Politics November 18, 2016
On the heels of Trump’s surprising presidential election win, President Obama had a few words of hope and empathy to share with his daughters, Malia and Sasha.
Malia, 18, and Sasha, 16, have spent years living in the White House. Along with the rest of the world, they were likely expecting Hillary Clinton’s win as the first female president in the United States. However, with Trump’s victory, the two young women may face the sexism and racism that defined much of Trump’s campaign.
However, in an extended interview with The New Yorker, Obama assures both the nation and his daughters that Trump’s election “is not an apocalypse.”
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Obama’s initial reaction was to give his daughters a pep talk. “What I say to them is that people are complicated,” he said. “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,” he continues. “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.”
Malia Obama has plans to attend Harvard in 2017, taking after her parents, both of whom graduated form the Ivy League school. Sasha, currently a high school sophomore, could follow in their footsteps.
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Besides the dignified advise of their father, Malia and Sasha have the guidance of their mother. “I’m proud of them, they’ve really managed this so well,” Michelle told Ellen DeGeneres on her show. “I mean, I just love them to death and the big thing I’ve always worried about was making sure that they got out of this whole. I’m just proud that they are poised, smart, intelligent young women.”
With Obama’s inspiring mentorship as a leader and diplomat and Michelle’s continued support, Malia and Sasha may very well shatter the glass ceiling that Clinton has already cracked.
