Former first lady Michelle Obama says in her upcoming Netflix documentary Becoming that it was a “slap in the face’’ that black Americans failed to show up to vote in the 2016 presidential election, according to the New York Post.
“It takes some energy to go high, and we were exhausted from it … when you’re the first black anything,’’ Obama said, referring to her and her husband, former President Barack Obama, of their failed efforts to help elect Hillary Clinton. You know, the day I left the White House, it was painful to sit on that stage, and then a lot of our folks didn’t vote — it was almost a slap in the face,” the former first lady added.
“It wasn’t just in this election, but every midterm, every time Barack didn’t get the Congress he needed, that was because our folks didn’t show up,” she said during another point in the film. After all that work, they just couldn’t be bothered to vote at all. That’s my trauma.