President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama say that their time in the White House hasn’t insulated them from racial prejudice.
“I think people forget that we’ve lived in the White House for six years,” the first lady said in an interview with People Magazine.
“I tell this story – I mean, even as the first lady – during that wonderfully publicized trip I took to Target, not highly disguised, the only person who came up to me in the store was a woman who asked me to help her take something off a shelf,” she added. “Because she didn’t see me as the first lady, she saw me as someone who could help her. Those kinds of things happen in life. So it isn’t anything new.”
The discussion on racial issues comes amid a broader national debate on such topics in the wake of police officers in Ferguson, Mo., and New York City avoiding criminal charges for killing black men.
“There’s no black male my age, who’s a professional, who hasn’t come out of a restaurant and is waiting for their car and somebody didn’t hand them their car keys,” the president told the magazine.
“He was wearing a tuxedo at a black-tie dinner, and somebody asked him to get coffee,” the first lady explained of another incident.
Still, the president cautioned that their experiences should be put in context.
“The small irritations or indignities that we experience are nothing compared to what a previous generation experienced,” he said. “It’s one thing for me to be mistaken for a waiter at a gala. It’s another thing for my son to be mistaken for a robber and to be handcuffed, or worse, if he happens to be walking down the street and is dressed the way teenagers dress.”
