“The View” co-hosts heaped praise on liberal activist and actress Jane Fonda on Monday after she delivered a politically charged speech at the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards, defending being “woke” and speaking out about empathy.
“It also gave me inspiration because, you know, there’s a lot of people that are older that have marched, that have protested in the past that are now saying, you know, we’re tired. It’s time that the young people do it, and Jane Fonda just reminded us that you are never too old, that you are never too successful,” co-host Ana Navarro said.
Navarro continued, praising Fonda for standing up for her beliefs, while sometimes disagreeing with the actress.
“This is a woman who has been protesting and standing up for her beliefs. Sometimes I’ve disagreed with her, and it has cost her at times. It has had great costs at her career, and you do not give up on America. You don’t turn your back on America. When America needs us to stand up, speak up, and show up, we have to continue doing it,” Navarro shared.
Fonda defended being “woke” during a speech at the SAG Awards and said, “Make no mistake, empathy is not weak or woke. By the way, woke just means you give a damn about other people.”
Co-host Sunny Hostin argued that the word “woke” had been co-opted by the right, and said in the African-American community, the term meant “acknowledging social justice inequities, acknowledging people’s suffering.”
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“I was always a part of it, and so I’ve never been asleep, and so it angers me when people are, like, this woke stuff’s got to go. That tells me that you don’t care about my lived experience. You don’t care about the oppression of the LGBTQ community. You don’t care about the oppression of the disabled. You don’t care about the oppression of immigrants. You don’t care about your fellow neighbor, and that is ungodly. That is not Christian,” Hostin said.
Navarro agreed and added, “they don’t care about it while wearing big, fat crosses around their necks.”
Whoopi Goldberg, who said last month that “wokeness” got White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt her job, argued that “all things” that make people feel uncomfortable would have been called “woke.”
“There have not been changes made in this country that were made without people being woke. We had to wake up and see that there’s nothing wrong with who you want to love as long as you keep me in mind when I say this is who I love. All of these things were challenged by people who said, oh, maybe they didn’t say you’re too woke, but they used whatever the hip word of the time was. This has always been, it will always be. This is what change does, and it makes people uncomfortable. It scares people. It makes people think that they are losing their place. You’re not losing your place,” Goldberg said.
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Hostin agreed with Goldberg and added, “equality can feel like oppression to those that have always been at the top of the ladder.”
Fonda delivered her politically-charged speech after accepting the Life Achievement Award at the SAG awards.
“Back to empathy, a whole lot of people are going to be really hurt by what is happening, what is coming our way. And even if they’re of a different political persuasion we need to call upon our empathy and not judge but listen from our hearts and welcome them into our tent, because we are going to need a big tent to resist successfully what’s coming at us,” Fonda said.
