Over the weekend, Michelle Obama sat down with Tracee Ellis Ross for the United State of Women Summit and discussed everything from the men who are currently failing up in government to finally putting to rest the rumor that she’s running for office.
The forever first lady responded to an audience question as to why she doesn’t have any plans to run for office, and she succinctly explained why.
“Well, that’s a whole other story because that’s not the answer, either. And when I hear people say, ‘You run,’ it’s part of the problem. We still didn’t get ‘Yes, we can’ right,” she said. “It’s not ‘Yes, you can,’ it’s ‘Yes, we can.’ And until we get that right, it doesn’t matter who runs.”
Michelle Obama went on to say that trying to find a unifying president is a distraction, and that not one person is going to be able to save us.
“Change starts close to home. So looking for the next person to run … I don’t mean to cut that off, but that’s been our distraction,” she said. “‘We’re going to wait for the next person to save us.’ We thought it was going to be Barack Obama, but he didn’t end racism.”
Of course, the summit’s focus was on women and girls, and Obama definitely had some thoughtful words about how both can be empowered, especially when it comes to our current administration:
In light of this last election, I’m concerned about us as women and how we think. What is going on in our heads where we let that happen, you know? When the most qualified person running was a woman, and look what we did instead, I mean, that says something about where we are. That’s what we have to explore, because if we as women are still suspicious of one another, if we still have this crazy, crazy bar for each other that we don’t have for men … if we’re not comfortable with the notion that a woman could be our president compared to … what, then we have to have those conversations with ourselves as women.
You can watch the full conversation above.