bullies

In Becoming, bullies are the foil for Michelle Obama’s governing principle of dignity over dominance — “when they go low, we go high.” She writes that since childhood she “believed it was important to speak out against bullies while also not stooping to their level,” and frames “dominance, even the threat of it” as “a form of dehumanization… the ugliest kind of power.” The answer to a bully, in her telling, is not to mirror their tactics but to “insist that words matter” and to appeal to dignity — “the core thing that had sustained my family, going back generations.” The concept ties directly to the book’s recurring contrast between dehumanizing power and the harder, chosen path of dignity.

Where this appears

• Becoming — bullies as the foil for “when they go low, we go high”; the answer is dignity and insisting that words matter, not stooping to the bully’s level.