We were all young once. We had such brilliant thoughts, with no fetters to stop us from expressing ourselves. So it’s nice when a presidential election brings back all those things you didn’t think anyone would remember, like your senior thesis. Here are excerpts from Michelle (nee Robinson) Obama’s Princeton University senior thesis, where she majored in sociology and minored in African American Studies. The thesis is entitled “Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community.”
- “Predominately white universities like Princeton are socially and academically designed to cater to the needs of the white students comprising the bulk of their enrollments.
- “As I enter my final year at Princeton, I find myself striving for many of the same goals as my White classmates — acceptance to a prestigious graduate school or a high-paying position in a successful corporation.”
- “My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my ‘Blackness’ than ever before.”
- “[My Princeton experiences] “will likely lead to my further integration and/or assimilation into a White cultural and social structure that will only allow me to remain on the periphery of society; never becoming a full participant.”
- “I have found that at Princeton, no matter how liberal and open-minded some of my white professors and classmates try to be toward me, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as if I really don’t belong. Regardless of the circumstances under which I interact with whites at Princeton, it often seems as if, to them, I will always be black first and a student second.”
- “Earlier in my college career, there was no doubt in my mind that as a member of the Black community I was somehow obligated to this community and would utilize all of my present and future resources to benefit this community first and foremost.”
- “In defining the concept of identification or the ability to identify with the black community … I based my definition on the premise that there is a distinctive black culture very different from white culture.
I am just a little puzzled by how one is able to write a senior thesis all about oneself, but I like it. It’s intimate, out there, self-indulgent, self-gratifying. And clearly, as is appropriate for senior theses, it was the culmination of her intellectual experience at Princeton.
Tags: African American, Culture, Humor, Life, Michelle Obama, Politics, Princeton, Sociology
April 16, 2008 at 2:12 pm
I am a college professor and while I understand that young people always take themselves quite seriously, I don’t think I would ever allow someone writing a senior thesis under my supervision to write about personal issues. Me, myself and I. Surely she could have moved beyond her milieu just a little to write about something important.
April 16, 2008 at 2:41 pm
Wow. I understand wanting to devote oneself to one’s own community, and a lot of what she says isn’t that remarkable, but it’s amazing how little she seems to have changed from those Princeton days. She is a very privileged person to have attended Princeton and Harvard Law. I would think that gratitude was not inappropriate. I am grateful for every educational opportunity I have had. I didn’t have it handed to me, and I don’t gripe about my student loans as she did recently, because it was worth every dime. It is more important to me than owning a big house or any other earthly comfort.
April 17, 2008 at 7:46 am
Maybe if there had been more black people at her university, she would not have felt so different.
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And it is true that many people cannot take an interest in something other than themselves. It is that way in most small blogs. I thought it was also essentially American, this self-analysis which, in a blog gets distorted by literary dramatization and becomes destructive.
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Some university teachers have so many students that they cannot read the papers that they are supposed to supervise.
February 4, 2009 at 12:43 am
I admire here bec.she find a way to express her feeling and that is thru her thesis.she just wanted to voice out what she feel and probably that is the only way.Hey guys thanks to her thesis because without this, there is no topic to discuss right now probably its meant to be happen because she will be a future first lady.she is just an instrument,but i guess this is the voice of all black american…! for me that is awesome!