Former President Barack Obama in a conversation with CNN’s Anderson Cooper:
Some the former President’s most searching commentary came when asked about the root causes to the deep divisions in the country, rifts that Obama attributed, in part, to questions about sources of information and race.
“We occupy different worlds. And it becomes that much more difficult for us to hear each other, see each other,” Obama said, something the former President attributed to a nationalization of both media and politics.
“We have more economic stratification and segregation. You combine that with racial stratification and the siloing of the media, so you don’t have just Walter Cronkite delivering the news, but you have 1,000 different venues,” Obama said. “All that has contributed to that sense that we don’t have anything in common.”
The solution, Obama said, is more face-to-face meetings where people are hearing each other’s struggles and stories.
“The question now becomes how do we create those venues, those meeting places for people to do that,” he said.
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