III: Foundation-Funded Racism: Jeremiah Wright and Michelle 117Churcher, “Mrs O.: The truth about Michelle Obama’s ‘working class’ credentials, London
Daily Mail, February 23, 2008)
So Michelle was from a very comfortable family, after all. In fact, some of Michelle’s early
advantages came from her father’s status as a ward heeler for the Chicago Democratic machine,
long associated with the Daley family:
“Michelle was from a middle-class family,” confirmed one of her long-time friends, Angela
Acree. “She came from a regular family. They had a nice home. It wasn’t a mansion, but it was
just fine. It was a decent neighbourhood.”
The Robinsons grew up on the upper floor of a house built in the Twenties. Number 7436 South
Euclid Avenue - a classical reference to the Greek mathematician which found an appropriate
echo in Michelle’s subsequent respect for traditional learning - even has a small garden, shaded
by a large elm tree, and an ornate stone bench.
The South Side of Chicago has long had its share of gang-infested housing ‘projects’ but with
the University of Chicago hospital close by, there were plenty of white professionals in the area
as well as hard-working families in the Robinsons’ own image.
No one could pretend they were rich and it is true that her father, Frasier Robinson, spent some
time as a maintenance worker for Chicago’s Department of Water Management.
However, he was a good deal more than the labourer that many seem to imagine.
Indeed, according to family friends, Michelle’s father was a volunteer organiser for the city’s
Democratic Party, a by-word for machine politics in America, and his loyalty was rewarded
with a well-paid engineering job at Chicago’s water plant. Even before overtime, he earned
$42,686 – 25 per cent more than High School teachers at the time.
Michelle’s mother stayed at home and devoted her energies to her and her older brother Craig.
Marian Robinson nurtured great ambitions for both her children, along with the traditional
values which are now serving Michelle so well.
Television was all but banned in favour of homework, debates about the issues of the day and
improving games of chess.
Bright and determined, Michelle was awarded a place at one of Chicago’s first ‘magnet’
schools, which offered special programmes for gifted children. By the time she was 13, she was
taking a college-level biology course.
Even as a child, she was not to be underestimated, says Craig, now 45, who works as the head
basketball coach at high-flying Brown University. There was no doubt who was in charge.
“We had this game where we set up two rooms and played ‘Office’,” he recalled. “She was the
secretary, and I was the boss. But she did everything. It was her game, and I kind of had nothing
to do. My sister is a poor sport. She didn’t like to lose.”
She rarely did. Michelle beat huge competition to win a place studying sociology at Princeton,
one of America’s most venerable and expensive universities.
Once she had arrived amid the fauxgothic precincts, however, she found herself surrounded by
spoilt white students from wealthy families. She, in contrast, was obliged to take out loans to
pay her way and this rankled, as she revealed in a 1985 thesis. (Sharon Churcher, “Mrs O.: The
truth about Michelle Obama’s ‘working class’ credentials, London Daily Mail, February 23,
2008)