"Former President Barack Obama recently gave a speech in which he attacked the critics of "identity politics." At the June Copenhagen Democracy Summit Obama said: "I have little sympathy for reactionaries who cynically condemn identity politics or cancel culture when really all they're doing is trying to preserve existing privilege or excuse entrenched injustice, or bigotry. I mean, the original identity politics is racism and sexism and homophobia. That's nothing if not identity politics, and it's done a lot more harm than some tweet from an aggrieved liberal."
"Reactionaries"?
"Yes, that would be the same Obama who burst on the national scene by giving a rafter-ringing keynote speech at the Boston 2004 DNC convention where he denounced identity politics. Then-Illinois state Sen. Obama said: "There are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. Well, I say to them tonight, there's not a liberal America and a conservative America -- there's the United States of America. There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America. The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into red states and blue states; red states for Republicans, blue states for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. ... We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America."' . . .
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