Date: 2024-12-21 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00017577
Thought Leadership
Barack Obama
Right, Left Cheer Obama Comments Against 'Woke' Shaming
Peter Burgess
Former President Barack Obama speaks during the Obama Foundation Summit at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2019. (Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Chicago Sun-Times via AP)
People on both the right and left are applauding former President Barack Obama after he told young people earlier this week that acting like 'woke' people and participating in 'cancel culture' isn't any way to change society.
Obama's words at the Obama Foundation Summit in Chicago calling out 'judgmental' people who want prominent figures' public access canceled because of what they may have said in the past was praised on Twitter by people ranging from Democratic presidential candidates to conservative pundits, reports The Washington Post.
The former president, in his warning to younger people, told them that 'this idea of purity and you’re never compromised and you’re always politically woke and all that stuff, you should get over that quickly. The world is messy. There are ambiguities. People who do really good stuff have flaws.'
Social media, he warned, allows such 'woke' people to be as 'judgmental as possible.'
'He is right on all counts,' 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang tweeted, and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hi., tweeted 'We all need a little more aloha spirit — being respectful & caring for one another. Not being so quick to judge. Not seeing everything as black/white.'
Conservative pundit Ann Coulter also tweeted a link and said 'Good for Obama,' adding that she was 'Not sarcastic!'
Obama during his Tuesday speech further explained his stance, saying that 'if I tweet or hashtag about how you didn’t do something right or used the wrong verb, then I can sit back and feel pretty good about myself, because man you see how woke I was? I called you out.'
Cancel culture refers to a mass effort to call out prominent people for allegations of wrongdoing and demanding they no longer have access to public platforms.
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