No really, I'm serious. I missed it, I have to admit I'm trying to avoid the Obama-Clinton shitfest. What was the context?
He was asked about her having been afraid of black people in the past and having been accused of racial or ethnic stereotypes (or words to that effect) and replied that when she saw someone on the street that she did not know there is a reaction that has been bred in and that reaction sometimes comes out the wrong way or words to that effect.
There are 3 issues here.
First, is there such a thing as a typical white person?
Second, the point that he appears to be making is that such a typical white person has in-bred negative feelings about black people.
Thirdly, to gunny's point, if a white person said that black people typically viewed all whites negatively it would be a huge deal.
On point 3, it appears that what Obama said is a pretty big deal anyway, at least as far as the media are concerned, though perhaps not as big a deal as if McCain had said it
On point 2, to a degree, I think Obama is partly right. I have a number of black friends. The fact that I consider them as friends should indicate that I do not view them in a negative light, far from it in fact. But the point Obama is making is about how white people view black people who are strangers to them. And that's a lot less easy and less comfortable for me to answer. Are the views of white people shaped by things like inherited bias? Do white people tend to latch onto the more extreme views voiced by some members of the black community (Sharpton et al) and graft them onto the black community in a more general sense because doing so suits the perspective they have about black feeling towards whites? Do white people latch onto media coverage about black criminal behaviour and store it up, ready to bring into an argument as "yet another exapmle of" whatever? To my way of thinking, some of us do. On the other hand, and this is where I disagree with Obama, "some of us" isn't "typical".
On the first point, is there such a thing as a typical white person? Of course there is. The typical white person I would say graduated high school, has a job, pays taxes and respects the law, amongst other things. That data must be relatively easy to come by. Information about whether white people "typically" have a degree of in bred bias about black people would be harder to get at reliably.
So why did Obama say what he did? Some will say he is addressing a truth that is largely ignored but ought to be brought into the open. Others will think it is because black people are more naturally distrustful of whites than whites are of blacks. And there will be many other perspectives as well.
There's no right or wrong to this. There is only opinion, and everyone's opinions are, to a greater or lesser extent, shaped by their experiences.
