"... .. The point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity. She doesn't. But she is a typical white person who, uh, if she sees somebody on the street that she doesn't know there's a reaction that's been been bred into our experiences that don't go away and that sometimes come out in the wrong way and that's just the nature of race in our society. We have to break through it..." - Senator Barack Obama
Can you imagine if Hillary Clinton said someone was a "typical black person?"
Seriously, Barack Obama basically called all white people racist. You know, because when us typical white folk walk down the street and see an African American coming our way we run to the other side of the road.
Is this guy kidding? Back in the late 1970s, early 1980s, I lived on 95th and Columbus in New York City; long before it went chique. I took a subway from 42nd Street to get home after working on Broadway late at night. I walked home from the subway alone. I rode with African Americans, walked down the street past midnight in an area that wasn't near safe, with African Americans walking beside me and behind me. I'm a whitey white Scots-Irish broad and I was never afraid of an African American coming towards me, and never once crossed the street.
In an update, Obama's spokesperson elaborated, but it didn't help:
UPDATE: We gave the Obama campaign a chance to respond to this post. "Barack Obama said specifically that he didn't believe his grandmother harbored any racial animosity, but that her fears were understandable and typical of those often shared by her generation," said Obama's PA spokesman Sean Smith, who added that Grandma is 86-years-old. He might have meant that specifically, but that isn't what he said, especially as he spoke of his grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, in the present tense. ... ..
It's becoming more apparent why Senator Obama didn't leave Rev. Wright's church, as well as continued his relationship with him. The truth is that racism works both ways and some of us blue collar folks don't appreciate being called racist by someone who has his own problems with race he is obviously in denial about.