If you think the fact that Michelle Obama is the First Lady of the United States excludes her from the trials and tribulations of the typical black American, think again.
Last night at the Republican National Convention, Mrs. Melania Trump gave a speech that sounded eerily similar to Mrs. Michelle Obama’s speech at the 2012 Democratic National Convention.
And I mean, eerily similar.
With an amount of plagiarism that would get a college student expelled, Melania Trump stood up at the podium in front of an audience of people and gave a speech that wasn’t hers with an astounding amount of confidence and conviction in her unwavering voice. She looked around the room with no remorse as she made points that weren’t hers, points she most likely doesn’t believe in or resonate with. She smiled at all the right moments as people clapped and cheered after every sentence she said, basking in the glory of a speech she didn’t write.
When I heard that Melania Trump had done this, I thought that people must have been exaggerating, that no one would blatantly steal from the First Lady and believe they would get away with it.
As the side by side comparison video made it’s way onto my Twitter timeline, I found myself dumbfounded. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. But after that initial bout of shock wore off, it was replaced with a sense of familiarity.
Whether you want to admit it or not, this happens way too often. We find a white people taking something from a black people and using it without credit all the time. A prime example of this is the term “on fleek”, which seemed to appear out of nowhere a few years ago. The phrase has now found itself ingrained in most people’s everyday vernacular, but most people don’t know where the term truly came from. Kylie Jenner seems to be credited for it the most, when in reality, a young girl from Chicago created the term that has now been used in media constantly, receiving almost no recognition for being it’s creator. And there are plenty more examples of this kind of disrespect, there are so many of people of color who have constantly found their work being taken and exploited, whether it be something as simple as a silly phrase or something as big as a political speech.
However, though Michelle Obama isn’t excluded from the trials of the typical black American, she is…well…Michelle Obama, which means of course this plagiarism didn’t go unnoticed or ignored.
Once the video of the speech hit the internet, it was an immediate topic of conversation amongst everyone. Everyone was wondering how she could think she would easily get away with stealing a whole speech, especially in the day and age of the internet where a quick google search would bring us back to the original. Celebrities such as Chrissy Teigan, Karrueche Tran and Jesse Williams all spoke up about the matter, offended that she would do such a thing. The situation even spawned a trending Twitter hashtag full of fake Melania Trump quotes.
The truth is, whether Melania wrote this speech or it was given to her by one of Trump’s brilliant campaign workers, it’s interesting to finally see this dynamic of black work being stolen on as large a scale as this one, and how it would play out if every black person had a platform as large as Mrs. Obama does.
Luckily, Michelle Obama’s name allowed this bout of plagiarism to be brought to the attention of news outlets everywhere. Some black people aren’t that lucky. Some black people have their work stolen and aren’t ever compensated or even recognized for it.
So even though it’s been said plenty of times before, it seems to have fallen upon deaf ears so I’ll say it once again: stop stealing from black people.
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