Former first lady Michelle Obama claims the Republican Party’s lack of diversity makes Americans distrust the political process.
During an on-stage interview at the Pennsylvania Conference for Women Tuesday, Obama shared why she thinks diversity is so important.
“We should be working actively to mix it up, so we’re getting a real broad range of perspectives on every issue. Shoot, I would see that in Congress,” she stated.
“At the State of the Union address… when you are in the room what you can see is this real dichotomy. It’s a feeling of color almost,” Obama said. “On one side of the room is literally gray and white. Literally, that is the color palette on one side of the room. On the other side of the room, there are yellows and blues and whites and greens. Physically, there’s a difference in color, in the tone, because on one side all men, all white, on the other side some woman, some people of color.”
“I look at that, and I go, no wonder. No wonder we struggle, no wonder people don’t trust politics. We’re not even noticing what these rooms look like,” she added.
According to Obama, the GOP being too white and male means “it’s hard to come up with the right answer [to the problems of minorities] when you haven’t lived it.”
At the same conference, the wife of Barack Obama also criticized President Trump’s message to young Americans as much worse than that of her husband’s.
“Many of the young people today, they only know Barack Obama as their president and what that standard felt like and what kind of messages were being talked about… They grew up only under hope and possibility and options and opportunity and creating more space,” Obama argued. “I think they will feel some of what’s happening now as intrinsically not what they were taught.”
Michelle Obama: ‘All Men, All White’ GOP Makes People Distrust Politics