Former U.S President Barack Obama believes that his daughters’ generation have “a pretty good sense” of how to manage the process of holding people and companies responsible.
Speaking in a CNN sit-down with Anderson Cooper, explained more about what he labels “cancel culture” with situations that sees “folks going overboard” as he applauded his daughters’ generation for tackling these key issues.
“What you and I might have tolerated as ‘Yeah, that’s sort of how things are,’ their attitude is, ‘Why? Let’s change it,’” Obama said as quoted by Complex.
“And that’s among not just my daughters but it’s among their white friends. There’s this sense of, well, of course it’s not acceptable for a criminal justice system to be tainted by racism. Of course you can’t discriminate against somebody because of their sexual orientation, right? Things they take for granted that I want them to take for granted.”
Obama also talks about what he thinks is the most “interesting” about this generation.
“They’re also starting to be very strategic about how to engage the system and change it,” he stated.
“They’re not just interested in making noise, they’re interested in what works. And, at least in conversations with my daughter, I think that a lot of the dangers of cancel culture and we’re just gonna be condemning people all the time, at least among my daughters, they’ll acknowledge that sometimes among their peer group or college campuses you’ll see folks going overboard.
“But they have a pretty good sense of, ‘Look, we don’t expect everybody to be perfect. We don’t expect everybody to be politically correct all the time. But we are going to call out institutions or individuals if they are being cruel, if they’re discriminating against people. We do want to raise awareness.’”