Sophia Surage
RCP Week 8
Blog 2
“Evolution of Mom
Dancing” Within Symbolic Grasp of “Ghetto”
Approximately
one year ago, First Lady Michelle Obama participated in a light-hearted dance
skit along side Jimmy Fallon (dressed in drag) on The Tonight Show. The skit is
a goofy promotion of Mrs. Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign aimed to address child
obesity by encouraging parents and their children to get active together. The
video is titled “Evolution of the mom dance” and consists of Fallon and Obama
doing a run through of all of the “mom” dances including “the sprinkler” “the
shopping cart” “just the hand part of single ladies” etc. Overall the spirit of
the skit is fun and goofy and shows that dancing is fun no matter how funny you
look while doing it.
The
YouTube comments section for the video of the performance is still very active
with what appear to be pretty polarized opinions about Mrs. Obama. While many
comments capture the light hearted tone of the skit and feature comments like
“Go Michelle!” and “Our first Lady is the coolest” others are incredibly racist
and revealing of the painful historical portrayals of black female sexuality
that continue to be levied against black womanhood. The comments also tellingly
reveal the how ghettoization is still connected to blackness within the
American mainstream psyche. Specifically the ways in which the racist comments
attack Michelle Obama’s (and black women in general) sexuality are by
criminalizing her behavior and calling it “ghetto”. Some comments even
specifically accuse Michelle Obama of bringing the ghetto into the white house,
and disgracing the elegant role of first lady.
I
focus on the comments section for this post not because I am a masochist, nor
because I want to provide any more of a platform for the sheer ignorance and
racism that some people chose to express, but to reflect upon how blackness,
gender, ghettoization, and criminology function in our current moment. Several
of the comments express concern that Michelle Obama’s dancing, despite the fact
that the video innocently depicts “the Evolution of Mom dancing”, is somehow
disgracing the high honor of being a classy/dignified first lady. Other
comments have a transphobic and racist undertone in claiming that Michelle
Obama, “Looks like a man” which falls into a long history of
hyper-masculinizing black women and theoretically barring them from definitions
of what constitutions graceful, proper, pure femininity. A few comments refer directly and or
subtly to ghettos. B2-12’s comment about Michelle Obama’s “weave” pokes fun at
black female beauty practices, and taps into stereotypes about hairstyles that
are described as “ghetto” and a reflection of a woman’s presumed lack of social
status and/or classiness.
In “Punishment
& Society Deadly Symbioses: When Ghetto and Prison Meet and Mesh” Loic
Wacquant points to the ideological ties between how ghettos function as
“ethnoracial prisons” and how they function alongside actual prison spaces that
are racialized. Furthermore, Wacquant
illustrates how blackness continues to be criminalized even outside of the
spatialized perameters of inner city ghettos. Wacquant writes: “Today’s black bourgeoisie still lives under
strict segregation and its life chances continue to be curtailed by its
geographic and symbolic contiguity with the African-American (sub)proletariat
(Patillo-McCoy, 1990)” (Wacquant, 104). Nonetheless, it has gained considerable
physical distance from the heart of the ghetto by establishing satellite black
neighborhoods at its periphery inside the city and in the suburbs” (Wacquant,
104). If inner city ghettos have historically been used to concentrate, contain,
and police people of color in order to systematically push them into prisons,
then the idea of “ghetto” continues to be used symbolically to criminalize and
police black behavior, especially when it is perceived to be out of place. Racist
perceptions of Michelle Obama in this skit attack her at the core of her
femininity, through critiques of her hair, and her lack of “elegance”. These
comments accuse Mrs. Obama of failing to perform the role of first lady
properly by being too “ghetto”. A white woman would mostly likely never be
accused of being “ghetto” if she were to step outside of the boundaries of
proper femininity although she may be slut-shamed, or called a “commoner”.
Calling Michelle Obama ghetto is an attack specific to race and class, casting
her as deviant and dangerous because it is presumed that her blackness and
blackness in general belong in spaces other than the white house. Finally, the
fact that a black woman is serving as first lady and the that she is sparking anxieties that her
blackness will somehow track a trail of “ghetto” into America’s “pristine” core
reflects the ways in which ghettos operate as a tool for criminalizing
blackness in and of itself.
Several comments from the Youtube
Page are featured below:
This is really
embarrassing. First Lady Jackie Kennedy wouldn't have been the BUTT of a
joke on TV. MO should act more dignified, instead of like a clown.
That's Obozo's job
She is definitely
not a pretty woman . But this is the best I have ever seen her look. She is
usually very embittered looking and reminds me of a "hands on the
hip" ..."angry Black woman".
She looks like an
ape.
does Saturday Night
Live have to get special permits to do an act with a Bonobo ?
This is an
embarrassment to the elegant role of First Lady..Thomas Wickett1 week ago
(edited) How much more can a president and a
first lady denigrate the office of the presidency? It's no wonder that we're
the joke of not just the free world but of the entire world.
There goes the
neighborhood.. i remember when a presidency had a little bit of .. i don't
know.. class.. regalness.. no wonder other countries laugh at us.. the
presidency has turned.. ghetto.. sigh
jimmys wig looks
just as real as her weave.
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