The first couple’s recent trip around the commencement circuit included remarks at historically black colleges and universities slapping black youth for “fantasizing about being a baller or a rapper,” in Michelle’s words, rather than pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. “This fixation, this insistence, on blaming black youth for problems that they didn’t create is completely unacceptable,” Nation writer Aura Bogado says. “What I would have liked to have heard” from the president, “if he feels intimate with this black audience, is an ask for these graduates to fight systemic racism.” Bogado joins a panel on HuffPost Live to parse the Obamas’ words.

—James Cersonsky

Mondays in Raleigh are not the same this spring. Read Phoebe Zerwick’s report.