In an impassioned commencement address at Tuskegee University Saturday, Michelle Obama unloaded on the struggles she’s experienced as an African American in a racially biased country. Highlighting the difficulties of being the first ever black first lady, Obama said she understood the struggles of the average African American, offering a laundry list of “daily slights” minorities suffered and citing the hard “realization” that no matter how much a black person does “for some folks it will never be enough.”

Speaking of her treatment in the 2008 presidential, Obama said she was subjected to “another set of questions and speculations” that white presidential candidates’ spouses were not (video above):

As potentially the first African-American first lady, I was also the focus of another set of questions and speculations, conversations sometimes rooted in the fears and misperceptions of others. Was I too loud or too emasculating? Or was I too soft? Too much of a mom and not enough of a career woman?

One particular moment that “knocked her back” was the 2008 New Yorker satirical cover depicting her as a terrorist:

Then there was the first time I was on a magazine cover. It was a cartoon drawing of me with a huge afro and a machine gun. Now, yeah, it was satire, but if I'm really being honest, it knocked me back a bit. It made me wonder "just how are people seeing me?"

Obama told the crowd that they should expect struggles ahead, particularly because they were black (video below):

The road ahead is not going to be easy. It never is, especially for folks like you and me. There will be times, just like for those airman, when you feel like folks look right past you. Where they see just a fraction of who you really are.

Obama said that people would not always at first understand how much they overcame to attain their degrees and their success, saying, “they will make assumptions about who they think you are based on their limited notion of the world.”

The first lady then launched into a list of “daily slights” that she and her husband and other African Americans experience in America on a regular basis, warning students that no matter what they accomplish, "for some folks it will never be enough":

We've both felt the sting of those daily slights throughout our entire lives. The folks who crossed the street in fear of their safety, the clerks who kept a close eye on us in all those department stores. The people at formal events who assumed we were the help. And those who have questioned our intelligence, our honesty, even our love of this country.

And I know that these little indignities are obviously nothing compared to what folks across the country are dealing with every single day. Those nagging worries about whether you're going to get stopped or pulled over for absolutely no reason. The fear that your job application will be overlooked because of the way your name sounds. The agony of sending your children to schools that are no longer separate, but far from equal. The realization that no matter how far you rise in life—how hard you work to be a good person, a good parent, a good citizen—for some folks it will never be enough.

Despite the grim picture of life as an African American in this country, the first lady told the students the many racial obstacles they faced were no excuse to “throw up our hands and give up”:

Graduates, today I want to be very clear that those feelings are not an excuse to just throw up our hands and give up. They are not an excuse to lose hope.

Partial transcript, video via Bloomberg.