Last week, Michelle Obama, the politician, issued a formal position statement on Twitter regarding the Supreme Court decision to eliminate affirmative action in higher education. In doing so, Michelle not only revealed her political ambition, which I believe includes the Democratic nomination for president in 2024, but also the likelihood that she herself was an affirmative action student at Princeton University in 1981.

In my film and book of the same name, Michelle Obama 2024: Her Real Life Story and Plan for Power, I do a deep dive into Michelle’s Princeton University experience. What I discovered is an obvious beneficiary of racial preferences who feels obliged to deny her privilege and to denounce the very system that bestowed those privileges as racist.

In the years prior to applying to Princeton University, Michelle and her brother Craig avoided the all-Black South Shore High School only a one block walk from their home. The Robinson family wanted their children to study with Whites. This was no surprise given that Michelle had been beaten up by the neighborhood kids for “acting White” and “talking White” during her childhood.  Michelle writes in her memoir, Becoming, about getting into a fist fight with a girl who repeatedly called Michelle an “oreo” – a major insult meaning you are Black on the outside but really White on the inside. Michelle had no desire to study with “those people” for high school.