Barack Obama has been sharing more insight into life with his family while promoting his newest memoir, A Promised Land. In a new cover story for People, the former president revealed that his daughters, Malia and Sasha Obama, both participated in racial justice demonstrations earlier this year.
According to President Obama, they “felt the need to participate” in the nationwide protests that took place following the unjust murders of Black Americans including George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, and wanted to be part of the resounding call for justice.
“I didn’t have to give them a lot of advice because they had a very clear sense of what was right and what was wrong and [of] their own agency and the power of their voice and the need to participate,” he said of his daughters. “Malia and Sasha found their own ways to get involved with the demonstrations and activism that you saw with young people this summer, without any prompting from Michelle and myself, on their own initiative.”
He continued, “They didn’t do it in a way where they were looking for limelight. They were very much in organizer mode,” adding, “I could not have been prouder of them.”
The former president also shared that though his girls, who are now both in college, have seemingly inherited a bit of his organizing spirit, he doesn’t envision them branching out into politics in the near future but rather sees them being “active citizens.”
“They’re reflective of their generation in the sense they want to make a difference and they think about their careers in terms of: How do I have a positive impact? How do I make the world better?” he said. “What particular paths they take in doing that, I think are going to change and vary between the two of them. I think they’re going to want to have an impact and their friends feel the same way.”
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