DENVER - Michelle Obama is no baby mama.

If that wasn’t obvious to the rest of America months ago when some clueless producer at Fox News aimed that ghetto colloquialism at the would-be First Lady, it was crystal clear this week.

During the first night of this historic gathering here in the Mile High City, Mrs. Obama made a speech to the Democratic National Convention that laid to rest the narrative that is common to many black women and girls who, more often than not, wind up stuck in a cycle of poverty and mediocrity by allowing every man who says they love them to impregnate them.

She obliterated that narrative by praising the men in her life who provided examples of how black men are supposed to treat black women; men who inspired her not to settle for anything less. Men who taught her that men are supposed to nurturers and providers, not just procreators.
 
I just hope that the real baby mamas, and for that matter, the baby daddies, were tuned in and taking notes.

Mrs. Obama talked about her father, Frazier Robinson, a Chicago water plant worker who remained the foundation of his family even as his health was crumbling beneath the weight of multiple sclerosis.

“My dad was our rock, and although he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in his early 30s, he was our provider. He was our champion, our hero,“ she said.

“But as he got sicker, it got harder for him to walk; it took longer for him to get dressed ... he just woke up a little earlier, and he just worked a little harder.”

Mrs. Obama also praised her brother, Craig Robinson, who is the men’s basketball coach at Oregon State University.
 
“At 6 foot 6, I felt that Craig was looking down on me, literally.“ she said. “[But] Craig wasn’t looking down on me. He was looking over me.”

And of course, Mrs. Obama praised her husband, Barack Obama, who is poised to become the first black nominee for the presidency of the United States -- and who she had two daughters with after he married her.

“I come here as a wife, who loves my husband and believes he will be an extraordinary president,“ she said.

But even with all that Obama had going for him, he still had to work to win his future wife over.

“She was very resistant to the idea of some inter-office dating,“ Obama said in the videotape presentation leading up to Mrs. Obama’s speech. The two met when he became a summer associate at a law firm and she was assigned to mentor him.

“I asked her out a couple of times, and she kept pushing me off ... we eventually went to the company picnic, and on the drive back, I offered to buy her ice cream. That is what put her over the top. I know how to treat a woman.”

Now, think about that for awhile.

If Mrs. Obama had low self-esteem, as many so called baby mamas do, she wouldn’t have been skeptical about dating a law student and a looker like Barack. The fact that he had to persuade her to go out with him says she was never on the “baby mama” track.

It also says that Mrs. Obama wasn’t just a smart and confident black woman, but a lucky one.

She was lucky enough to have strong male figures in her life; men who didn’t leave her to scavenge for love and esteem by producing children that she couldn’t care for.

Of course the growth of the baby mama phenomena, or rather, the out-of-wedlock birth epidemic is, like many other issues that dog our community, tied to economics. As joblessness has increased in black communities, alternative realities have evolved.

What has happened is that many black women have no confidence in black men as husbands and providers, so they settle for single motherhood.

And many black men who feel marginalized by a society that devalues them assert themselves by asking women to have their ba bies, and not to wear their ring.

That’s why I’m hoping that the rise of Michelle and Barack Obama will lead to a redefining of black manhood and black womanhood.

I’m hoping that Obama can inspire black men to reject notions of manhood that only create more needy children and destitute women.

And I’m hoping that Mrs. Obama’s story can inspire black women to start saying no to the men who don’t have a problem with that.