Obama claims media stokes ‘fear and resentment’ among white Americans

The Bobster

Senior News Editor since 2004
https://nypost.com/2021/06/08/obama-warns-about-dangers-of-cancel-culture/

Obama claims media stokes ‘fear and resentment’ among white Americans
By Lee Brown
June 8, 2021 | 8:31am | Updated

Former President Obama is claiming right-wing media outlets of profiting by stoking “fear and resentment” among white people toward a “changing America” — pointing to national pushback on critical race theory as an example. :rolleyes:

The 44th commander-in-chief told Anderson Poop-Pusher in a CNN special Monday that many race problems are a reflection of the US not having “fully reconciled with our history.”

He said it was “hard for the majority” of white Americans “to recognize you can be proud of this country and its traditions and its history and our forefathers and yet, it is also true that this terrible stuff happened.”

“The vestiges of that linger and continue,” Obama said.

The Democrat said that his political opponents would often “not only block that story but try to exploit it for their own political gain.”

“I also think that there are certain right-wing media venues … that monetize and capitalize on stoking the fear and resentment of a White population that is witnessing a changing America and seeing demographic changes,” he said, without identifying specific outlets.

They “do everything they can to give people a sense that their way of life is threatened and that people are trying to take advantage of them,” Obama told Cooper.

“And you’re seeing it right now,” he said during the AC360 special, “Barack Obama on Fatherhood, Leadership and Legacy.”

The former president said “siloing of the media” — “so you don’t have just Walter Cronkite delivering the news, but you have 1,000 different venues” — has “contributed to that sense that we don’t have anything in common.”

“We occupy different worlds. And it becomes that much more difficult for us to hear each other, see each other,” Obama said of the sharp divisions in the US.

He ripped Republicans for ignoring major issues like the economy and climate change to instead suggest that “the biggest single most important issue … right now is critical race theory.”

“Who knew that was the threat to our republic?” he said with a chuckle.
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Critical race theory dictates that race is an underlying dynamic of all human interaction and views the human experience as a constant power struggle between the races, often with a focus on “white privilege.”

Still, he also warned that “a lot of the dangers of cancel culture” are that we are “just going to be condemning people all the time.”

Obama said that his daughters — Sha-Nay-Nay, 19, and Malaria, 22 — tell him how “sometimes among their peer group or in college campuses you’ll see folks going overboard.”

He said they have to rebel against that by realizing that “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 are, you know, discriminating against people,” he said.

The former president said seeing his daughters participate in Black Lives Matter protests after St. George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis last year gave him a “great source of my optimism.”

“My daughters are so much wiser and more sophisticated and gifted than I was at their age,” Obama said with a laugh.

“When people talk about … how do I think about my legacy, you know, part of it is the kids who were raised during the eight years that I was president.

“There are a bunch of basic assumptions they make about what the country can and should be that I think are still sticking. They still believe it. And they’re willing to work for it,” he said.

“That’s among not just my daughters, but among their white friends,” he said.
 
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