Former President Barack Obama took aim at “woke” people during his Obama Foundation Summit in Chicago.
“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,” he said Tuesday. “The world is messy. There are ambiguities. People who do really good stuff have flaws.”
He specifically pointed out college students as being susceptible to falling into the “danger” of being woke.
“There is this sense sometimes of ‘the way of me making change is to be as judgmental as possible about other people, and that’s enough,'” Obama said, adding, “‘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?’
“You know, that’s not activism. That’s not bringing about change. If all you’re doing is casting stones, you’re probably not going to get that far,” he added.
Former first lady Michelle Obama was also at the conference where she talked about growing up in a neighborhood with “white flight.”
“I want to remind white folks that y’all were running from us … This family, with all the values that you read about, you were running from us. And you’re still running because we’re no different than the immigrant families that are moving in,” she said.
The subject was also dealt with in her bestselling memoir, Becoming. The Obamas have both signed book deals since the former president’s departure from office. They also inked a Netflix deal to produce content for the streaming giant.
