home to two Black parents, both college educated aspiring entrepreneurs, who never quite got all the opportunities that they deserved in life by way of one glass ceiling or another. 

Raised on TV like the Cosby show (Bill Cosby is trash but the show at the time embodied "Black excellence", so please stick with me 🙏) and Fresh Prince of Bell Air, I came from an era where the attainability of wide spread Black sustainable generational wealth felt within reach. 

Respectability politics were and are always a problem (that's a discussion for another blog 😂) but for my family, I can say that there was genuine naiveté in thinking that if we all worked hard enough...maybe after my grandparents had to sit on the back of the bus, and maybe after my parents grew up in segregation, and maybe because my parents broke so many seemingly impossible barriers...that me and my siblings would break through even further and not face the pain of previous generations.

My parents were hopeful, but not fools. They placed me and my siblings in a private Christian school where most of my classmates did not look like me, but they also prepared us for the inevitable. Not a single family dinner went by without deliberate discussion around history and what was happening in the world that day.

My dad, a political science major and sales professional by trade, never shied away from honest and raw conversations about how society would lie to us and gaslight us (Yes, I’m sure he used different terminology at the time before gaslight was a TikTok buzzword 😂) and that we had to be prepared to handle ourselves in these environments in a way that kept us professional and safe. If you’ve met my mom, you know she is the sweetest human, but do not mistake that for weakness. She always taught us that people would underestimate us and to always stay one step ahead.

By the year 2017, I had attended a diverse public high school and graduated from a college where I was able to surround myself with a diverse set of friends and I even attended a super diverse church. I still faced racism, but it had been some time since the source was specifically from someone who was more than just a random coworker in the next cubicle over. Yes the random coworkers made me secretly cry in the bathroom from time to time…but hey - I could rationalize that they meant nothing to me, I meant nothing to them, and that they may not have ever met a Black person growing up, so they may just be far gone.

I was in a phase where I still had hope that maybe, for some of the people that grew up alongside me, they could at least feel convicted…through rational conversation and a loving tone…especially if they were outwardly a Christian and supposedly living a lifestyle dedicated to love. I am not a fool, but maybe I just wanted to believe that my former classmates, the ones that grew up with me as one of their few (if not only) Black friends — would at the very least take a step back, if they realized that I completely disagreed with their (often disrespectful) social media posts.

Spoiler alert — I was wrong.

So in 2017, somehow I found myself in the all too common Facebook DM battle with a girl that went to my middle school. I was defending Colin Kaepernick kneeling in protest to police brutality in this country AND general outrage against the brutal murder and lack of justice for 17 year-old Trayvon Martin. You know, general human rights topics that people pretend is complicated or political.

She made the usual arguments.

Argument 1: She said that it was disrespectful to the military to kneel.

To this I asked "What about my Black friends and family who are veterans and would kneel beside him...do they not matter?" They served this country and STILL faced racism. Imagine that.

Argument 2: She said that she didn't see a systemic/societal issue because she herself is someone working in healthcare and just doesn't see color.

I didn’t go down the path of explaining the problem of “not seeing color” and instead noted that no matter what she sees/does personally, she couldn’t speak for everyone.

I was mortified. What did her experiences have to do with anything any way?

I wanted to shout “This isn't even about you!” But I remained calm as my former classmate continued to turn the conversation to a hostile environment.

When she couldn't argue with me about the systemic issues, she started speaking with language directed towards me personally, rather than the Black community or problems in America as a whole. 

She said (and these are direct quotes):

"YOU have nothing to worry about"
"Come on, YOU really think YOUR life is in danger?

If you don't understand the implications here, I'll break it down for you. She thought that because I went to a private school with her, that somehow I wasn't the kind of Black person that needed to worry. I realized what she was doing instantly. My heart sank and I felt physically sick.

It was like she was adding a little classism into the mix, thinking that would help her to make her point. Her goal was to separate me, the individual, from the community. Suddenly the argument became that even if some Black people were in danger, I, Jaslyn Ferguson, wasn't the kind of Black person that would ever be in danger.

That's when she said it. She finally said, "OMG you’re fine, you know...you're like Michelle Obama".

What this girl didn't realize was that even if I looked like I lived a similar life to her on the outside, we had very different circumstances. For example, as we attended the same private school — I witnessed my parent's buying our first home, while this girl's family lived in a literal mansion likely since before she was born. She clearly came from “old money” as the kids say, while my family lived in debt and sacrificed everything to put me in that school, simply so that I would have chances and opportunities that my parents didn't have as Black Americans growing up in the 60's.

Now disclaimer - I know that compared to many people I lived a privileged life in many ways. My parents were successful in their careers and the fact that private school was an option, was huge. But this privallege came with many costs - financially, mentally and spiritually. Every day that I was in that private Christian school, I faced multiple micro and macro aggressions, from unsolicited hair petting to teachers flat out saying that Black people aren't in the Bible - a far stretch from this girl's experience where she was probably oblivious to the very core memories that shaped my adolescence.

Michelle Obama didn't grow up with a silver spoon or a childhood void of discrimination either, as evident in her autobiography. No Black American is safe from violent racism in America. Just because Michelle Obama and I are college educated, perceived as fashionable, and both have notable career accomplishments...we are not exempt from racism.

Both Michelle Obama and I have shared stories publicly about situations where we have faced racism. In fact, if we have anything in common, it is that in spite of the levels of success that we have achieved in our careers, we have still faced discrimination in this country and multiple scenarios that made us feel unsafe.

To this day if my older brother, a Black man in his mid 30s, goes for a walk or bike ride to and from his gated community, if it is dark or raining (Especially if he's wearing a hoodie or anything similar), he'll sometimes call a family member just in case.

In 2019 I had a scary encounter with law enforcement while conducting research for my company Historifi. I had committed no crime, not even a traffic violation yet was pulled over in an old historic Black Town and questioned by a cop who admitted I had done nothing wrong (#Storytime for another day 🙃).

I asked her if she thought that I and other Black Americans were just exaggerating. She didn't try to hide it and she said “pretty much”.

She proceeded to say all sorts of offensive things, often mocking me. Statements like:

"OMG stop, you are a college educated female who isn't going to get shot over some questionable illegal activity".

Is that what she had reduced the crisis of Black lives in America to, just questionable criminals? Even if there weren't innocent crime-free Black and Brown people dying by racism daily, was she okay with excessive force as long as the victims are "questionable"?

At one point she felt comfortable enough to throw in some sarcasm with statements like:

“Oh yea because I forgot slavery still exists in 2017”.

I was not new to these types of conversations so I was careful to navigate the conversation with patience. Nothing I said warranted disrespect of any kind and if anything I gave her more grace than she deserved. Yet she spoke down to me.

The point is:

This is the racism that concerns me the most.

The people who will smile in your face for years and then invalidate your life experiences in a matter of seconds.

The people who are so arrogant and set on being right in their toxic mindsets (passed around in their families and communities), that they will look a Black person in the eyes and tell them that they are exaggerating about racism in this country - All the while, claiming to be an example of Jesus’ love and compassion.