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Barack Obama takes on 'woke' call-out culture: 'That's not activism'

Guardian NewsCited 14× on HN, 2020–2025
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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.

12 comments from Hacker News

@normalaccess2025-01 · in “The Origins of Wokeness”

Even Obama is not a fan of "woke" culture and calls it out for the hollow vapid gotcha politics that it is: ▶ this video

@gitfan862025-01 · in “The Origins of Wokeness”

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

@gitfan862025-01 · in “The Origins of Wokeness”

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

@incomingpain2022-10 · in “The Problem with Polling Might Be Unfixable”

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.

@incomingpain2022-04 · in “Heresy”

▶ 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.