On Anne Coulter and Black Womanhood...

Anne Coulter strikes again.

This time she's written an(other) inflammatory book entitled, "Guilty Liberal 'Victims' and their Assault on America," in which she accuses liberals (surprisingly) of playing victims when really they are the ones victimizing America.

Yawn.

Usually this wouldn't be a big deal. I mean, of course she gets on my nerves and yeah can cause my blood rise a degree or two, but I let it roll off my back. I mean, she is afterall Anne Coulter, a name as synonymous with conservative hate as Bill O'Reilly. However, this time she really struck a nerve. Coulter tapped into what's been brewing below the surface of many an American's mind and seeping oh so discreetly (sometimes not) into American media: the attack of Black womanhood.

Coulter's new book includes a section in which she lashes into Michelle Obama, ridiculing her style as an, "obvious imitation of Jackie O's style - the flipped-under hair, the sleeveless A-line dresses, the short strands of fake pearls," that "would have been laughable if done by anyone other than a media-designated saint." Then she takes it a little bit further when she compares Obama to Cindy McCain saying the latter woman, "dresse(s) well without freakishly imitating famous first ladies in history."

My blood is boiling.

Not only is Coulter's assault on Obama's dress absolutely ridiculous and completely irrelevent (who the fuck cares?) but it stinks of gendered racism. Of course Michelle Obama could never be equal to Jackie O... or even Cindy McCain, because of course Michelle Obama is Black. Not just Black, she is a brown sista.

I've been watching this scene unfold for months now. The subtle and not so subtle attacks on Michelle as too hard and angry because she has a mind and mouth of her own and hasn't been trained into quiet submission like some politicians' wives. I've watched the way the media has questioned Barack's ability to lead the country with a fiery wife like Michelle. I've watched the media relegate Michelle Obama, an intelligent, well educated, Black woman, to a familiar take on Black womanhood - the angry Black bitch.

I believe and have believed for some time, that Barack Obama is not what scares some white folks at all. It's his beautiful, intelligent Black wife that frightens them. Michelle Obama represents what white oppression has tried to kill, vilify, subdue and control for centuries - Black womanhood. Black women have always been portrayed as such. You know, not quite woman. Somewhere stuck between raging savage and dignified lady, never quite measuring up to the latter. All attempts by Black woman to to embrace the feminine have been regarded as "freakish" attempts to "mimic" white women. Nothing more than a silly caricature. Black women in America can never truly be feminine - not by societal definitions anyway - because our brown skin, courser hair and of course round rear ends are the total antithesis of all things proper and ladylike, all things woman, in this country.

I've always thought, and still do, that the thing that scared some white folks the most about this brown president, is his Black wife. Putting Michelle Obama in the place of First Lady automatically thrusts Black womanhood into the front and center - a place where it's never before been in this country.

So of course Anne Coulter would attack Michelle's dress. Of course she would. Because by doing so, she's subtly attacking her womanhood and her right to step foot in the White House as more than a cook or maid. She's questioning this Black woman's right to take the place of the many white women before her as the face of the American woman. Essentially, she's questioning any Black woman's right to ever be more than a "freakish" imitation of a white woman.

It's sickening.