U.S. President Barack Obama encouraged his daughters to continue pushing for their rights and beliefs following several incidents of racism in the U.S., which some speculate are related to the outcome of the U.S. election.
In a post-election article with the New Yorker, Obama said he wanted to make it clear to his daughters, and his staff at the White House, that the world wouldn’t end just because Republican Donald Trump was elected.
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“What I say to them is that people are complicated,” Obama said.
“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.”
He continued, “You don’t start worrying about apocalypse. You say, O.K., where are the places where I can push to keep it moving forward.”
Obama was referring to a rash of disturbing acts of racism reported in several U.S. cities after the election.
In New York State, the words “Make America White Again” were spray-painted on a dugout at a baseball field in Wellsville. A large swastika was also painted on the dugout. In another incident, a black doll was found in an elevator at a dorm at Canisius College with a noose around its neck.
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The article, titled “Obama reckons with a Trump presidency,” profiles the current president in the weeks leading up to and the week following the election. After speaking at several campaign rallies for Democrat Hillary Clinton, Obama admitted that the election results surprised him.
But, according to the article, the president remains optimistic about the future of the country he’s led for eight years.
“I genuinely do not assume the worst, because I’ve seen the best so often,” he said.
“So it is a mistake that I think people have sometimes made to think that I’m just constantly biting my tongue and there’s this sort of roiling anger underneath the calm Hawaiian exterior. I’m not that good of an actor. I was born to a white mother, raised by a white mom and grandparents who loved me deeply. I’ve had extraordinarily close relationships with friends that have lasted decades. I was elected twice by the majority of the American people. Every day, I interact with people of good will everywhere.”
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