March 20, 2008

Barack Obama Finally Admits What He Thinks of the “Typical White Person”; Obama Spin Team Goes Into Overdrive

Words fail me — but in reality, you don’t need me to comment; if you can’t see Obama’s own racism in full bloom after reading this, then you’re blind in one eye, and can’t see out of the other.

First, a quick refresher on what Obama said Tuesday, that’s being referenced below:

I can no more disown him [Jeremiah Wright] than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother — a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

And now, today…

From Dan Gross at Philly.com:

Obama on WIP: My grandmother’s a “typical white person”

We thought we heard this, but we wanted to go back and listen to the clip of Sen. Barack Obama on 610 WIP this morning to be sure.

610 WIP host Angelo Cataldi asked Obama about his Tuesday morning speech on race at the National Constitution Center in which he referenced his own white grandmother and her prejudice. Obama told Cataldi that “The point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity, but that she is a typical white person. If she sees somebody on the street that she doesn’t know (pause) there’s a reaction in her that doesn’t go away and it comes out in the wrong way.”

Gross doesn’t quote Obama 100% verbatim, so here’s my transcript (listen here, or here):

“The point I was making was not that my grandmother, uh, harbors any racial animosity — she doesn’t — but she is a typical white person who, uh, you know, if she sees somebody on the street that she doesn’t know, you know, there’s a reaction that’s been bred into, uh, our experiences that— that don’t go away and that sometimes come out in the wrong way.”

Continues Gross:

We doubt this story will have legs, but wonder if Hillary Clinton referred to a “typical black person,” would we ever hear the end of it?

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. The Clinton campaign has not yet returned our request for comment on Obama’s remarks. We aren’t holding our breath for a Clinton comment.

Again, words fail me — so I’ll let this emoticon say it all: