Barack Obama apparently deftly delivered another bullet to his foot with his recent comments about his "white grandmother." He called her a "typical white person" and the news commentators on radio and TV are lovin' it! The tone of their comments boils down to this: "How dare he, a black man running for president, use racial stereotypes when racial stereotypes have done so much to hurt civil rights?"
Well take it from a "typical white person", stereotypes or not, I can certainly understand his grandmother's fear of walking past certain people (be they white, black, Hispanic or other) on any street. Why? Simply because some of them are very different and different is, to many of us typical white people, not good — in fact it's scary sometimes.
To be clear here, I'm not talking about skin color (actually skin color has almost nothing to do with "racial" attitudes) and I'm not talking about people who I have previously met. I'm talking about that stranger whose mannerism, dress, and body language — in general terms, the way he or she presents him/her self — are so different from my own that it triggers a danger signal. Be honest, you've all seen them! They are the punks who walk down the street talking loud and giving everyone they see "the look" that says, "Hey, you better not be lookin' at me or I'll jump your a**." They are the bleary-eyed drunks and druggies who look like they are ready to do anything for another drink or fix; they are almost any young people who are travel in "packs", acting like they are the kings and queens of the sidewalk and YOU are on THEIR sidewalk.'
Am I a racist for thinking this or seeing people that way? Hell no! I'm just a typical person who happens to be white and who has been raised to behave a certain way and to expect people to behave a certain, non-threatening way. I'm sure that neither Barack's white grandmother nor I are the least bit intimidated by 95+% of the people we see on the street no matter what color they are. Perhaps if Barack's white grandmother spent more time in urban ghettos she would become accustomed to all the different manners of dress and behavior — perhaps if I spent more time there I would also be more comfortable with those who seem to go out of their way to look and act "different."
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Poor Granny!
Gosh, poor Granny! Maybe the fear she has of black men was actually a premonition of her own grandson.
2 - Mike D
stop the whining, that is the most typical out of your comments. "if that was a white guy who said the same thing about a black guy.." GET OVER IT
3 - JustOneMan
Mike...
"if that was a black guy who said the same thing about a white guy.." GET OVER IT
JOM
4 - Mack
Obama can deliver a speech on a teleprompter quite well, but in an interview or off-the-cuff, he becomes George W. Bush, ummming and erring, and yes, shooting himself in the foot.
5 - JustOneMan
Hey Mack...cut out the racial overtones and inuendo..the last thing we need is an image of Obamaa with a gun in his hand...by golly think of all the scared old white grandmothers....
JOM
6 - Figures
White knocks Black = Riots
Black knocks White = No Prob
Typical
7 - Chris
I am so SICK of black racism towards whites. Obama is just another typical N I Dubble-Guh er as far as I am concerned now. He's a racist SOB and I should know one when I see one as I am Cherokee.
8 - JustOneMan
Chris,
Me think you drink to much fire water!
JOM - Just call me Kimosabe
9 - Frederick
All the Obama people come out and try to make everybody feel small for even talking about this. How dare you challenge Barack on a tiny little non-issue when he's trying to do great things like 'unify America'! Now get out of Barack's way, you small, little, inconsequential person! Do you Obama supporters ever stop to examine what the hell you're all even talking about with this 'unification' stuff? Who is going to be unified? When will this unification happen? Immediately upon his election? Do I get a tax break for performing or particiapting in a unification? Can I get some specifics please? (Oh, I just don't get it, huh?) You're right.
10 - Dr Dreadful
Huh.
Whymrhymer, I just read through the comments so far, and then reread your article. I couldn't see anywhere where it said, 'Only comments that make absolutely no sense whatsoever will be accepted'.
Go figure.
It's sad that you feel threatened by people who look and behave differently. I don't - and I grew up in South London.
11 - Matthew T. Sussman
"Some people are different than others."
There. You could have saved yourself 300 words. (Well, 298 if you add "Barack Obama" for the additional Internet traffic.)
12 - TWP
Well---I guess the survival instinct only is present in us Typical White People---you know, that instinct that tells you that bum that keeps hassling you after you gave him what change you can spare probably wants to hurt you. THAT is what Barak meant when he mentioned a Typical White Person in that drippingly sarcastic voice---his Granny was hassled by a nasty bum at a bus stop---and he was offended because it was mentioned the bum was black! Oh well---BHO proved to be a Typical Black Person assuming ALL whites are typical...................after this comment, America can be assured he really DID NOT hear the sermons of his Racist pastor----huh?
13 - Zedd
Whymrhymer
Did you just suggest that people should act like you so that you don't get scared??
Did you also acknowledge that you more than likely don't have a reason to be afraid, it's just that you aren't used to the way these people WALK and move THEIR bodies and if you were used to them you wouldn't be scared?
Are you mad?? What part of the Constitution do you comprehend? Walking like YOU is not a prerequisite. Now what should be outlawed is watching too many movies, because clearly, that is your biggest problem.
I see goth kids who look like the living dead, surely that scene goes against every natural instinct but somehow I get it that these kids are just wanting to look scary and that YES they may have issues and probably on drugs and some my even be thieves but they are just needy, although eye rolling, kids. You however don't see the human in Black or Hispanic kids who are just trying to be noticed.
Man up.
However I appreciate your honesty.
14 - Zedd
Why are people referring to Barrack as a Black man. He was raised exclusively White. His African father was nowhere in site. If anyone knows average Whites its he. He is one. He just doesn't look like one. This guy had to learn what Blacks were.
15 - Don
I am so relieved that we have finally set the standard. It is now OK for me to point at a black hip-hop gangbanger and say, "That a "typical black person". Obama has certainly added his version of healing to the dialog. One man's racism is just another's innocent comment, huh? The Audacity of Hate.
16 - Whymrhymer
Dr Dreadful, Perhaps one of us is actually atypical. :-)
Anyway, the more you become accustomed to something the less it affects you. I remember watching my first wrestling match on TV when I was about 6 or 7 years old; it was a bloody affair and my stomach was in knots by the time it was over. Less than a year later, the violence didn't phase me (and I still didn't realize that it was all staged). That's why I made my comment about spending some time in an urban ghetto and how it makes you immune to the fear.
The reality is, I was just using myself as an example -- I grew up in racially mixed neighborhood and I currently work in a neighborhood that is a mixture of black, white, Hispanic and Korean. I have become pretty immune to differences; the only people I now fear are the ones who make it obvious that they want to be feared.
Zedd, you're reading MUCH TOO MUCH into my words.
I never suggested that anyone should act more like me, I was simply making the observation that people tend to react with fear (or at least something approaching fear) to people who are very different in mannerisms and dress then they are.
And yes I did acknowledge that many people (not just me) "more than likely don't have a reason to be afraid, it's just that [they] aren't used to the way these people WALK and move THEIR bodies and if you were used to them you wouldn't be scared?" Is there something invalid about that observation?
YOU are mad to even suggest that I am calling for any laws that regulate how people look or act when walking down the street. You have totally missed my point!
17 - Zedd
Don,
Obama is just as White as he is Black. Actually he was raised White (if there is such a thing).
And quit whining. Lets meet after 250yrs, slavery, jim crowe and daily garbage, then you may start making comparisons. Until then, shush. You sound wimpy and silly.
18 - Krutic A
Obama is just as White as he is Black. Actually he was raised White (if there is such a thing).
I would agree with that.
His recent overt 'blackness' is more political than anything else. And if I had to guess, I'd bet his wife is the one that picked their church and he went along with it.
19 - STM
I can kind of see where where the tone of this thread comes from. Like Doc, I grew up in a multicultural neighbourhood of a non-American English speaking country (Australia).
I never felt threatened. However, in the past few years, people have felt threatened by the rise in the number of criminal gangs of boys and young men of middle-eastern descent.
It's just because it's a recent phenomenon (the gangs, not the Australians of mid-eastern descent, who have been here since the 19th century).
But it means many people have now turned all young men of mid-eastern descent into a lumpenmasse to be feared and wary of, which is not reality.
I'm like Doc, I don't feel threatened - but because I can mostly tell the difference between those with good intent and those with bad (and the former outweigh the latter by a huge margin), I'm occasionally wary.
It's good to be wary in any urban environment, but to live a life full of fear about a particular group of people who look and act differently is emotionally crippling and usually not based in any way on reality. Besides which, the bias only means you are blocking yourself off from a whole range of social interactions and potential friendships.
20 - Doug Hunter
You want brutal internet honesty. Judging by the number of young black males in jail, there is good reason to be scared when you see them on the street. People will be openly or, for most, secretly fearful of blacks until they bring their level of murder, robbery, drug dealing, and gang-bangin (not the dirty type) down from the high level it is currently at.
High rates of black crime is not ignorance, it's just a simple fact. If you don't like the truth, change it.
21 - tony
I find it ironic that Obama would refer to his grandmother as a "typical white person" after he had confessed to the same concerns in his book:
Then I guess Barack must be a "typical white person" too because he confessed to the same concerns in his book:
-- Barack Obama from 'Dreams of My Father',
"When his grandmother wants a ride to work because the day before, while awaiting the bus, she was threatened by a black panhandler, he is outraged -- at his grandparents. . . Later, when he moves to the South Side of Chicago in 1984, he eventually discovers that, like his grandmother, he’s sometimes scared of black males on the street, too."
And the concerns are shared by others:
-- The Reverend Jesse Jackson, as quoted in US News, 3/10/96,
"There is nothing more painful to me ... than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery, then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved. "
The point being, if Jesse, Barack and his grandmother all admit to stereotyping in this case, why didn't Barack simply say "typical person".
22 - Whymrhymer
STM, Totally agree and, call me a wimp but gangs scare the s**t out of me!
Doug, "You want brutal internet honesty."
Yes! And you provided it! Thanks
Tony, Excellent points!
23 - JustOneMan
Obama Outed for misrepresenting the truth.
This is how he described the Wright situation, "This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted."
The reality is , Wright doesn't appear to have struggled much at all. If anything, he came from something of a privileged, or at least upper-middle class background. Wright is from a family that represents incredible success for people of any color, or race. Obama's offered excuse is really no excuse at all.
Here is his moms backgroud,
June, 1938, she married her COLLEGE sweetheart, the Reverend Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright; Graduated from Virginia Union University magna cum laude, with degrees in mathematics and English; in 1949, she earned a Master of Arts degree in mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania; during the 1958-59 school year, National Science Fellow in the Graduate School of Education of the University of Pennsylvania where she earned a Master of Science degree in education; she went on to earn a Doctor of Education degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1971.
She had a distinguished 34-year career in the Philadelphia public schools; was the first African-American teacher at Roosevelt Junior High School, and was appointed Vice Principal of the Philadelphia High School for Girls in 1968 and remained in that position until her retirement in 1978.
In addition, Wrights family is very successful he has several aunts, uncles and cousins who have post graduate degrees and other professional accomplishments.
Hmmmmm does that sound like a person whos opportunities were "systematically constricted". Rather then celebrate and promote the idea of education and self determination he instead promotes victimization and hopelessness.
Based upon the great successes of his family members, the revrerend might just be the "black sheep" in his family. As Obama stated "every family has one."
JOM
24 - Dave Nalle
For once JoM posts something of value. Wright's mother's level of success, for a woman much less an AA woman of her generation is simply amazing. It doesn't place her above average it probably puts her in the top 1/100th of 1% just for women, probably 1 in a million for AA women.
Dave
25 - Dan
Tony, In "Dreams of my Father", Barrick isn't the one outraged at his grandparents.
He walks in on his grandfathers anger at his grandmother. The grandfather, sees fit to drag 17 year old Barrick into the bad vibe by explaining that grandma was accosted by an aggressive panhandler at a bus stop.
As a result she was asking grandpa to drive her to work at the bank. Grandpa refused, because he wrung it out of grandma that a racial component was at work in her thinking.
Apparantly, gramps was going to teach his life partner a lesson on high moral thinking.
After confessing grandma's moral sin to Barick, grampaw relented to drive grandma to work.
It seems as though young Obama was puzzeled by all of this, so he sought out the council of a nearby friend of the family. The elderly black man tells Obama that grandma is right to fear black men at the bus stop. because she understands that black people have a reason to hate.