Barack Obama and the ‘cancel culture problem’

Barack Obama has spoken out against “cancel culture” in his own party, claiming that “buzzkill” Democrats are getting caught up in “policy gobbledygook”.

“Sometimes people just want to not feel as if they are walking on eggshells,” the former president told the Pod Save America podcast, “and they want some acknowledgement that life is messy and that all of us, at any given moment, can say things the wrong way, make mistakes.”

Obama “did not give an example, or name anyone”, said The Times, “but the left of his party has been accused of promoting identity politics”.

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‘That’s not activism’

This was not the first time that Obama has spoken out about the trend. In 2019, he objected to the prevalence of “call-out culture” and “wokeness”, reported The New York Times.

Speaking about youth activism at the Obama Foundation Summit, he said: “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.”

The former president said that, among some young people, “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.

“That’s not activism. That’s not bringing about change,” he said. “If all you’re doing is casting stones, you’re probably not going to get that far. That’s easy to do.”

Speaking to CNN in 2021, he warned of “the dangers of cancel culture” going too far in American society, saying there were “people going overboard”, noted The Hill.

Cancel culture ‘isn’t real’

“His comments hold a lot of gratifying truths,” wrote Sarah Ditum for The Observer, following Obama’s remarks in 2019.

She added that cancel culture “can spill into lost jobs, broken friendships and public protests; ultimately, it amounts to an effort to declare the victim a non-person, someone intolerable to decent society” and with “no appeals and no rehabilitation”.

However, wrote Sarah Hagi for Time in the same year, “cancel culture isn’t real, at least not in the way people believe it is”. Rather, “it’s turned into a catch-all for when people in power face consequences for their actions or receive any type of criticism, something that they’re not used to”.

Indeed, writing for The Independent, author Michael Arceneaux said he was “never quite sure if Obama really thinks this naively or if he’s trying to convince certain sects of the population – notably young black folks, whom he just loves to lecture – that it’s better to coddle white people about their prejudices with the hopes of growth rather than speak our minds as we see fit”.

Another to take issue with Obama’s opinion was journalist Ernest Owens. In The New York Times, he wrote that “as a millennial who has participated in using digital platforms to critique powerful people for promoting bigotry or harming others, I can assure you it wasn’t because they had ‘different opinions’.

“It was because they were spreading the kinds of ideas that contribute to the marginalisation of people like me and those I care about.”