Michelle, Meritocracy and Me

Once I arrived on campus, I expected to feel equal to my white peers: Like them, I had gained a spot in the class by virtue of my smarts and my potential. But I kept noticing small differences between me and the white students that were hard to ignore: clusters of freshmen who were already friends because they had spent years together at prep schools I had never heard of; questions about my hair, motivated by utter bafflement about the fact that I didn't wash it every day; complete, galling ignorance about Haiti.

I chalked much of this up to youthful cluelessness (which I was hardly immune from), but I still wondered. Were these sorts of moments, experienced over and over, the reason the African American students felt the need to commandeer a long table in the dining room to break bread and crack jokes that we'd all instantly understand? I spent a fair amount of time at the Black Table (which often included Latinos, too) and truly enjoyed my times there. But at countless other meals, I sat with other students, all the while secretly wondering whether I was being branded a traitor for choosing not to sit with my own people. I didn't need anyone else questioning me -- I had ingrained the stereotypes into my own psyche.

Michelle Obama seems to have struggled with similar questions during her four years at Princeton. I felt some twinges of youthful recognition as I read her (by now thoroughly scrutinized) 1985 senior thesis, "Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community."

"My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my 'Blackness' than ever before," she wrote. "Regardless of the circumstances underwhich [sic] I interact with Whites at Princeton, it often seems as if, to them, I will always be Black first and a student second."

I understand the sentiment, and I felt it again when I looked at that New Yorker cover. Even today, it's all too easy to see Michelle Obama as black first, and a lawyer, a married mother of two and a possible first lady second. That New York Times/CBS poll noted that she was "viewed favorably by 58 percent of black voters, compared with 24 percent of white voters." Merit is one thing. Color is another.

My own notions of being seen as equal to my white peers came crashing down quickly; in my first semester, I found myself struggling in a psychology class and pulling a D average by midterm. Facing self-doubt, I reminded myself that I was getting the same education as my white classmates. I turned my personal motto -- "See, I can be here too" -- into a reminder not to give up on myself.

Barack Obama's quest for the presidency is a classic "See, I can be here too" moment. The only problem with that thinking is that it presupposes, on some level, that you're not really supposed to be there -- that at any moment, you will be revealed as the interloper you truly are, then kicked out with your expired visitor's pass. That's what the New Yorker cover signaled to me and, I suspect, to plenty of other blacks who've followed the Ivied trail upward: the moment when acceptance of the Obamas, based on their accomplishments, was revoked.

But this historic campaign allows no time for bitterness or regret over past choices. Next month, I'll return to Princeton. This time I'll be addressing minority high school students taking a summer journalism course. As they look around campus, trying to imagine whether they could ever be accepted at such a place, perhaps they'll see me, hear my remarks and say to themselves, "See, I can be here too."

labbet@washpost.com

Theola Labbé-DeBose is a Post Metro reporter.