Barack Obama takes on 'woke' call-out culture: 'That's not activism'
Guardian NewsCited 14× on HN, 2020–2025
news · general · 2020–2025 on HN
A Guardian clip of Barack Obama at the Obama Foundation summit saying that call-out culture is not activism and that casting stones will not bring change.
Cited repeatedly in threads on wokeness, cancel culture and outrage as an authoritative voice from the left criticizing call-outs.
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12 comments from Hacker News
Even Obama is not a fan of "woke" culture and calls it out for the hollow vapid gotcha politics that it is: ▶ this video
You are dismissing the issue by implying it is a right wing thing. Obama is using the term and criticising people who do it in this clip. I in no way consider him to be right wing. ▶ this video
You obviously didn't read the article. He calls out how virtue signallers quickly change what the rules are around which word are OK. Here is someone who you may or may not consider to be a far right bad actor explaining what woke is: ▶ this video
They show a general bias toward democrats in the article. However, if you look at 2011 and earlier, it does seem balanced. Only since 2011 is there a problem. This aligns with the democrat shift in political polarization. link >But what if the problem is that Republican voters are the type of people that don’t talk to pollsters? And the few Republicans that do talk to them are unrepresentative of the party itself? If this were the case, then there would be no clear fix I think it's less this problem, a few paragraphs later they self-refute this point. Polling was relatively reliable before 2009. It's something new, and it's obvious what it is. Republicans vote in their secret ballot differently than they admit to pollsters. Why can they not publicly admit their opinion anymore? ▶ this video Obama is smart. What I believe happened is social sciences fell on its face. It's unclear to me if STEM excluding social sciences left the field with lesser talent or if the revelations that caused social sciences to collapse bore out STEM. Ultimately this is what spawned jordan peterson. In most cases what he says is just what the social sciences say. The problem is what he says is a tough medicine to take. The democrats would rather stop him from speaking than confront what social sciences say.
▶ this video Obama is a very smart dude. 2 years ago he saw it building and he misidentified this as activism. John Mcwhorter I believe better identified this as a religion: link As an atheist you see the same pattern often. Here's a hour long video of sam harris and john talking about it: link This new religion has the christians, muslims, atheists, and others all worked up. It's unusual for a new global religion to form, nothing there to really prevent it. The big difference this time is they got really big while remaining undercover. I guess my prediction as well. You could become a preacher for this new religion, set for life to serve. Just need to figure out how to. If you do try this, make sure you are following the golden rule every day. Make sure you're 100% positivity. Try to merge religions, I'm pretty sure 'coexist' is a big part of this.
It is incomprehensible for me to understand why people call this "principled". It is bullying in the words of President Obama - "That's not activism" [1]. If Neil wants to go and debate, he should show up on JRE and put his points forth. [1] ▶ this video
This culture, whatever it is, has had a personal impact on me. Many great people that I truly and deeply admired growing up, the reason why I am the person that I am today is because of historical figures. People need to learn how to forgive, look for the best in people and let go of decades old misgivings of a person. They changed the world. They inspired a whole generation. Anything that they did in their personal lives pales in comparison. If you want to go with this route, literally every person's great great grandfather was sexist in 1920s by today's standards. People need to understand the era, the context under which they operated. I am pretty sure my thoughts today are going to be outdated after 50 years. This is a dangerous slippery slope of wokeness that needs to be strongly codemned IMO. It's one thing to raise awareness, another to deflate historical figures because of some shit they said 70 years ago. It is toxic, futile and against your cause. "That's not activism" - President Obama: ▶ this video
President Obama on woke ideology pointing out to what his daughters are learning in our education systems: ▶ this video
"This is not activism". Here is President Obama speaking about this so called wokeness in Academia: ▶ this video
The term for this is wokeness. It is typified by overly sensitive, agenda-pushing, irrational behavior that uses offense as a tool to further their political agenda, oppress those who oppose and exemplify eggregious levels of false moral-superiority (and virtue signal to their mob). As President Obama says [1], it is not activism. [1] ▶ this video
Obama called out the "super woke" generation a few years back: ▶ this video "If all you're doing is casting stones, you're probably not going to get very far"...
Do you have examples? The only one I'm aware of is this talk in 2019: ▶ this video That was good, but too late. It seemed like he mostly got "Ok, boomer" responses from his target.