2.4
November 23, 2016

What Obama told his daughters on Election Night.

“Here’s What President Obama Told Sasha and Malia After Trump Won the Election.”

I wish I’d been able to hear these wakeful words in what seemed like a bad dream (here’s my advice, from that night).

Via a feature interview in The New Yorker (worth subscribing to):

“What I say to them is that people are complicated,” Obama told me. “Societies and cultures are really complicated … This is not mathematics; this is biology and chemistry. These are living organisms, and it’s messy. And your job as a citizen and as a decent human being is to constantly affirm and lift up and fight for treating people with kindness and respect and understanding. And you should anticipate that at any given moment there’s going to be flare-ups of bigotry that you may have to confront, or may be inside you and you have to vanquish. And it doesn’t stop … You don’t get into a fetal position about it. You don’t start worrying about apocalypse. You say, O.K., where are the places where I can push to keep it moving forward.”

Leave a Thoughtful Comment
X

Read 0 comments and reply

Top Contributors Latest

Elephant Journal  |  Contribution: 1,510,185