First lady Michelle Obama gave a candid speech about racism and her own experience coping with racial discrimination during the commencement ceremony at Tuskegee University in Alabama on Saturday.

During her remarks at the historically black college, Obama talked about facing racism during her stint in the White House, and warned the graduates that they will continue to face bigotry in their own lives because of their race.

"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," she said, reports Vox. "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."

At one point in the speech, she admitted that she was taken aback by the infamous 2008 New Yorker cover that depicted her with a "huge Afro and a machine gun," and made her wonder, "Is that how people see me?"

She went on to describe some of the derogatory remarks she's received from political pundits.

"And over the years, folks have used plenty of interesting words to describe me. One said I exhibited 'a little bit of uppity-ism.' Another noted that I was one of my husband's 'cronies of color.' Cable news once charmingly referred to me as 'Obama's Baby Mama.'"

She also said, "You might remember the on-stage celebratory fist bump between me and my husband after a primary win that was referred to as a 'terrorist fist jab.'"

However, even before Barack Obama was elected as the president in 2008, the first lady said that she was subjected to insensitive media questions on the campaign trail.

"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 angry, or too emasculating? Or was I too soft, too much of a mom, not enough of a career woman?"

At the end, Obama encouraged the graduates to overcome racial obstacles by staying "true to the most real, most sincere, most authentic parts of yourselves."

She also preached a message of taking personal responsibility, saying racism is "not an excuse to just throw up our hands and give up. Not an excuse. They are not an excuse to lose hope. To succumb to feelings of despair and anger only means that in the end, we lose.

Watch clips of Michelle Obama's speech below.