Michelle Obama book makes white girls feel ‘ashamed,’ Texas parent says
The parent also claims the biography unfairly depicts former President Trump “as a bully," and wants it banned from school libraries.
A Texas parent wants a children’s biography about former first lady Michelle Obama pulled from school libraries because it could make white girls feel “ashamed.”
The concerned parent said Michelle Obama: Political Icon by Heather E. Schwartz also unfairly depicts former President Donald Trump “as a bully” and should be banned, Insider reports.
The request from the Katy, Texas, parent comes as conservatives seek to prohibit students from reading books that explore race, sexuality or gender. According to NBC News, so far, there are 50 titles that parents in the state have asked schools to remove.
The unnamed parent said Obama’s book gives the impression that “if you sound like a white girl, you should be ashamed of yourself.”
The description of Schwartz’s Obama book on amazon.com reads: “Growing up on Chicago’s South Side, Michelle LaVaughn Robinson loved school and her family. Driven by her parents’ passion for education and her own desire to succeed, she graduated first from Princeton and then Harvard Law School and landed a job at a prestigious law firm, where she met her soon-to-be husband, Barack Obama.”
“It rose to the top of some of the headlines, I think, because it’s sort of outrageous,” Schwartz said of the push to ban the book, as reported by The Daily Gazette. “Because it’s not a controversial topic at all. It’s a nonfiction book about a real person, based on facts.”
“There’s really not much you can object to in a book like this,” she maintained, “and then somebody found something to object to.”
Schwartz noted that the book is “not about President Trump, who figures in very little, and it’s not at all anti-white.”
“It happens to be about a Black public figure who is very influential — she’s probably an inspirational person to Black young people in particular,” she added.
The author said in a statement to Insider that she is “shocked” that the concerned parent believes the book promotes reverse racism.
“The idea is to give readers different examples of successful women that they could see as role models — see themselves in, in some way,” Schwartz said.
“As an author, a reader and a parent, I’m against book banning on principle,” she told Insider. “There couldn’t be a safer way for kids to learn about difficult topics, gain new perspectives and explore the world and their place in it than by reading words on a page.”
However, a spokesperson for the Katy Independent School District told Insider that Obama’s book will not be removed following a district’s review after receiving the parent’s complaint.
“We could have gotten hundreds of requests, and it would have gone through the same process,” said spokesperson Maria Corrales DiPetta.
While some conservative parents and officials in Texas express concern about protecting the feelings of white kids by banning books that explore diverse topics, over in Florida, a new bill that aims to prohibit making white students feel “discomfort” over past racism has advanced.
The bill is part of an ongoing Republican push to eliminate “critical race theory” from K-12 schools and government programs, theGrio reported.
SB 148, also called the Individual Freedom Act, reads, in part: “An individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, does not bear responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex. An individual should not be made to feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race.”
This article contains additional reporting from theGrio’s Biba Adams.
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