Michelle Obama's mom had concerns about her daughter marrying a bi-racial man

Luther Vandross was outed as gay after his death.

Peter Slevin’s biography, Michelle Obama: A Life, is due out next month, and among the stories in its pages is one about the misgivings a younger Michelle’s mother had about her marrying a man named Barack Obama.

In an appearance on “Chicago Tonight” back in 2004, Marion Robinson admitted that she was “a little bit” worried because Obama was bi-racial. She went on to say, “That didn’t concern me as much as had he been completely white.”

“I guess that I worry about races mixing because of the difficulty — not for, so much for prejudice or anything,” Robinson continued. “It’s just very hard.”

But Robinson’s concerns were not great enough to oppose the marriage. To the contrary, once she had met and gotten to know the young Obama, in Slevin’s words, “Marian, no pushover, was favorably impressed with Barack.”

Robinson went on to support the First Family as they moved into the White House, often playing the part of the doting grandmother as she watched out for the girls in everything from bedtime at the White House to trips to China.

The biography is scheduled for release on April 7 and will trace the life of the current First Lady from her childhood in Chicago through her education at Princeton and Harvard. The book takes a largely favorable view of her life, describing the forces that would come to shape her worldview.

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