The former president calls attention to the future saying division won’t be tolerated.
The 44th President of the United States, speaking Wednesday at the World Travel & Tourism Council Global Summit in Seville, Spain, warned of the rise of populism in North America and countries in the European Union.
“These are dangerous roads,” Barack Obama said. “I believe in uniting people and not in separating them.”
He didn’t name Trump specifically, but said, according to a Seville newspaper Diario de Sevilla, which was translated from Spanish, that he believed populist uprisings in the U.S., Canada and other countries were being “generated by the fear people have of losing their status.”
There has been plenty of that fear lately.
We know the population of people of color in this country is quickly nearing a majority status.
The current administration’s immigration policies are targeting and trying to erase Black and Brown people from the same status that white immigrants, past and present had and have.
The right-wing media is pumping fear of people of color on a daily basis.
Fox News’ Tucker Carlson’s comments released about former First Lady Michelle Obama needing to “whiten up a little bit,” and his questioning of Barack Obama’s Blackness, or his declaration that immigration “makes our own country poorer and dirtier and more divided,” certainly demonstrates it.
Officials that should be maintaining laws are disrespecting lawmakers of color in the name of racism and hate.
Examples include a Texas County Commissioner telling a Latina judge to stop speaking Spanish and law enforcement trapping immigrants for deportation.
Also, countless attacks on the youngest Congresswoman, a Latina, and unabashed Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), FBI surveilling of Black activists while white law enforcement have plenty of free speech and unpunished actions against people of color.
Obama’s words fly in the face of what is becoming the unconstitutional and inhumane norm, and he is calling for a “respect for diversity.”
“The generations behind us are more sophisticated, worldly, cosmopolitan and appreciative of cultures than the old people are. They are not afraid of difference, change, things that are unusual or unfamiliar. That’s the world they’ve grown up in.
“The politics of looking backward and erecting walls is a politics that is going to not appeal to young people,” the former president added. “It’s one that they fundamentally reject.”
Next year, according to the Census, 50.2% of children in the U.S. will be children of color.
