Photo courtesy of sasha_and_malia_obama_pictures/ Instagram.
President Barack Obama is proud of his daughters, Malia and Sasha Obama, for joining the George Floyd and BLM protests last summer. President Obama said that the young women felt compelled to participate in the nationwide protests following the murders of Breonna Taylor and Mr. Floyd at the hands of the police.
The nation’s first Black president spoke with People Magazine and said that his daughters felt “the need to participate” in the BLM protests. Obama told the outlet that he didn’t have to give them any advice because they had a such clear understanding of what is right and wrong on their own. President Obama added that the two young women wanted to use the power of their own voices and needed no encouragement.
“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. They didn’t do it in a way where they were looking for limelight…I could not have been prouder of them,” Obama said…Their attitude was — we’ve seen something wrong and we want to fix it, and we think we can fix it. And we understand that it’s not gonna take just a day or a week or one march to fix it. But we’re in it for the long haul.”
President Obama describes Malia, 22, as a person who “enjoys people, enjoys life and enjoys conversation. She’s never bored, which is a badass quality that can take you places.”
Of Sasha, 19, Obama said, “Sasha is, as Malia describes it, completely confident about her own take on the world and is not cowed or intimidated — and never has been — by anybody’s titles, anybody’s credentials. If she thinks something’s wrong or right, she will say so.”
Both Malia and Sasha are currently attending college, and while Obama doesn’t think Malia or Sasha want careers in politics, he does think that they will find something meaningful to do and try and make a difference in the world.
“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 says. “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….And these kids are really focused on — how can I do something that I find meaningful, that resonates with my values and my ideals And that I think is an encouraging sign for the country.”