Legal Commentary

Michelle Obama Event: Seating Re-Arranged to Showcase Whites

By Jeralyn

Via The Tartan, the student newspaper for Carnegie Mellon on a Michelle Obama campaign rally in PA:

While the crowd was indeed diverse, some students at the event questioned the practices of Mrs. Obama’s event coordinators, who handpicked the crowd sitting behind Mrs. Obama. The Tartan’s correspondents observed one event coordinator say to another, “Get me more white people, we need more white people.” To an Asian girl sitting in the back row, one coordinator said, “We’re moving you, sorry. It’s going to look so pretty, though.”

“I didn’t know they would say, ‘We need a white person here,’ ” said attendee and senior psychology major Shayna Watson, who sat in the crowd behind Mrs. Obama. “I understood they would want a show of diversity, but to pick up people and to reseat them, I didn’t know it would be so outright.”

The politics of theater. Can you imagine if a similar request for African-Americans was made by the Clinton campaign? It would lead the evening news. [Hat tip Instapundit.]

Full post as published by TalkLeft on April 08, 2008 (boomark / email).